Tamara Tabo emailed:
I am not sure whether this will make you smile, cringe, roll your eyes, or simply click delete . . . .Here's her photo:
I have worn my affection for Flannery O'Connor on my sleeve, so to speak, for about 13 years. This version of the quote comes from Walker Percy who lovingly purloined it from Flannery for use in his novel The Thanatos Syndrome.
Wow. Great picture. I can't imagine putting the words "gas chambers" on my body, but I wouldn't get any tattoo, and perhaps — given the use of tattoos by the Nazis — an argument against what they represent is the first or only acceptable tattoo.
But why is opposition to tenderness an argument against what Nazis represent? And what's with the 2 versions of the aphorism? What meaning is there in the shift from sentimentality to tenderness? And how closely do the thoughts of Flannery O'Connor and Walker Percy connect to present-day debates about empathy and trigger warnings?
MORE: In fact, O'Connor, like Percy, used the word "tenderness." She wrote:
One of the tendencies of our age is to use the suffering of children to discredit the goodness of God, and once you have discredited his goodness, you are done with him.... Ivan Karamazov cannot believe, as long as one child is in torment; Camus' hero cannot accept the divinity of Christ, because of the massacre of the innocents. In this popular pity, we mark our gain in sensibility and our loss in vision. If other ages felt less, they saw more, even though they saw more, even though they saw with the blind, prophetical, unsentimental eye of acceptance, which is to say, of faith. In the absence of this faith now, we govern by tenderness. It is tenderness which, long since cut off from the person of Christ is wrapped in theory. When tenderness is detached from the source of tenderness, its logical outcome is terror. It ends in forced-labor camps and in the fumes of the gas chamber.Walker Percy — who claimed not to realize he was appropriating O'Connor — wrote:
Beware, tender hearts! Don’t you know where tenderness leads? To the gas chambers. Never in the history of the world have there been so many civilized tenderhearted souls as have lived in this century. Never in the history of the world have so many people been killed. More people have been killed in this century by tenderhearted souls than by cruel barbarians in all other centuries put together. My brothers, let me tell you where tenderness leads. To the gas chambers! On with the jets!Interviewed about that passage, Walker said:
It is the widespread and ongoing devaluation of human life in the Western world -- under various sentimental disguises: "quality of life," "pointless suffering," "termination of life without meaning," etc. I trace it to a certain mindset in the biological and social sciences which is extraordinarily influential among educated folk -- so much that it has achieved the status of a quasi-religious orthodoxy.... Although it drapes itself in the mantle of the scientific method and free scientific inquiry, it is neither free nor scientific. Indeed, it relies on certain hidden dogma where dogma has no place. ... The first: In your investigations and theories, [thou] shalt not find anything unique about the human animal even if the evidence points to such uniqueness. ... Another dogma: Thou shalt not suggest that there is a unique and fatal flaw in Homo sapiens sapiens or indeed any perverse trait that cannot be laid to the influence of Western civilization. ... Conclusion: It is easy to criticize the absurdities of fundamentalist beliefs like "scientific creationism" -- that the world and its creatures were created six thousand years ago. But it is also necessary to criticize other dogmas parading as science and the bad faith of some scientists who have their own dogmatic agendas to promote under the guise of "free scientific inquiry." Scientific inquiry should, in fact, be free. The warning: If it is not, if it is subject to this or that ideology, then do not be surprised if the history of the Weimar doctors is repeated. Weimar leads to Auschwitz. The nihilism of some scientists in the name of ideology or sentimentality and the consequent devaluation of individual human life lead straight to the gas chamber.
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32 comments:
Well, well, well...there's a cute piece of protest!
"Without any external anchor in law, mores, or trusted guides—or any openness to being challenged in one’s thinking—empathy turned inward will lead each of us to our individual prisons of the self."
Paganism doesn't provide a moral law so there is nothing left except sentimentality which is easily manipulated. Science tells us about the physical universe but tells us nothing about the human soul.
As someone who has a tattoo (a guitar), I've tried to think of any words that I would want permanently on my body. Haven't found any yet. I'm not going to start with gas chamber LOL.
