My post on teaching children about evil contained a passing comment about adults and graphic images or descriptions of horrors. That comment garnered some mild and understandable dissent and question both from Paul Cella and from commentator Brad.
I do believe that we Christian (and all morally sensible) adults should be a lot more careful than I suspect most adults are about putting horrors into our minds. As far as I'm concerned, watching direct simulations of torture or rape merely as part of entertaining ourselves ought to be completely out. I realize that this may sound like a radical proposal to some, but I think it's important to realize that we are in a sense giving ourselves an emotional and spiritual whack when we watch such things. And we are engraving things on our minds that cannot be erased. Therefore, we shouldn't do so lightly.
But we may still ask under what circumstances viewing or reading about horrors in detail might be valuable or necessary. Brad raises the excellent examples of movies like The Silent Scream and photographs of emaciated victims of concentration camps. Since such images have value in bringing home the reality of evil actions, the humanity of victims, and so forth, they obviously are not wrong either to produce or to view. In fact, those who record such things are documenting truths that should not be forgotten. How and when, then, should we view them?
It seems to me that the person who is fully convinced that a particular act is horribly wrong has, prima facie, far less of a reason to view images of some atrocity or its aftermath or to read descriptions of it than someone who doubts that it is an atrocity. To choose a slightly off-beat example, if I am already a passionate opponent of fox hunting, it's plausible that I needn't and therefore shouldn't watch videotapes of a fox being torn to pieces by hounds. Something similar is true, I believe, of far more important issues. The passionate pro-lifer is really not the person who needs to be watching The Silent Scream. It is the unconvinced, the lukewarm, or the outright pro-choicer who should challenge himself by watching the movie.
But here I have introduced another idea--the question of how passionate one is about a certain type of evil. It's certainly possible to believe that something is wrong at a mental level but not to be passionate about that opinion, not to see just how wrong the thing is, not to have one's overall mental and emotional outlook rightly ordered regarding that act. In that case, disturbing images might bring home the truth of what one had previously known only "in one's head," leading to a more just appreciation of the truth.
There could possibly be one other reason for learning details of horrors: One might need information to answer others who are downplaying the evils. But here I'm inclined to waver, because a great deal depends on what sorts of details we are talking about. In what argumentative context is it actually going to help one to lead someone else to the truth if one can cite gory details of some particular act of rape or slaughter in a big city? In particular, is it likely enough that having those details ready to hand will be useful and valuable to make it worth it to put them into one's mind? Here I have my doubts.
But finally, I must stress that "watching or reading details of horrors" is a very large category. It may be excusable and even valuable to show 13-year-olds photographs of concentration camp victims. It is unquestionably not excusable or valuable to show them videotapes of torture, real or simulated. And even for adults, I think the following, which I posted in the other thread, is a pretty good principle: Watch horrors only in moderation and when you're sure there's a point to your doing so. Don't be quick to do so, and don't be too quick to think that you have a duty to do so.
Note: I ask that comments to this post not contain any links to disturbing images or detailed descriptions of torture or horrors, please. I also ask that comments themselves contain only general descriptions of or references to horrific acts.
Comments (65)
Until, the gross moral relativism that comes with a perverse Christian gloss is finally and completely purged from the Body of Christ. Make the viewing compulsory and as interactive as possible. Show without interruption the renditions, torture-sessions, the sexual humiliation of Abu Ghraib, the degradation at Guantanamo and the atrocities of past wars in an endless feedback loop, so that no one here accepts, rationalizes or employs weasel words in defense of Caesar’s depraved practices. And after this strict regimen, those who still prefer to reside in a half-way house with the culture of death will take forced leave from our sides. . We have our own immortal souls to save and a larger civilization to preserve. The days of risking both for Mammon are a host of heresies are over.
Cue the projector and roll the tape. No. More. Compromises.
Posted by Kevin | December 16, 2008 5:58 PM
EDIT;
We have our own immortal souls to save and a larger civilization to preserve. The days of risking both for Mammon and a host of heresies are over.
Posted by Kevin | December 16, 2008 6:01 PM
Kevin,
YOU'RE SO WRONG!
Torturing, mutilating, raping and, above all, murdering innocent people for Truth, Justice & The American Way = 'GOOD'.
Also, the fact that the horrors of the Holocaust (and their soul-gripping images) were (rightly) acknowledged with such reverent sympathy while the atrocities at Hiroshima & Nagasaki (and likewise the horrors inflicted upon countless innocents in those images which depicted the charred remains of the dead and the half-charred bodies of its surviving victims) merely received a snicker of "good for them" kind of treatment; don't you already know that whatever we choose to do even if evil and even to those innocent is actually 'good' since we are, after all, American and, above all, Christian?
Posted by aristocles | December 16, 2008 6:28 PM
I offer the following as an example. Students who read the Odyssey in high school or college often object to the way Odysseus treats the Cyclops. They don't realize that Polyphemus is a monster and they fault Odysseus for the way he treats the Cyclops. The intensity of this episode is but a prelude to the horrible slaughter of the suitors when Odysseus finally returns home. The killing of the foremost suitor, Antinous, is extremely graphic and exceptionable. Virgin minds are offended. As a result, the idea of justice becomes repulsive. Horror, in this case, does not help to hate the enemy, but rather to despise the good.
