"TORTURE" -- GUILT & SHAME AND IMBECILIC ADOLESCENCE!

“TORTURE” – GUILT & SHAME AND IMBECILIC ADOLESCENCE!

James R. Fisher, Jr., Ph.D.
© May 24, 2009

“Though it sleep long, the venom of great guilt, when death or danger, or detection comes, will bite the spirit fiercely.”

Shakespeare

“I regard that man as lost, who has lost his sense of shame.”

Plautus (427 – 184), Roman comic poet

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REFERENCE:

Responses keep coming in on my missive on “Torture.” This is such a case.

A READER WRITES:

Jim,

Another hit! I have "enjoyed" a lifelong love/hate relationship with guilt - in Freudian terms, I'm sure I have an overdeveloped Superego. Whenever I speak on this topic with Jews or Catholics, they seem to believe that their religion/subculture invented guilt. I explain it to them thus:

The Jews invented guilt. The Catholics institutionalized it. The Puritans turned it into a national pastime.

The problem may be that it is no longer most Americans' pastime - guilt, and its neurotic motivating power, has left our national psyche.

We're better adjusted as individuals - people like me who feel guilty despite having done little wrong and plenty right: what's healthy about that? But as a collective whole?

Possibly not so good. Look at Wall Street. Look at the Bush Administration's patent lack of remorse, as evinced by Cheney on national TV lately. I think a good, healthy dose of guilt might indeed be good form, to paraphrase Mr. Salvater.

Ted

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DR. FISHER RESPONDS:

Ted,

When guilt is rationalized categorically, referencing Jews, Catholics and Puritans in terms of guilt, my wonder is if it doesn’t take the sting out of personal identification, and therefore meaningful reflection.

I can see the advantage of such usage as a seminar leader, public speaker, indeed, as an intellectual entertainer, but does the effort register with any moral impact? Or does such reference simply distance the intended audience from a sensitivity to personal guilt and shame?

My sense is it disperses guilt and shame and nullifies the personal impact. When I’m making such references, I want the reader to reflect, “Is he speaking to me?” I am indeed!

My missives are an invitation for the reader to ponder what I am pondering, but from his perspective, not mine. I am self-engaged but addressing him.

Someone wrote that “you are always talking about yourself,” as if I should apologize or be self-conscious for doing so. My predilection has precedence.

In the Irish Roman Catholic Church, the priest reads the Epistle before he reads the Gospel at Sunday Mass. The Epistle is a moral missive in support of the Gospel. Since a little boy, Epistles have given me conceptual understanding of moral principles, and have dictated the style of my missives.

I tell empirical stories, and that is what Epistles are, stories, not to pump up my sails, but to put wind in the reader’s. What follows is consistent with that practice.

GUILT AND ITS REPRIEVE -- A PERSONAL INCIDENT!

When quite young, highly successful, but also naïve, I had a vision of building a medical and professional complex in Marion County, Indianapolis, where I was a chemical sales engineer for Nalco Chemical Company. I was also active in community affairs, among which was Secretary of the Zoning Board of Appeals for Lawrence Township, appointed by the mayor of the City of Lawrence, a personal friend.

The City of Lawrence was a burgeoning suburb of Indianapolis on the northeast side of the county with a 27-acre parcel of land that I thought ideal for my project. I shared the idea with a Nalco veteran, who had been with the company in its early days, and was relatively affluent.

“I’ve never taken a chance in my life. I want to get in on this,” he said passionately. "Secure the deal and I'll write a check for the balance." Naively, I took him at his word.

The land was owned by one of the major real estate developers in Indianapolis, and had a sales price of $30,000. I had previously commissioned an architect and had complete drawings of how the project would look when completed. I contacted the developer's attorney, gave him a deposit of $3,000 on Friday, and signed papers to pay the remaining $27,000 on the following Monday, once my partner released the funds.

Over the weekend, my partner got cold feet, and backed out. It was January 1964, and that $3,000 in 2009 dollars would be more than $30,000 today. It was my complete savings at the time. What to do?

On Monday, I went to the offices of the attorney for the developer located on Monument Circle in downtown Indianapolis, and immediately became weak in the knees once inside its imposing mahogany walls. A secretary ushered me into an even more impressive sanctuary where the attorney sat.

