Moral calculus

It is a truism that disasters bring out the best and the worst in people.
I tend to believe that most people sustain a basic level of compassion for each other, even for those they have never met or those who live at great distances of separation, whether such separations are social, economic, cultural or simply geographical. This is not to say that I am unaware of the existence of unpleasant or even genuinely evil people. In general, however, I have faith that such people are in the minority. And I think there is good evidence that my optimism is a kind of realism, which I mean in full consciousness of the ambiguity of the term ‘realism’ and hence the multifarious motivations that could undergird acts of compassion and charity.
A number of years ago I visited the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Park and Museum, which was constructed in 1954 in the ruins of what was once the bustling business district of Hiroshima before the atomic bomb destroyed the city and so many lives. The museum has gone through a number of different iterations as the Japanese and the rest of the world struggle to come to terms with how to remember such unbelievable and unspeakable horror. By the time I visited, however, the museum was a moving and even harrowing experience, with most of the controversial political issues exorcised from its displays (which itself was controversial, of course). I confess that I walked through the park and museum in a rather numb state of disbelief as I tried to understand the historical reality of what was being presented to me. Looking around, it was clear that nearly everyone else there was in the same kind of condition. What was at stake was not the political or strategic salience of the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in the closing days of WWII (about which scholars and policy makers have debated for decades), but simply the human suffering that the bombs brought on the people who were going about their lives in these cities – this requires no debate.

But there was a family of American tourists who burst into the mausoleum-like silence of the museum just before I left. They were happy and jovial, laughing at some of the exhibits and pushing through the lines of people who were walking in rather shocked silence. Before I go on, I should say that there were many other Americans in the museum who seemed as shocked as I was by this behaviour, shocked and embarrassed: this is not about American-ness, whatever that might be. My mind cycled through various responses: repugnance at inappropriate behaviour, but then a glimmer of understanding that perhaps they were just overwhelmed by it all and hence responding with some juvenile form of denial. In the end, my view of this family was sealed when I followed them to the guestbook that is provided near the exit of the museum for visitors to write their thoughts and feelings as they leave. In general, the book is filled with the apparently heart-felt agonies and compassion of people from all over the world, as well as from Japan, who were simply stunned into disbelief that people could do this to one another and that people could endure so much horror. But the last three entries in the book, by the father and two sons of the family I watched, simply said: F*&k you Japs! This is what you get for Pearl Harbor! It was written three times in the same words, but in different handwriting.
On the one hand, this incident reveals something reassuring. The vast majority of people who were confronted with this human tragedy reacted with compassion and sympathy and disbelief; only a tiny minority seemed to find pleasure in the suffering of others. On the other hand, the logic of that minority view is pernicious and dangerous. It revolves around what ethicists and historians have come to call ‘moral calculus’: the belief that one atrocity can be balanced against another, that vengeance is a mechanism for levelling the scales of justice.
As the earthquake, tsunami, and nuclear crisis has unfurled in Japan this month, I have been reassured by the massive support that the people of Japan have received from the international community, who recognised a human tragedy in the making. However, as in the Hiroshima Museum, I have also seen an ugly and vindictive minority who have sought to deploy a version of ‘moral calculus’ to give voice to their own chauvinisms and hatreds. There appear to be two such ‘equations’ doing the rounds of internet forums and chatrooms: one of them involves the now customary accusation that Japan deserves all the tragedies that it suffers because of ‘Pearl Harbor’ (whatever might have happened there in reality); the other seems to revolve around the idea that the Japanese deserved the be hit by this earthquake and tsunami and nuclear crisis because they eat whale meat and kill dolphins (and the Sendai area is a major fishing zone). In some cases, this latter charge is phrased as: it serves them right for ‘The Cove.’

Just as I was shocked by the family in the Hiroshima Museum, I am shocked to see such sentiments amidst such suffering and such widespread human compassion. However, in some ways this represents a new low-point in the kind of moral calculus employed to justify such vindictiveness: in this case, the calculators are not claiming that human vengeance for wrongs suffered can be justified by the moral equivalence of the wrongs inflicted (Pearl Harbor = Hiroshima & Nagasaki); instead, they are claiming that historical events justify any and all calamities that might befall a people in the future, whether enacted by historical victims or even by the planet Earth itself. That is, the calculus is not so much moral as karmic, and karmic on a national scale (ie. it is not individual people that accumulate karma, but nations accumulate it and then their people suffer for it). The despicable ridiculousness of this logic reminds me of a brilliantly disturbing episode of South Park in which it is revealed that the Japanese kill dolphins and whales because the American government convinced them that a whale piloted the Enola Gay (presumably in order to prevent the moral calculus around Hiroshima & Nagasaki working against the USA).

Posted by Chris