Beware of staring into the abyss, for the abyss begins to stare back.
Whatever that abyss might be, it has often been taken to mean the possibility that the nullity that exists at what Joseph Conrad artistically called The Heart of Darkness would begin not only to stare back at us, but to capture us in that stare, and claim us as its own. having recently exited from an entire century when the abyss stared at us - from the trenches and slaughter-bench of Flanders' Fields, to the sign reading Arbeit Mach Frei over the entrance to that most hideous of human realities, Auschwitz-Birkenau, to the insanity of the nuclear stalemate, holding the entire world hostage to the whims of the least stable leader of each superpower at any given time - one would think we might be a bit wiser and more circumspect in our approach to evil. Indeed, we might actually understand it, and the potential within all of us for committing the most horrific acts imaginable. One would hope we would be more cautious in applying the epithet to individuals and groups, although certainly not acts. After all, the mote in the eye of the Other is very often magnified by the beam in our own.
Unfortunately, it was not to be. With David Frum's use of the those three words, "Axis of Evil" - at once invoking the memories of the horrors of the Second World War and the clarity of a black/white vision of our motives and actions over and against the Other - we have returned, like lemmings to a cliff, to the theme of evil in our collective life. Unfortunately, again, too often we see the mote in the eye of the Other and scream about how horrid it is, ignoring the piercing pain and ultimate weight that sits within our own.
We do have resources, however, that can let us be more clear about that beam, although perhaps not what to do about it. Over at Alternet.org, there is this reprint of a story originally in The American Prospect by Tara McKelvey, on former Army interpreter and interrogator Tony Lagouranis. Lagouranis recently participated in a forum at NYU law school on torture and the television show 24, because as an interrogator in various places in Iraq, Lagouranis knows from torture; he performed it. For anyone out there who would claim to have no qualms about the use of torture, I would urge you to read the article. Below is the close of the article, as quote from Lagouranis:
. "I didn't know I would discover and indulge in my own evil," he writes in his forthcoming book. "And now that it has surfaced, I fear that it will be my constant companion for the rest of my life."
The President is wont to spew about "evildoers", always, of course, an Other, never the virtuous Us. Sadly, Larouganis had to learn the hard way that, in fact, evil is no respecter of skin color, nationality, religion, education, or any other mitigating factor. One would have thought that lesson pretty clear by now, but myopia about our own capacity to inflict horror on others is, alas, part of being human. Larouganis, however, no longer has the luxury of indulging in moral blindness. As much a casualty of the immoral policies of the Bush Administration as were his victims, I have nothing but pity for him. For those who ordered him to act this way, and for those who vocally support such acts from a distance, out of whatever motive, I have nothing but scorn. You think you can stare in to the abyss and not be held in its empty gaze, or perhaps can even conquer it.
You, like Louriganis, have already lost. So have we all.
