The Political Pathology Asylum: of ethics and torture

Blogging NASA psychiatrist Dr Sanity has two recent posts for the asylum page. While the first pertains to ethics rather than the political hystrionics for which this dossier is reserved, in the final analysis the lack of a moral compass lies at the root of every psychopathological phenomenon ... here's an excerpt, but the post is worth reading in its entire brilliance:

Dr Sanity: "BARBARISM, TORTURE AND MORAL COMPASSES"

(...) Ethics is the branch of philosophy that tells us how to behave in the world, or what is the proper course of action, particularly for situations like this where one is trying to determine what is "right" versus "wrong". On a fundamental level, ethics is really the manner in which we codify our most important values and act on them.

In a comment thread from a 2006 post at The Belmont Club, Wretchard, speaking about the barbaric Islamic fundamentalist terrorists with whom we were at war, wrote:

The brilliance of the new barbarism is that you cannot fight it without destroying your own value system into the bargain. Traditionally the solution has been to consider wartime a discontinuity, when civilization's rules are suspended. It becomes possible, for example, to lay waste to the Monte Cassino Abbey. Berlin was bombed without regard for its buildings, churches or people. (...) the war cannot be won without cost. And the fundamental fraud foisted on the public is to claim we can have war without horror, conduct an intelligence war without dishonesty and cunning and obtain victory without sacrifice.

His two points are particularly relevant in the discussion of torture. To the extent that we can, we have tried to maintain "civilization's rules" as much as possible, while at the same time suspending them when the situation demands--i.e., adherence to a life-affirming value system that requires you to protect innocents who might be harmed by evil. Indeed, when it comes to the issue of torture, one might even say from an historical perspective that the administration went overboard to try and find techniques that were sufficiently uncomfortable and even unbearable; and which would elicit the necessary information without inflicting lasting harm on the recipient. In this, they were obviously successful. (...) >>>
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Dr Sanity: "NARCISSISM, PATHOLOGICAL LYING, AND POLITICS"

One type of denial is Repression , a neurotic defense characterized by a seemingly inexplicable naivete, memory lapse, or lack of awareness. Repression is often dismissed as an artifact of diminished attention by cognitive psychologists, but I find that it almost always reflects a rather creative method to resolve some inner conflict for the person who uses it. With repression, affect is out in the open, but the associated idea is out of the mind and unavailable to consider. Someone who has repressed some knowledge may be genuinely astonished that anyone would consider them to have deliberately ignored the issue. The "forgetting of repression is different from ordinary forgetting in that there is often some sort of parallel symbolic behavior that goes along with it. (...) >>>

May 18, 2009
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