Ah, so it's an argument against utilitarianism as a moral philosophy. I can agree with that without sharing the turn to theism as the only other basis for morality. Indeed, paralleling the argument of Plato in the Euthyphro, if we do not have an independent and rationally knowable standard of good and evil, acceptance of God as the source of good and evil reduces to willing submission to superior power.
I always liked the part in Bonnie and Clyde when the gang retreats to the farm of C.W. Moss's father. C.W.'s dad beats the hell out of him, not for robbing banks and killing people, but for getting a tattoo.
Everyone has heard of the Spanish Inquisition. They burned people at the stake for a perceived lack of religious faith. One of Napoleon's stated intentions for the invasion of Spain was to eradicate the Inquisition.......How many people have heard of "freedom caps"? Freedom caps were cloth hats filled with hot tar. They were placed upon the heads of those who were perceived as lacking the proper enthusiasm for freedom, equality, and fraternity. As a general rule, the hot tar boiled the brain of the wearer within his skull, and the wearer died. But sometimes the wearer survived, although he did suffer a massive stroke. The humanity and decency of freedom caps compared to stake burnings are self evident........If tenderness leads to the gas chambers, equality leads to the gulags.
Tamara is beautiful hence the need for a tag. We will be hearing from her again, and I ain't be meaning no damn postcard neither.
Blond female privilege.
But isn't "gas chamber" off center? Was the tattoo artist too blinded by lust to center the words?
Crazy Street Corner Guy Off His Meds Says:
Harvey Keitel says that there is a God because only God could've created Harvey Keitel: as God created the shark and the hyena, blood and the watermelon, so did God create him, and as God created him he has no remorse or sentimentality, there is only the Now and the Now is Want. Harvey says God also created Stevie Nicks.
I started "The Moviegoer" by WP years ago. Didn't get far before quitting but I still remember some scenes quite vividly.
A movie star meeting some commoners in the street and the common man's emotions as to how to acknowledge the star without sacrificing ego supplication in front of his lady-friend.
Powerful stuff. WP was an MD who didn't start writing till later in life if my recollection serves.
whswhs said...
"Ah, so it's an argument against utilitarianism as a moral philosophy. I can agree with that without sharing the turn to theism as the only other basis for morality."
Theism vs. sentimentalism. What are the other alternatives?
"...we govern by tenderness. It is tenderness which, long since cut off from the person of Christ is wrapped in theory. When tenderness is detached from the source of tenderness, its logical outcome is terror. It ends in forced-labor camps and in the fumes of the gas chamber."
The biography of unrestrained liberalism since 1793.
The word spacing of that tattoo is unfortunate – it draws attention to itself, rather than transparently conveying the message. "leads to the gas chambers? Is that the same as gas chambers? Oh, okay."
After having read the material,I cannot say that I entirely follow the logic. That may be a lack-of-sufficient-brains issue, or it may be a disquieting-suspicion-of-agenda issue. In general, I agree that being disconnected from an inflexible morality leads to unimaginable horror.
It is my view that the librul attack upon Christianity is intended to dismoor us from our morality so that we will, for example, not rebel when the death panels determine that Grannie has only only a few years left and that those years have a dollar value that can be put into the balance when calculating the dollar amount of the medical care that must be spent to achieve those years of life. That's how the Brits do it with their fabled gub'ment health care.
Similarly, we are mocked when we express religious objections to abortion. It's the favorite pastime of the hipsters: mocking and deriding.
This is how the gas chambers, education camps, killing fields, Inquisitions and gulags happen. It may be my own immorality, but I do not include waterboarding in that list, because it is neither torture nor is it wrong.
That is the suspicion-of-agenda thing. However, I'm open to the possibility of it being a lack-of-sufficient brains thing. I'm a practical fella. Let's make a deal. I'll give up the waterboarding if the looselugnut libruls will give up abortions and death panels, and then maybe we can somehow steer clear of the gas chambers.
- Krumhorn
Both of those passages post-date Whittaker Chambers' striking critique of Atlas Shrugged with the line about 'From almost any page of Atlas Shrugged, a voice can be heard, from painful necessity, commanding: “To a gas chamber — go!”'