The secretary brought in all the documents I was to sign and gave them to the attorney, a well-dressed man, who waved me to sit down across from him, and said with a broad smile, “Let’s do it!”

“I don’t have the money,” I blurted out without preamble. The two of them looked at me as if I was joking. They could tell by my expression I was in deep agony and sincere. Without saying a word, they waited for me to explain. “My partner backed out,” I said matter-of-factly as if this was sufficient explanation.

“You know this is a serious breach of contract?” the attorney said.

“Yes sir.”

He looked at me a long time, dismissed the secretary, and then dialed a number. He was calling the developer. The attorney explained the situation. He turned his chair so that his back was toward me as he talked. Then he spun around. “Is there any chance you can raise the money?”

Two things kicked into my mind simultaneously. They expected I had a backup plan, which I didn’t, but they wanted to get rid of the land! “Could I talk to the developer?” I asked. The attorney handed me the phone.

The developer said, “You’re out $3,000, son, and you’re wasting everybody’s time.” He then went on to vent his spleen. I listened. I didn’t interrupt. He was obviously not having a very good day, and I had made it worse. Then what I expected came. “That is, you’re out the three grand if you don’t have another proposal.”

To this day, I hate talking on the phone. I screen all my calls, and only answer about 5 percent of them. If I can’t see you, I can’t read you. I was reduced to thinking with my gut, but boldly. “Sir,” I said, “I made this contract in good faith, but my partner got cold feet. I don’t think you want to take my $3,000. I think you want to sell the land.”

I could hear his breathing. “Here is my proposition,” I said off the top of my head breathing equally hard myself. “I would like you to give me a year’s extension and . .”

“What the hell are you talking about? I’m not giving any goddamn extension much less a year.”

“Sir, hear me out," I said evenly. He was breathing hard again. Somehow that increased my boldness. “I get paid every three months. I will send you a check for $2,000 each quarter over the next four quarters, or until I find a buyer for the land. If I don’t sell the land by that time, you will have $11,000, and I will be out that amount.” I thought for sure he’d say you have a month, take or leave it, but to my surprise he said,

“You’re willing to take that risk?”

“Sir, I’m a salesman, and a very good one. I am if you’re willing to trust me.” He was.

* * *

Over the next three quarters, there were several bites on the land but no one could come up with the amount needed – I was selling the land for $33,000 and wouldn’t budge on the price.

Then early in the fourth quarter a buyer materialized who needed the land immediately. He was an industrialist with a major contract from Korea, and had to build a facility with a railroad spur and easy access to metropolitan suppliers for components. He agreed to the $33,000 price, but we quickly ran into a glitch. His lawyers discovered the land was zoned suburban commercial (SC), not suburban industrial (SI). A road had to be cut through the property and “SC” required a 15-foot setback on either side of the road whereas “SI” required 5 feet. They needed the latter or the deal was off.

There was no time to go through the lengthy process of rezoning, but I was in a position to cut through red tape and have the Director of the Marion County Zoning Board, whom I knew rather well, change the land’s zoning from “SC” to “SI,” for an “honorarium,” as he put it.

Once again, I was on the horns of a dilemma. I confess I considered paying him the bribe, justifying it on the basis of what a huge loss it would be to my family if I didn't. My wife knew nothing of this whole business, so I agitated alone. In those days, before they locked up Catholic churches, I would sit in their musty dark silence wherever I was, and think. I did that now.

Part of my mind thought, no one will ever know, as I was aware of how poorly records were kept in 1964 in the county’s archives, as on occasion as Secretary of Zoning Board of Appeals for Lawrence Township I had researched them.

Then, it dawned on me. “I would know,” and I would know that my success was a fraud. I went back to the industrialist that day and told him it was not possible to change the zoning.

* * *

If matters were not complicated enough, they became more complicated. I was promoted area manager in the Industrial Division for Nalco heading up the office in Louisville, and forced to relocate almost immediately, meaning leaving Indianapolis where the land I was attempting to sell was located.

Depressed, and nearly certain that I had not only lost my initial investment in this land deal of $3,000, but compounded that loss with an additional $6,000 already, and possibly, a total of $8,000 if I didn’t find a buyer in final two weeks before Christmas. No one I was certain would be thinking of buying land during the Christmas holidays.

