The Creature

The problem with guilt is that it always seems like the one's who should feel it the most, feel it the least.  On one hand you have someone who's mortified that they killed a spider, while another person sleeps soundly after defrauding an entire demographic out of their retirement savings.  As a parent you might feel awful that you lost your temper and snapped at your child, and then you turn on the TV and see some woman who is on trial for smothering her baby and tossing it in the woods, and she appears to have no concerns beyond negotiating with the Lifetime channel for the movie rights to her story.  As a mode of retribution, guilt seems ridiculously inadequate.  Yet, somewhere long ago, many of us probably had a moment where someone wronged us and we thought, "Well, I'm sure they'll feel bad about what they did."

At some point down the line, we wise up to the fact that things don't always work out like that.  More often than not, the other party sees no reason to feel guilty whatsoever.  They rationalize the situation from their own point of view and they find themselves quite content with that rationalization.  Perhaps you even realized later that you were the one in the wrong.  Morality can be tricky.  People have a wide variety of opinions about what is right and wrong, and on top of that you have the fact that few of us hold our own behavior to a standard of ruthless honesty.  Guilt is like a crushing weight we struggle to get out from under.  Rationalization is the method by which we struggle.  Some people are more adept at slipping out than others.  Some seem to operate under the implicit assumption that nothing they do could possibly be wrong.  Some don't seem to care if they do wrong.  And finally, there are some that don't even seem capable of processing the issue.  For the people along this scale, the magnitude of their sins is actually inversely proportional to the guilt they suffer.  It all seems grossly unfair, doesn't it?

So we appeal to other things.  We turn to the law to judge them, and yet we see scoundrel after scoundrel walk away free.  We turn to Karma, looking to the clever twists of fate to balance the scales of justice.  But yet, as satisfying as it is when things fall together ever so neatly, it doesn't happen nearly enough.  Sometimes we wait for God to punish the wicked, and then we're liable to grow old waiting, our lives consumed by the bitter hope of revenge.  Meanwhile, on the other side, you have people that push right through these moral roadblocks like so many straw men.  The law will control them?  They say the law is for the weak that need to be controlled.  They say they can escape the law or bribe the judge.  God will punish them?  They say there is no God, and they can do whatever they feel like.  Morality becomes a joke, the illusion of restraint.  They take all these notions at face value, and once they've disposed of them, they believe they've disposed of morality itself, and they think the way before them is clear for any unrestricted depravity they might have in mind.

Well, I would like to throw my hat into the ring on this and offer a hypothesis of my own concerning the nature of morality.  First, we need to return to the issue of guilt.  Conscience  is the most basic, primal unit of morality.  In my post The Garden of Eden, I said that conscience is our awareness that free will opens the possibility that we might make mistakes.  I said that it was an expression of our uncertainty when faced with making decisions.  I said that it was the responsibility that we bear for our freedom.  So what are we to make of people that seem to elude their conscience altogether?

You see, we've been looking at guilt the wrong way.  We've been treating guilt as if it is the punishment.  What if it's the eluding of guilt that is the punishment?  More precisely, what if it's the cost of eluding guilt?  You see, it's perfectly possible for a person to slip out from under guilt, but that slipping comes with a price.  In order to live with the evil you've done, you have to become the sort of person that can live with the evil you've done.  Taken to its furthest extreme, you would have to degenerate to something less than a human being.  You would have to become a horrible, nightmare creature.

I'm sure you all remember Jeffery Dahmer.  He murdered and ate people.  When he was arrested, there were several skulls found around his place and a freezer stocked with body parts.  Now, imagine for a moment living like that, the putrid smell, the knowledge that there are dismembered bodies all around your house.  I'm not saying to imagine the horror and revulsion that you would feel.  That's easy.  I'm asking to you to imagine what kind of person you would have to become to live like that and not have it bother you, the kind of person that might even enjoy living like that.  Or imagine being the woman who threw the baby into the woods.  Think about the love you have for your own child and the warm place it has in your heart.  Now, imagine that love ripped out of you and nothing but a cold emptiness in it's place.  What's worse, the guilt you feel if you did that to own child or being the sort of person that could be capable of doing something like that and feeling no guilt whatsoever?  Let's not kid ourselves into thinking that these people got away with their sins because their conscience didn't trouble them.  The normal human emotions that make life worth living have to be destroyed and damaged beyond repair for these people to make their clean escape.

Of course, things are rarely so extreme.  Most of our transgressions are on a much smaller and pettier scale, but we still damage ourselves trying to elude the guilt.  A little piece of our spirit gets amputated.  To rationalize stealing from someone, we have to become the sort of person who can no longer take pride in the things we've earned, the sort of person who can no longer feel joy over someone else's good fortune.  To rationalize infidelity, we have to become the sort of person who can no longer trust anyone they love.  To rationalize lying over and over, eventually we have to become the sort of person who can longer respect the truth.  That might not sound like much, but I certainly wouldn't want to be the sort of person who doesn't care about the truth, that would have to disappear into the dark cubbyhole of my mind while reality fades away.  To rationalize murder, we would have to become the sort of person who loses all sense of the importance of life.  The murder is two-fold.  The murderer murders the victim, and the most fundamental part of themselves as well.

The irony is that the person who thinks that dispensing with morality grants them unlimited freedom, fails to realize how intimately free will and conscience are bound.  As I point out here, free will is impossible without emotions.  Our choices are driven by our desires.  To escape their conscience, a person has to kill their emotions and cut off the flow to all the deeper currents of sensibility.  Sure, they could do anything they feel like doing.  They just don't realize that it's the feeling that's the problem.  They can no longer pursue love or joy.  You see them with the vacant look in their eyes.  They're no longer one of the living, but rather one of the undead, a creature that has torn their own soul to pieces.