The weird thing is that I believe that Rand, O'Connor, and Chambers (despite them being as disparate religiously as you can find, being a militant atheist, a devout Catholic, and a conflicted Quaker) would all of them agree on the subject of "tenderness", which is to say, empathy-based ideology, what Rand called "altruism" and what Chambers saw as man-centered morality.
Comedy Stage Open Mic Night Comic says:
So Trevor and I are at the bar -- because sometimes it's just too depressing to be two adult males sitting on folding chairs in the parents' basement -- and by depressing I also mean vaguely homoerotic (laughter). Uncomfortable, a bit. Self-concious about how you're sitting, sometimes. Anyway, we're at the bar, drinking beers and looking at the girls we could never have. Turns out there's a lot of them -- like, almost all of them (laughter)...
Trevor, he has a thing for girls with tattoos. Myself, I don't care one way or the other; a girl could have an Aryan Brotherhood tattoo on her shaved head and I'd still ask her if she wants to meet my parents (laughter). And the first thing my parents would think: finally, a chance for grandchildren (laughter)...
So, Trevor: if a girl has tattoos and wears eyeglasses he automatically falls in love. I think it is the combination of naughty librarian and biker chick, we've never discussed it in much detail (laughter). Anyway, there's this girl at the bar with eyeglasses and a tattoo, and Trevor is transfixed, he can't even talk about the upcoming Star Wars movies anymore (laughter)...
There is a problem, though: her tattoo is script, and we can't quite make out the words. For Trevor, this is maddening: he HAS to know what it says. Being that we have had several beers, we have developed something not unlike courage (laughter), so we approach her to ask about the tattoo. Trevor, he's smooth: he says to her "I see you have a tattoo" -- and she lifts up her sleeve without even looking at us, like she has done this countless times before. And there, on her upper arm, are the words "YOU SHOULD SEE THE ONE ABOVE MY VAGINA" (laughter)...
Trevor stammers for a moment, but the girl cuts him off at the pass: "Don't ask" she says, still not bothering to look at us. So we skulk back to our table, and we now have a new topic of conversation (laughter). I ask Trevor "What if it's a swastika?"
"In ancient civilizations the swastika was a symbol of well-being" Trevor says. That's Trevor: he can always find the bright side of things (laughter)...
Thank you, you've been very kind...
Tamara Tabo is just not putting ink on her body. It's impressive that she would take the time to write such a interesting essay. Maybe passion leads to the gas chamber too, but it's good to see nevertheless.
Everyone has heard of the Spanish Inquisition, William, but nobody expects it.
So what they were trying at Nuremberg was... a little tenderness?
As fond as I am of O'Conner & Percy, I have to disagree with them, especially Percy, on their analysis of the historical record.
As a criticism of the morality of the liberals or social democrats in their orbits, I agree with both Percy & O'Conner. But I think their applying their critique of sentimentality to the totalitarian ideologies of National Socialism & Marxist-Leninism just doesn't work, as at least Percy wants to do.
Both ideologies were very well aware of the importance of the concept of Empfindsamkeit in late 18th/19th century European moral thought, and they categorically rejected assigning any worth to moral judgments based on the sentiments of a self-conscious subject. For both ideologies, the individual found his moral worth only as part of a higher collective, either as member of a class (Marxist-Leninism) or as member of a race/state (National Socialism). Both ideologies thought that they were simply applying scientific principles to correct major human social ills. Their propaganda to the cadres in the field always emphasized that there was hard & morally dirty work that needed to be done, and one shouldn't let one's conscience get in the way of doing one's duty to the Fatherland or the Workers.
If Percy wants to argue that the emasculated morality of modern liberalism makes it vacillate in the face of totalitarianism, well, okay. But, I don't think that the historical record quite supports hanging the sin of an excess of "tenderness" on the Nazis or Commies.