This is the direction of thought that Chantal Delsol explores in Icarus Fallen. More often than not, the horror of war justifies fear of truth.
I also note in passing that it is "the problem of evil" that is used to dismiss and ignore truths (e.g. MacDonald).
Posted by KW | December 16, 2008 6:42 PM
Kevin, your examples would fall into my category of people's viewing things if they are inclined to excuse them or don't think them wrong while others do. I would argue, however, that someone who is as wholly opposed to the things you list as you are need not view them.
I think this is rather an interesting point: Is it possible for someone to be, for example, a completely strong and utterly committed pro-life warrior without having seen pictures of aborted children? I think it is possible, and in some ways is preferable: The undamaged mind and eyes _with_ the committed heart. I think it may be a change in our culture that has made this seem so unlikely.
Posted by Lydia | December 16, 2008 6:56 PM
Yes, is possible. Still, if rain falls on the just and the unjust, so also the horror enters the mind of the just and the unjust. And in the ancient epistemology, we become, in part, what we see. But it is the just who are affected rightly. Being damaged is not by what goes in, but by what goes out.
Posted by KW | December 16, 2008 7:20 PM
Yes and no, KW. I think there are things that people understandably wish they hadn't seen and wish they could forget. I know I have such things, for all the care I take--news stories, descriptions of crimes and the like. Detectives who have to view images of horrific child abuse in the course of their work in order to catch the perpetrators are doing something they should not do if it were not necessary for the cause of justice. The reason they shouldn't do it is that there is some objective sense in which burning such images onto our minds is dealing with a kind of toxin. It is not that it necessarily makes us bad people but that it harms us in a different sense. I think we need a category of "harm" that does not mean (per se) "damaging the character" but refers rather to a sort of trauma to the soul. Indeed, the more normal and good a person is the more trauma he will suffer in seeing such things, because of their horror. That isn't something to do to oneself lightly.
Posted by Lydia | December 16, 2008 7:36 PM
Kevin had alaredy attended to this in the previous thread -- It's called "DESENSITIZATION".
As he had said:
To which I had responded with general agreement --
As I had attempted to relate then:
It is the ubiquitous display of such violent images in both television and cinema that causes many individuals these days (especially today's youth) to watch broadcasts as the news to the extent of engendering the response (even if subconsciously), "So what?"
The fact is the rabid manner in which we flood the senses with such violence, the greater the desensitization that occurs whereby the general audience reaches the point of callousness.
It's to the point where even if one were to make a point about just how bad abortion is by showing pictures to that effect; most likely, because of frequent exposure to such materials, the shocking morality of the message becomes lost because it no longer becomes efficacious due to the desensitization that had occurred.
Posted by aristocles | December 16, 2008 7:41 PM
On the principle that you don't have to eat what's in a garbage can to know what's there, I think Lydia is right. You don't have to see something evil in order to understand it or effectively to oppose it.
But I think that's true for those with more foresight, understanding, imagination and mental purity than I have. I'm often obtuse enough to require graphic images to move me to knowledge and to action.
Posted by Michael Bauman | December 16, 2008 7:49 PM
Yes and no, Lydia. (By the way, that is a wise response. John Lukacs often responds in that way in his writing--smart man.)
There is a place for the suffering of the soul through empathy. Being pure has its place, but it is also through suffering that we have pity and redeem. In being harmed we are effect greater good.
Some of the saints have this ability and duty. But your caution is noted. Not all are called to be saints, nor is every philosopher able to read Hegel--he's a toxin, I'm told.
Posted by KW | December 16, 2008 7:49 PM
Why would it actually require images to know that the Holocaust is wrong? That abortion is wrong?
That the deaths of thousands of innocent lives at Hiroshima & Nagasaki were as well?
I believe the other thread proves that even if one were to be presented with its images, there are those who would still dismiss the horrors of those events either because of having seen enough of those images and have grown insensitive to them or, more likely as in the case there, because they altogether disregard those horrors as being evil in the first place.
Posted by aristocles | December 16, 2008 8:09 PM
Ari,
It doesn't require pictures of the holocaust (for me) to know it was a colossal evil, though (for me) the pictures stiffened and intensified my opposition, and helped move me to write against it whenever I could make the allusion sensibly, even in other contexts. Were I less morally obtuse, I suppose I would have been moved to greater opposition without those aids.
For whatever reason, I have been intensely and overtly anti-abortion even though I've never seen things like The Silent Scream, or other documentaries and photos of that sort.
Motivations are a mystery.
Posted by Michael Bauman | December 16, 2008 8:32 PM
I think abortion is a good example, because it is one on which we all agree. To me one of the most interesting question concerns young people who are raised pro-life and grow up with their heads screwed on straight. Does a moment generally come in their lives, perhaps in young adulthood, where in some sense they _need_ to see pictures of aborted children or a movie like Silent Scream in order for it to be real to them? Is this part of growing up? Is there a significantly greater danger of their pro-life views becoming merely academic and eventually being abandoned if they don't go through this as a sort of rite of passage? How much variation is there from one person to another on that?