I was wrong. A week before Christmas, I had to leave Louisville and return to Indianapolis to meet a horse breeder from Ocala, Florida, who wanted to take a look at the land.

My heart sunk when I met this man. He was tall, round, scruffy and disheveled with rough hands, ruddy complexion, and the look of an out of work farmer. It was his eyes, however, that were different. They were executive eyes, decisive eyes, eyes that had no time for small talk.

I still remember his reaction when he saw the land. “I’ll take it,” and then he asked, “What you asking for it?” I told him. “Fine," he said, "Got to be back in Lexington tomorrow, can we do this today?”

I called the developer’s attorney, and surprised him once again. “I’ve got a buyer, and I’m bringing him to the office now.” We did the deal. It was the week before Christmas.

The rest of the story is equally bizarre and provides another instance of my naiveté. I was so overwhelmed with the whole affair that in January 1965, I received an additional check for $3,000 having overpaid the builder for the land. I had forgotten that I had charged $33,000 and only contracted to pay $30,000 for the land.

SHAME AND ITS VICISSITUDES

IN THE SHADOW OF THE COURTHOUSE (2003), I expressed my confusion as a boy with the jubilation that followed the hundreds of thousands of civilians who perished at Hiroshima and Nagasaki with the dropping of the atomic bomb. I wrote:

“On Monday, August 7, 1945, I read in The Clinton Herald that yesterday ‘President Truman reveals a U. S. Army Air Force bomber dropped an atomic bomb on Hiroshima, Japan.’ I never heard of such a bomb or such a place. On Thursday, I read that the day before, Wednesday, August 9, another atomic bomb was dropped on Nagasaki, Japan. Each bomb, according to The Herald, was a single missile 2,000 times the blasting power of the largest bomb used previously in the war. I try to fathom this destructive power and the reason for it.

“I listen to my da’s railroad buddies celebrating these bombings with a kind of excitement I hadn’t heard before. ‘Understand it leveled Hiroshima to the ground, and all their papier-mâché huts with it,’ says one. ‘Not a Jap standing,’ says another. ‘Did even a better job at Nagasaki,’ says a third. ‘Heard on the radio tens of thousands killed and tens of thousands more critically wounded in both attacks,’ says a fourth, ‘and we didn’t lose a flier.’ Finally, my da concludes, ‘Won’t be long now.’

“Thank God for that!” they echo as one.

“Does Japan have that huge an army in those two cities?” I ask innocently, seeing the only justification for such an attack. All eyes turn to me in stunned silence. Usually, they don’t even notice me. Then they break into uproarious laughter. Their eyes go watery. Fists to the eyes stay their tears; legs kick the floor until the house shakes, and some even hold their stomachs in raucous hilarity. I didn’t mean to be funny. What’s so funny about tens of thousands of people dying? Does war make people like that?

"I ask my mother who is in the kitchen reading. She says, ‘You wouldn’t understand.’ I ask my da after his railroad buddies leave. He says simply, “It saved thousands of American lives.’ Both answers are inadequate.” (pp 301 – 302)

Six decades later, I am still perplexed at the demonstration of such glee. Silently, I sought refuge then at the Clinton Public Library to read about these two cities. I didn’t understand shame but I think my young mind embodied it.

My da caught me crying, shook his head in disgust, and told my mother to handle me. War before that incident was like a game, like playing cops and robbers, cowboys and Indians, not real, but the pictures in the newspapers made it real.

* * *

There was an Indian Reservation not far from my home called “Tama,” which my da took me to a couple of times. I considered us poor, but I couldn’t understand how Indians could live in even more deplorable conditions. When I asked my da, he simply answered, “They’re Indians,” as if that explained the situation.

All my growing up period I never read about Indians except the romanticized version of the first Thanksgiving with the Pilgrims, and later, the many triumphs of Americans over Indians in battle, and the atrocities of Indians against settlers. Even “Custer’s Last Stand” had the dramatic appeal of a fallen hero, a possible presidential candidate cut down in the full flush of life, and not that of an incompetent leader.