It's interesting to note that the Spanish Inquisition over it's several centuries of existence killed about five thousand people. Napoleon, on a good day, could knock off that many before lunch......With the exception of the Muslims, murderous fanaticism seems more a function of the nationalists and the egalitarians than to those of religious faith. Christianity has not been a murderous faith in centuries........I have a tattooed tear drop under my left eye for every man I murdered in prison. It makes for an interesting conversation starter. None of those murders had anything to do with doctrinal disputes.
My only question is why is the tattoo so poorly laid out? Is it on purpose?
liberals will gladly operate a gas chamber. They'll throw the Zyklon-B in with gusto. They'll watch as conservatives are in their final agonizing death throes through the portal window and laugh.
well...I'm suddenly interested in Law.
She is looks like the type of broad who'll talk flippantly about gas chambers, but would react with indignation if you farted in her presence.
YoungHegelian: the conceit lies in the supposed divorce between conscience and sentiment, with the further suggestion that a conscience without a basis in divinity/natural law/whathaveyou is a nullity, merely sentiment raised to a divinity of its own.
And sentiment is at the heart of Marxist moral fury, its driving engine. Nietzsche and his will to power aside, the Marxist moral remit is based upon that sentiment for the oppressed classes, the "tortured children". They're the difference between the bandit Dzejughashvili and Joseph Stalin, robbing banks for the sake of the Party and the proletariat.
The Nazis just change the values "proletariat" for "volk", and so forth. And the Nazis seem to have been exceedingly sentimental, thus all the manipulative stage-dress and ritual aimed at the elevation of emotion over the intellect, especially massed emotion.
@Mitch,
I don't question that as politicians appealing to their masses, both Marxists & National Socialists used every political trick in the book, including appeals to "sentiment" (the Nazis with their great emphasis on Gemeinschaft springs to mind.
But at the ideological level, I don't think there is an appeal to "sentiment" in the classic 19th German formulation found in e.g. Schegel.
"...conscience without a basis in divinity/natural law/whathaveyou is a nullity..." I think that both Marxists & National Socialists would agree with that statement, and would locate the source of that natural law in either the nature of class consciousness or race, both of which were seen by their respective proponents as being "scientific knowledge". For the Nazis, the German Volk are the ubermenschen, biologically destined to rule over the lesser races. For the Marxists, the proletariat are on the winning side of history, because, they, and only they, achieve true self-consciousness through praxis, in the dialectic of Lordship & Bondage. Only the proletariat has the possibility to be morally right because only they, and only they, can see reality, moral, scientific or whatever, for what it is.
As you can see, I take very seriously Marx's claim to replacing the "mental masturbation" of the Hegelians with empirical & positivistic "science". I also take seriously the claim of the 19th c. racists like Arthur de Gobineau ("Hitler's favorite Frenchman") that he was building political theory on human nature as expressed in race "in order to make political science a true science."
That we in the 21st c. think that such claims to "science" are spurious nonsense doesn't mean that such claims were not historically made, and with complete & utter conviction by the proponents of these ideologies.
William said, How many people have heard of "freedom caps"? Freedom caps were cloth hats filled with hot tar. They were placed upon the heads of those who were perceived as lacking the proper enthusiasm for freedom, equality, and fraternity.
Do you have a cite? Googling turns up nothing about them in France. A similar practice called "pitchcapping" was apparently first used during the Irish Rebellion of 1798.
I question whether "tenderness" without God is what led to the gas chambers. Was it tenderness of any kind that drove eugenicists? Who flourished quite a while before Hitler hit the scene, by the way.
Perhaps there will be no peace or justice until everyone is accountable.
Accountable to whom? The church of the inquisition was accountable to no one but itself. NSA is accountable to no one.
Accountable for what? What laws or rules should govern our behavior? Who will make those laws and rules?
Until we can anwer those questions, we are doomed to keep repeating our sordid history.
"My only question is why is the tattoo so poorly laid out? Is it on purpose?"
The tattooer was a poor artist.
"My only question is why is the tattoo so poorly laid out? Is it on purpose?"
The tattooer was a poor artist.
The idea is that sentimentality is an inner-directed abstraction of human feeling that crowds out genuine, other-directed human empathy and love — see the Roger Scruton quote as comment on your April 9 Sentimentality post.
So...that means no lube, right?
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