I really don't know the answers to these questions. I "saw" _Eclipse of Reason_ (which I gather is even worse than Silent Scream), but only in the sense of being in the room when it was being shown and listening to the narrator. I closed my eyes through nearly all of it. I think that factual descriptions of abortion procedures have been valuable for making and keeping the truth vivid to my mind, but the movie did not make a difference of that kind.
Posted by Lydia | December 16, 2008 9:29 PM
Another good post, Lydia, on a troubling but necessary discussion.
The comment of mine you link to refers to a Wall Street Journal article relating the full story of the Bombay massacre. I firmly believe that people ought to read it, and regard Kevin's denigration of it as misguided. But it was not gory or exceptionally graphic details that I urge upon the reader. Indeed, the article never does describe anything I would call gory.
What it does do, for which the Journal deserves real credit, is tell the story, concisely, dispassionately, effectively. And (this is the kicker) in the starkness of the narrative it leaves no doubt as to the motivation of the gunmen -- they were operating in obedience to Islamic doctrine. Here is the key, in my mind.
According to the doctrine of jihad, what these men did was holy. There is almost no imaginable act of cruelty or callousness that cannot be embraced under the authority of jihad. Plunder, murder, mayhem, enslavement, rape, deceit -- anything may be justified if it is carried out in the service of the war to subjugate unbelief. The fact that world media go to extraordinary lengths to downplay this horrifying fact, that they would rather prattle on endlessly in banal recitations of supposed Western crimes and Muslim degradation at the hands of capitalism, or spin off a hundred conjectures of psychological motivation, without even broaching the possibility that the motivation is religious, authentic obedience to an ancient tradition of war and terror and subjection -- all this amounts to my reason for saying those rare pieces of journalism where the truth of the matter is brought home ought to be read.
A whole lot of people appear to prefer to look upon this wicked and terrible institution -- the Jihad -- and see Western imperial perfidy, or Jewish machination, or poverty and hopelessness, or lack of democracy, or American warmongering, or . . . Anything but the stark staring fact that for 1400 years the Islamic religion has contained its own peculiar institution, which has imbued some fraction of its young men with a spirit of fanaticism and vengeance, who in turn set the world on fire: extinguishing forever in a generation the Latin Christianity of North Africa, smashing up the Eastern empire, laying waste to India, plundering Southern Europe for centuries, and among a thousand other crimes producing a mass grave and crematorium in Lower Manhattan.
To me this colossal falsification, this studious ignorance, which our media has perpetrated for a decade and more, will only be overcome when people are forced by solid reporting and solid history to face the awful facts.
Posted by Paul Cella | December 16, 2008 9:58 PM
Thanks, Paul, that's very clarifying, and quite right. And I'm sorry that I misunderstood the nature of the article you were linking. Now I want to go read it myself, for sure!
Posted by Lydia | December 16, 2008 10:04 PM
Really? Then let us take heart that an incredibly large faction of Islam is either in apostasy, or have vastly different interpretations of what constitutes Jihad. And let us also, Paul say a prayer of thanks that the Indian government refused to be goaded into a reaction that would result in the deaths of untold hundreds of thousands of people. The radicals were looking for a game of rope a dope. They now a prudent enemy that will respond on their own terms. Here's hoping our foreign policy elites don't stagger like a bar-room drunk into the back-alley of the Kashmir region. Maybe we can outsource our statesman to India?
Posted by Kevin | December 16, 2008 10:21 PM
For me, this issue has a great deal to do with my differing reactions to verbal and visual images. I can read about a lot of things that I could not possibly tolerate seeing visual images of. It seems to me that visual imagery is much more compelling and potentially destructive. This is why we were quite willing to talk about and let our children (at appropriate ages) read about many things we would never have let them see on film or even in photographs until they reached at least the teenage years. But I know that different people have different tolerance levels for these things; I actually don't visualize what I read very well, so I get the ideas but not so much the images, which is fine with me -- when I do get images in my head I have a terrible time with them. And I think that not everyone has to know a great deal about every evil thing . . . I have appreciated very much the fact that when my husband studied homosexual behavior for a church ministry he was involved with he refused to tell me anything except some plain statistics. He believed it to be so abhorrent that he didn't want it in my mind. And that's fine with me. I can know it's evil, and talk about it clearly, and -- I found out last spring -- effectively counsel someone contemplating that road, without knowing more than I do.
This is an issue I struggle with constantly in the teaching of creative writing and just generally in teaching students who are immersed in a visual culture (it scares me some days that my youngest son is entering the film industry). I find that I have no clear answer except that we must be walking in the Spirit, with the heart desire to glorify God and serve our neighbor. And that answer is seldom satisfactory to those I teach . . . strict rules or self-satisfying emotions are so much easier to live by.
Posted by Beth Impson | December 16, 2008 10:46 PM
Exactly right Ari. Briefly describe any of the abominations in question; abortion, genocide, atomic warfare to any middle-school child and their reaction will be one of instinctive revulsion. What causes them later in life to be able to tolerate or even applaud these same acts? What damage is done, as Lydia alluded to earlier, to their eyes, minds and finally their hearts that could so fundamentally alter their interior life in so short a time?