Then, too, the Spanish explorer Hernando Cortez was romanticized in the books I read in my growing up period, failing to mention how he ruthlessly destroyed the Aztec culture in the sixteenth century, and laid to waste Aztec cities and temples of exquisite architecture. Little note was taken of Aztec advances in such fields as astronomy and the arts.

One of my early hero’s was President Andrew Jackson, who soared to prominence on the battlefield and as advocate of the common man. Yet, it wasn’t until my college student days that I became aware of the Indians’ “trail of tears” as he moved Indian nations east of the Mississippi River to the far west, thus destroying their ancient homelands and culture while desecrating their sacred grounds.

President after president throughout American history have signed and broken treaties with Indians, at will, because they could. Yet, there have been no national monuments to this shame.

We have essentially erased the Indian culture from the face of the United States. So, today, there is no Indian tradition, only Indian reservations like “Tama,” and Indian casinos spread across the length and breadth of the country. There is no national holiday dedicated to the Indian culture, yet this continent belonged to the American Indians long before Europeans made it their home.

We are all well aware that six million European Jews perished in Nazis concentration camps during WWII. We also know that more than 58 million perished in that war launched by Hitler six years after the Reichstag fire, which gave the Nazis a pretext to destroy the government and impose its will on the German people.

Nazis did this with democratic elections, elections that for the first time used modern technology and the media to manipulate the will of the people with the invention of contrived scapegoats of the Jews and the WWI Treaty of Versailles.

It is more than sixty years since that shameful period in human history. Since then Germany has been working through its past, attempting to conquer the past through painful self-examination, which has dominated political and cultural life in Germany since the end of World War II.

If you have had the opportunity to visit Germany in recent years, you have seen, as I have, the monuments to the Holocaust in Berlin. The German people are just now, more than six decades later, beginning to come to terms with the Nazis, while imploring the world to believe the genuine sincerity of their shame.

It is time for Americans to get started on what we have done to American Indians and to African Americans. President Harry S. Truman would not outlaw lynching in his administration because he didn’t believe it was prudent to do so at the time. Monuments and museums to the Holocaust are everywhere in Germany, especially in the major cities. Where are the monuments and museums to lynching, or to the eradication of Indian culture in the United States?

It is time for the Roman Catholic Church to apologize for its laxity in World War II for the behavior of Pope Pius XII with regard to the Jewish Question. The oblique apologies of Pope Paul II and Pope Benedict XVI are not sufficient. Where is the shame?

We know of the scandals of American Catholic priests and their sexual abuse of children, and the millions of dollars the church have had to pay the victims. We also know there was massive cover-up for decades. Not until the problem could no longer be contained did the Church act, and then reluctantly. Prior to that sex offending priests were rotated and cavalierly placed in harm’s way of children with imperious contempt. Where is the shame?

Now we learn that tens of thousands of Irish children were sexually, physically and emotionally abused by nuns, priests, and others over sixty years in hundreds of church-run residential schools meant to care for the poor, the vulnerable and the unwanted, according to a report released from Dublin last week. The New York Times reports:

“The 2,600-page report paints a picture of institutions run more like Dickensian orphanages than 20th century schools, characterized by privation, and cruelty that could be both casual and choreographed. A climate of fear, created by pervasive punishment, permeated most of the institutions, the report says. In the boys’ schools, it says, sexual abuse was endemic.”

Where is the shame?

Sometimes I wonder if we have traveled through all these centuries into modernism and post modernism only to find ourselves in Paradise Lost chasing money until it has no meaning, experiencing discomfort with society which has no substance, feeling psychological urges for a strong father figure, when he has long ago abandoned us, retreating into our primal desires with reckless abandon, which makes heaven a hell, and a hell of heaven, as Milton might say.

Without guilt and shame, conscience and caring, there is no sensitivity to our common humanity as these are its boundaries.

Viewed from that context, I fear we Americans are inclined to intellectualize our pain and shame, dissipating it into rhetoric rather than action. We are an unusual society. You say we are more mature. I flinch at that suggestion, as I couldn’t imagine us to be more imbecilic adolescent.

We cower in the cave of fear and paint it with our faint hopes. Not until we face and absorb our negative history can we count ourselves among the grown ups. If there is no sensitivity to evil, then there is no place for good. There is only room for hollow men.

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