Michael, I agree, yet it seems insufficient. I can't stand the gruesome posters of aborted babies and feel they are counter-productive. I doubt anyone here became pro-life as result of The Silent Scream too, but most of us knew, instinctively and to our core that the "surgical procedure" was criminal. Can a culture that has lost the sense of awe be incapable of shock, empathy and a sense of justice?
I think it's obvious. We won't win over many hearts with the enforced viewing of human degradation. That realization fills me with dread.
Posted by Kevin | December 16, 2008 10:49 PM
Really, Kevin. Of course there is some variation in the Koranic texts and classic interpretations as to who this duty falls on -- one common formulation is that all "able-bodied" men are enjoined to take up arms to resist the infidel. There is also the distinction between Greater and Lesser Jihad, the former being the struggle against sin, the latter the struggle against the infidel.
But the fact is that in the classic formulations the mere fact of unbelief is an oppression necessitating war. Supposing the infidel has heard the call to submission (that's what the word Islam means), his innocence is ended, and he is rightful the object of jihad.
Now, as for the Indian response, we shall see. It's only been a couple weeks, and on my reading tensions of escalated almost every day.
Posted by Paul Cella | December 16, 2008 10:49 PM
After the election and the utterly contemptible ‘lawyerly’ position from the USCCB not to excommunicate the intellectual-formal “Catholic” lawmakers of abortion (scandalously, because the surgical minions automatically are), we lay orthodox Catholics MUST FIGHT PUBLICLY, BLAMING THE HYPOCRITICAL USCCB!!!!! for what they are: servants of mammon.
St. Luke: 11: 52 "Woe to you lawyers! for you have taken away the key of knowledge; you did not enter yourselves, and you hindered those who were entering.
53 As he went away from there, the scribes and the Pharisees began to press him hard, and to provoke him to speak of many things, 54 lying in wait for him, to catch at something he might say.
16: 13 No servant can serve two masters; for either he will hate the one and love the other, or he will be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and mammon."
Cordially
Posted by Guillermo Bustamante | December 16, 2008 11:03 PM
Beth, you are quite right about visual imagery. I _do_, however, visualize what I read quite clearly. I usually assume that the author (especially in fiction) means me to do so and that I'm being lazy if I don't. But usually I can't help it. But visual depictions mean that _no one_ can help it.
Kevin, I wouldn't be too sure about no one's having his mind changed by The Silent Scream. At the moment I'm not at my brightest and sharpest, but I was hearing and/or reading a story just a week or so ago that I recall as a definite anecdote to the contrary. I simply cannot remember the details of it. The point of it was, though, that the person could no longer evade the humanity of the child who was killed. I find that I myself in discussing abortion try to force people to drop the euphemisms. I think it is at least somewhat valuable even argumentatively to speak in terms of "Dismembering an unborn child" rather even than using the phrase "surgical abortion," for example. It's important for pro-aborts to be forced, as far as one is able to force them, to admit what they are actually endorsing. Some will brazen it out while others fly back to their euphemisms--"terminating a pregnancy," etc.
Posted by Lydia | December 16, 2008 11:16 PM
Paul, it seems then many are called, but few are listening, probably because resist implies either a defensive action, or an assault on a nearby foe. This is good news. Gives us time to reacquaint a dissolute nation with the one true Source for its former energies. As for a war between India and Pakistan, it is too horrible to contemplate.
Posted by Kevin | December 16, 2008 11:21 PM
Lydia, sonograms would seem most helpful, coupled with the endless battle to re-capture the language from the masters of deceit.
Posted by Kevin | December 16, 2008 11:26 PM
Hi Kevin isnt it possible that the main deterrent to India and Pakistan engaging each other to the extreme is because of the visual record of what "could" happen if one gets trigger happy? I think it's possible that many nuclear nations have shown restraint for the sake of human life--their own especially because of the shock of what that weapon did to mankind in the past.
The war of ideas is being fought on many fronts, and in the particular instance of the abortion debate, the pictures did in short time what words couldn't. Yes it's ugly, and it hurts[it hurts me more than some since 34 years ago I believed the "blob of tissue" line and agreed to kill my baby]. The images of the truth speak undeniably and cannot be dismissed so easily by the "masters of deceit". The nature of the urgency may have something to do with it, we dont have time to be nice about it.
Posted by Brad | December 17, 2008 12:40 AM
Brad, based on your moving testimony, the grisly pictures clearly reach the hearts of some, so by all means use them. I also agree that powerful men have shown restraint for the sake of human life especially their own when standing on the precipice of a nuclear confrontation. One could also argue the images of mass carnage prompted them to seek these ungodly weapons in the first place.
The issue of imagery and its dehumanizing effects is very troubling. We're left trying to overcome the modern predilection for abstraction, while still maintaining the dignity of the human body. How does one offer reverence to God's handiwork while depicting its obscene debasement? It is a brutal dilemna.
Posted by Kevin | December 17, 2008 6:48 AM
images of the truth
That's a strange phrases. Doesn't truth involve judgment?
Posted by KW | December 17, 2008 8:35 AM
KW, is truth dependant on judgement?
Is something true only if it is judged to be?
If the phrase isn't clear, maybe it would've been better to stated as "images that show the truth".
Posted by Brad | December 17, 2008 9:45 AM
I think Brad is right to refer here to "images of truth." That is what journalism should be--showing and recording things that should not be forgotten. That unborn children are killed in this way is a horrible, objective fact. We don't make it true by judging the act to be wrong. And it is worth noting that it is not the people carrying out the atrocity who are showing its results. They would rather have them hidden. "He that doeth evil hateth the light, neither cometh to the light, lest his deeds should be reproved."
But again, I take Brad's story to illustrate the fact that it is the people who don't have this issue quite right who need to see the pictures.
Posted by Lydia | December 17, 2008 10:02 AM
No, truth involves judgment.
What I am objecting to is the Wolf Blizter kind of journalism that claims "the facts, ma'am, just the facts."
Posted by KW | December 17, 2008 10:17 AM
That's a bit of a broad (and harsh) brush, don't you think? (well, evidently, you don't--but I do). One of the great things about being a Catholic is that we always have "the bishops" to kick around. It's a marvelous past-time, like shooting fish in a barrel. If it wasn't for infallibility, a bishop could never hope to get a single thing right!
Actually, they are servants of God, and without a bishop, you aren't a Catholic. Your criticisms of the bishops will have a much greater chance of being received if you were to take a more humble approach. Many US bishops have spoken out clearly and forcefully against the positions of Catholic politicians in recent weeks and months. Please be fair in your criticism.
Posted by thebyronicman | December 17, 2008 11:32 AM
To speak truth is to say of what is that it is and of what is not that it is not. Truth, in other words, is correspondence to reality. The photographs showed objective reality. In that sense they showed objective truth. And some people do need to understand the truth in that unpleasant way in order to "get it." Others don't.
Posted by Lydia | December 17, 2008 11:48 AM
Truth does not depend on judgment. That is exactly backwards. The soundness of a judgment that X is true depends on its correspondence to the truth.
Posted by Zippy | December 17, 2008 12:13 PM
And so the idea that photographs correspond to reality is a judgment.
There's a great scene in the film by Tarkovsky, "The Sacrifice" when the postman brings a very large framed map of medieval Europe as a present to the main character, Alexander. "My god," he says, "how naive they were!"
Better yet . . . I just finished reading about a story to my children this morning about a newly born rabbit who takes his first steps into the world. Suddenly a large animal appears. On its head it carries two small trees without leaves. That must be an enemy, ten times bigger than a fox or an owl. The rabbit can't breathe for fear. His mommy reminds him, "You can't judge an animal by its size."
Posted by KW | December 17, 2008 12:27 PM
Zippy, I am using truth to describe judgments. The judgment "X is" or "X is something" is either true or false. So I don't follow the the proposition "X is true."
Posted by KW | December 17, 2008 12:55 PM
Quid est Veritas?
Where the individual is concerned -- yes, it does.
Is not how a truth value is assigned by way of judgment?
Subjecting a thing to empirical verifiability is how a thing is judged to be true.
One cannot believe that something is the truth simply because it is stated as such.
Perhaps somebody as informed as thebyronicman could answer this, but wasn't skepticism a philosophical method by which such credulity was avoided?
Posted by aristocles | December 17, 2008 1:07 PM
Posted by Zippy | December 17, 2008 1:13 PM
It is trivially correct to say that I believe a truth only if I believe it--in other words, that I do not _possess knowledge_ of a truth unless I actually believe it. But reality does not depend upon my understanding it correctly.
Posted by Lydia | December 17, 2008 1:15 PM
aristocles, is your statement "Subjecting a thing to empirical verifiability is how a thing is judged to be true" empeircally verifiable? If you want to argue for this position, I can assure you that it'll devolve down to the root of how man knows anything at all, where empiricism fails miserably.
Posted by Brad | December 17, 2008 1:42 PM
Lydia,
I love what you wrote here:
If I might submit an example:
Catholicism is that which, to me, corresponds to reality; it is, for me, 'Truth'.
I'm sure that your (rightly) treasured Anglican beliefs corresponds just as tightly to reality from your perspective and that, where you're concerned, this is undeniably 'Truth'.
Thus, it seems to me that reality -- just like truth (or, perhaps better yet, the assignment thereof) -- coheres at the point of the individual.
Of course, I concur that what ends up actually being The Truth is entirely independent of our individual considerations.
Posted by aristocles | December 17, 2008 1:45 PM
If this is an oblique reference to Socratic skepticism, yes, he wished to defeat naive credulity, but his end was always the fact of the matter. Most people think that about him, anyway. He would say that the object of dialectical process is to discover the universal definition. So you start from your own ignorance, and then proceed to apprehension of truth in an ordered way, since, as the saying goes, The Truth Is Out There. Socrates presupposes the objective existence of universals (or at least Plato's Socrates does), and he thinks that we can have knowledge of them. In several places (Meno, Phaedo) he famously says that we are actually born with knowledge of them, but then we forget. Dialectic is a way of remembering, of spurring recollection.
The other sorts of radical skepticism are, as a general rule, well, other sorts of things altogether. I don't think the roots of radical skepticism are in Socrates, although some do. RS seems to me rather an aberration and disease of reason, not reason itself.
Posted by thebyronicman | December 17, 2008 1:46 PM
Brad,
I admit there is a hopelessly endless regress if one were to rely entirely on this method; yet, that doesn't dismiss the fact that (with the exception of our religious beliefs, which carries the element of revelation) it is a means by which we determine a thing to be true.
Posted by aristocles | December 17, 2008 1:50 PM
For all those things which are subject to empirical verifiability, they should be made subject to empirical testing by someone. But certainly everyone can't do everything. So we have to trust competent authorities. But any intelligent and moderately well-educated person should be able to judge, in any given case (or at least in the majority of cases), what makes a person a competent authority, and in fact what sorts of things are in principle empirically verifiable and what sorts of things by nature defy empirical investigation. For the latter, there may be non-empirical methods of investigation and demonstration.
Posted by thebyronicman | December 17, 2008 2:02 PM
But back to the subject directly at hand. I think, Lydia, Flannery O'Connor would concur. I certainly concur. Who else concurs? Part of the success of the abortion industry in our culture is that it's so out of sight. The child is out of sight, the clinic is out of sight, the technicians who perform the killings are out of sight. The horror of abortion can be brought into the light by means of modern photo-realism. Sometimes one must shout to be heard. I wouldn't evaluate this way of communicating on the basis of converts it makes to the Pro-Life cause, and it can certainly be overdone, and should never be done for the mere sake of morbidity or shock value. Photos of mutilated infants are not art. But they might be journalism.
Posted by thebyronicman | December 17, 2008 2:14 PM
thebyronicman,
Quite right.
And it's largely because of the euphemisms Pro-abortionists employ in order to hide the horrors that is abortion; it is largely this euphemism which has advanced the moral decay of our society & the destruction of human life.
What does "Pro-Choice" really mean but "Pro-MURDER"?
George Orwell wrote in “Politics and the English Language”:
I recall a conversation with one interlocutor and in my attempt to cement the point, I had submitted for his inspection what abortion actually does and the heinous murder that is committed to a live human being; to which, his answer was merely:
"Your picture is gruesome - but so what? The world is full of gruesome pictures."
Perhaps he has seen enough of these pictures to the point where he has become desensitized?
Or, just maybe, the euphemisms that had predominantly saturated the mass media and other fronts exploited by these stealthy "Pro-abortionists" has led him to this point where, ultimately, he no longer sees the human being; just masses of human tissue.
Posted by aristocles | December 17, 2008 2:27 PM
Let's get one thing out of the way so that it's either off the table or on the table. I suspect the former. Emperical verifiability is useless in testing for any metaphysical truth [including moral truth value]. It even fails at emperical verification of the physical world if it denies revelation-which hardcore "scientisism" adherants and modern methodological/philosophically naturalists do deny to their own embarrasment. Universal truths cannot be emperically proven even where physical evidence of the universal truth shows itself because of the logical impossibility of being thorough in the testing. Scepticism is all that empericism will necessarily give us.
Hopefully here, this is not a huge debate. We are all thinking God's thoughts after Him by revelation, through deduction, not induction. His standard of Truth is the only one of any value at all, so the relativist view of truth is worthless unless somehow he stumbles upon God's version of it. Then and only then is his opinion worth anything at all except for condemnation while he's suppressing the truth in unrighteousness.
For the huge majority of humans, the images or inhumane treatment is offensive until God gives them over to their desires:
Rom 1:19 For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men who suppress the truth in unrighteousness,
Rom 1:19 because that which is known about God is evident within them; for God made it evident to them.
Rom 1:20 For since the creation of the world His invisible attributes, His eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly seen, being understood through what has been made, so that they are without excuse.
Rom 1:21 For even though they knew God, they did not honor Him as God or give thanks, but they became futile in their speculations, and their foolish heart was darkened.
Rom 1:22 Professing to be wise, they became fools,
Rom 1:23 and exchanged the glory of the incorruptible God for an image in the form of corruptible man and of birds and four-footed animals and crawling creatures.
Posted by Brad | December 17, 2008 3:25 PM
Still, with the exception of rare experiences like Brad's, there is very little evidence that vouches for the efficacy of such tactics. We should acknowledge the limits and be open to the very real possibility that photographic accounts of abortion, torture and modern warfare may only increase the diosrder we are attempting to arrest. Pictures may be worth a thousand words, but waving them without context before an audience that has had its mental landscape repeatedly violated leaves me cold.
I'm in the Beauty will Save the World camp. Ugliness is the accepted norm. Pictures of a developing fetus are probably more effective and in keeping with our mission to remind man he is made in God's image.
Posted by Kevin | December 17, 2008 3:27 PM
Brad, I'd rather not get into a meta-debate about empirical evidence and its relation to metaphysical truth. I suspect you and I would have rather different approaches. I am an evidentialist in apologetics, with an emphasis upon historical apologetics.
Kevin, I'm actually sympathetic to some of your concerns there, though actually my greater concern is with people who are already ethically well-formed but deliberately harrow themselves with images of evil because they feel they "ought to see it." I think there is a false conscience there, sometimes, especially with young Christians and conservatives in the college-age level. I can imagine someone from a fairly sheltered home who is made to feel that he has to see some horrific things as part of growing up. On the other hand, I'm concerned about cases I have known of young people raised right who went to ethics class and lost their pro-life views. Would a dose of preventative photo-journalism have helped? So I'm of two minds.
Posted by Lydia | December 17, 2008 3:32 PM
Kevin,
While I agree with you generally here, I believe this is more due to the unintended consequences that occurs upon exposing the masses to such images which itself lends tremendously toward the greater desensitization of the audience -- not only to the horrific images, mind you, but also, consequently, to the acts themselves.
Posted by aristocles | December 17, 2008 3:48 PM
Lydia, they feel they "ought to see it." syndrome is a prurient curiosity embedded somewhere in the darkest part of our souls. Like any other sin, it needs to be inoculated against and defeated. Photos put a distance between the event and the spectator that makes horror palpable, if not perversely appealing. I can say is those who experience the real, unfiltered event - whether it be abortion, torture or war - are never the same again. I have a good friend, a former Marine who was the last to leave the Port Authority's offices at the WTC on 9-11. He saw and felt things upclose that have been burned into his consciousness forever. A great guy, but seven years later, he still has nightmares and possesses a rage that can appear out of nowhere. And, does anyone really think the skyrocketing sales of anti-depressants is merely coincidental to the number of abortions performed in this country? Those who want to safely see "it", are acting as agents of a deadly disease. store.
Posted by Kevin | December 17, 2008 3:56 PM
Actually, Kevin, I've known some really good people who feel _no_ prurient curiosity but have been _made_ to feel that they ought to see certain things. Perhaps I'm introducing something a bit controversial here, but didn't you ever meet anybody who felt guilty, defensive, or like a "wimp" for not going to see Mel Gibson's _Passion of the Christ_? I have.
Posted by Lydia | December 17, 2008 3:59 PM
Lydia,
This is interesting --
Are you suggesting that the explicitly violent scenes depicted in Mel Gibson's Passion of the Christ was necessary in conveying the extent of Christ's suffering and sacrifice for us?
Posted by aristocles | December 17, 2008 4:06 PM
but didn't you ever meet anybody who felt guilty, defensive, or like a "wimp" for not going to see Mel Gibson's _Passion of the Christ_?
Actually, no, but those who protect their vision should be admired.
Posted by Kevin | December 17, 2008 4:11 PM
I'm suggesting that people shouldn't be made to feel guilty for not going to see it. I'm suggesting that it might do good to some and harm to others. I've not seen it, and I make no apology, but some people I've seen on-line and also known certainly seemed to feel that they needed to excuse not doing so.
Posted by Lydia | December 17, 2008 4:14 PM
In my experience, most anyone who is at all uncomfortable with orthodox Christianity, including Christians, are to varying degrees uncomfortable with Gibson's film. Why I myself admit that I thought the Divine Tear scene was a bit melodramatic and overly precious. I've never met anyone who was defensive about not seeing the film, but this is not to say they don't exist. I had a number of friends at the time that felt great antipathy for the movie, charging that MG was exploiting the audience with all of the graphic displays. Interesting thing, these same people never, or rarely, complained about graphic depictions in other films as being "exploitation of the audience." There was something touched a nerve in people about that movie. No one, it seems, is ambivalent about it.
Posted by thebyronicman | December 17, 2008 4:15 PM
Agreed. And by the above recent comment, I didn't mean to imply that anyone who didn't like Passion is uncomfortable with orthodox Christianity. It's just the correlation I happen to recognize among most of those I know. One could very well criticize it legitimately on artistic, or even theological grounds.
Posted by thebyronicman | December 17, 2008 4:20 PM
thebyronicman touches on a poignant aspect concerning the viewing of the film in terms of its violence and with respect to the film's audience and what happens then.
The strangest reaction I've ever encountered was when, during my own first and only viewing of the film, members of a youth group from a newly-founded church at university were sitting adjacent to me.
Whenever one such violent scene came on, they started laughing and, for some odd reason, rooted on the violence that was occurring at that moment in the film.
While I doubt they intended to be offensive, there was something in their reaction to the explicit violence happening in those scenes that sought to altogether diminish their gravitas rather than some purpose to ridicule it.
Perhaps these scenes incited in them some sort of defense mechanism in order to psychologically cope with the severity of the violence in those scenes?
I don't know.
Regardless, the affect is there.
Posted by aristocles | December 17, 2008 4:38 PM
So true. The Christian critics of The Passion were typically those who refuse to countenance their own role in Christ's suffering. They cling to a comforting narrative of a progressive visionay maltreated by a reactionary regime. Their theology has banished sin, so Gibson's rendering would trouble them on several levels.
Posted by Kevin | December 17, 2008 4:42 PM
Well, I don't know. I know of one young man who expressly said that he did not think he should see the movie because he has trouble with disturbing imagery, finds that it haunts him and that he cannot suppress it, and so forth.
I'm not criticizing the film. I'm just saying that I didn't go because I felt I would not be spiritually benefitted and would not be able to handle the graphic scenes. I do indeed apply this principle consistently. I'm an across-the-board wimp. :-)
Posted by Lydia | December 17, 2008 5:02 PM
I propose that, unlike the explicit violence depicted in other films such as in the action genre, for instance; this particular one hits too close to home.
Maybe there is some truth to what Kevin said about humanity's own role in Christ's suffering that certain folks refuse to accept or perhaps it's because we ourselves refuse to countenance the very extent of Christ's sufferings for us.
Maybe -- just maybe -- things that might cause us to realize the actual depth and extent of Christ's own suffering and death may itself be too much for us to countenance and the very casual treatment, "Christ suffered and died for us", will have to do.
If we did venture ever more deeply into these things in such manner, we would be coming to grips with the very reality of that event and the intolerable intensity of His sufferings that might prove all too inconvenient for our all too modern psyches, our all too modern lives which essentially revolves around our own pursuit of happiness and fairy-tale wanderings.
Like the horror that is abortion, who would want to countenance the reality of that? Better to deny or, better yet, avoid facing the reality of its horror altogether.
Posted by aristocles | December 17, 2008 5:26 PM
So, Aristocles, are you saying people _do_ have a duty to see the film and _should_ feel that they are "wimping out" if they don't? Because it's sort of sounding that way to me.
Posted by Lydia | December 17, 2008 5:31 PM
"I'm not criticizing the film. I'm just saying that I didn't go because I felt I would not be spiritually benefitted and would not be able to handle the graphic scenes. I do indeed apply this principle consistently."
I try to as well, not because of 'wimpiness,' but out of a feeling that such graphic violence is not something I want to subject myself to or have lodged in my memory banks. I've avoided well-regarded films for this reason -- Gangs of New York, Pan's Labyrinth, Casino, and yes, The Passion -- and when I've made exceptions I've often regretted it. The Gladiator comes to mind (far more violent than it needed to be) and a recent case in point was 'The Departed,' which I got talked into watching because of its star power and quality acting, but which I really disliked.
I put off seeing No Country for Old Men for several weeks because of the reports of nihilistic violence, despite my appreciation of both the Coen Bros. and Cormac McCarthy. When I finally did see it, I found it to be not as graphically violent as I had anticipated and an extremely well done thought-provoking, and in its own way, conservative film. In general, I avoid things that are rated 'R' for brutal and/or graphic violence.
Posted by Rob G | December 17, 2008 6:36 PM
Lydia, I hope to not get into any tangent discussions about methods, but I think when talk of truth according to... comes up, it's worth at least knowing what ground we either share or dont. Visual images penetrate past the filter of language. When one sees something, not only does the cognizant mind begin to appraise it, but the gut/intuition/soul/inner man all see it without the trickery of the mind, if only for an instant. As soon as one sees something that their worldview cannot abide in, the wordsmithing and wrangling to make sense of it begins. [something like this in the abortion debate: "oh ok I see that it's a baby, but it's not a person because a,b,c...] This often, almost instantaneous, dodging cannot deny the fact that the image of God in them was speaking truth, God's truth.
Kevin, you said:" Pictures may be worth a thousand words, but waving them without context before an audience that has had its mental landscape repeatedly violated leaves me cold."
I have to agree with what you say, and want to clarify my position that without the context of care and concern, none of the images we've discusse ought to be shown. This careless way is done regualarly though, and I think that this is an area you are focusing on where I'm looking at more intimate discourse for the use. I dont think I've argued for indiscriminant widspread use of images, if it seemed that I was, I apologize.
I have thought of a few other images that have been used: The melting icebergs, diseased lung compared to a healthy lung, children with no hair in hospitals, sea birds covered in oil sludge, smog overhanging a city, [and even here in So.Cal. weather reports of a few spinkles hitting in the gutter-oh the horrors :) ].
Posted by Brad | December 17, 2008 7:49 PM
Without filter? Without trickery of the mind?
Really?
That must explain the callous response of certain individuals when they're presented with a visual depiction of an aborted baby and why these end up saying, "Your picture is gruesome - but so what? The world is full of gruesome pictures."
Posted by aristocles | December 17, 2008 7:56 PM
Aristocles, I think people do get their defenses up pretty fast. The tactical question is a difficult one, but I'm certainly _not_ going to say that there is no point to or legitimate use of the images of aborted children. My concern is just with people who see such images more than they need to or when they do not need to.
Posted by Lydia | December 17, 2008 9:32 PM
" but out of a feeling that such graphic violence is not something I want to subject myself or have lodged in my memory banks."
Rob G, that is my policy as well. The Passion had some "close your eyes and turn your head moments", but I am better for having experienced the movie. Two emotionally pulverizing scenes will remain with me forever. The first is the excruciating anguish in the Garden of Olives and the other when Jesus meets His Blessed Mother after stumbling under the weight of the Cross. When he looks up at her and says; "See how I make all things new" the entire theater was consumed by unbearable grief.
Brad, seems we've arrived at a most welcome consensus here!
Posted by Kevin | December 17, 2008 10:19 PM