Domestic Left #30: In the end, we all admitted
In the end, we all admitted that we were guilty. Maybe not of the specific crimes we were being accused of, maybe not of any crimes at all, or even of shortcomings, ethical or moral. In some cases, perhaps, we were just admitting that we were guilty of no longer being able to take the accusations, the pointed questions, the casual inquiries, the constant attention to detail.
There is a point at which you start stumbling over your own answers, even when you are telling the truth. It’s not your guilt surfacing, telltaling from below the surface of your psyche; it’s the sheer exhaustion of maintaining your innocence.
I remember yelling at the interrogators, something far more crude and direct than “Have you no sense of decency, sir, at long last?” But the interrogators are skilled. You think that what you are saying is compelling in its emotional honesty, or sharp and clever in its intellectual acuity, or simply irrefutable because of its veracity. You think that your verbal arrows will pierce their armor, or at least distract them from you, and your lack of it. Instead, they just become pushpins tacking doubts to the walls, and the doubts are all yours, never theirs.
* * *
Of course, I can’t speak for anyone else, but I was well-practiced at guilt. I brought to the star chamber all the tools of inquisition that the investigators would need.
The original Star Chamber was a kind of “super-court” of the English crown, designed to be able to bring to justice members of the upper classes who were effectively immune to the judgments of the regular courts. It was a court of equity as well as of criminality, trying violations not only of law but also of moral standards.
In time, unsurprisingly, it became a political tool of the King, known for imposing gruesome punishments. It was abolished in 1641 by Parliament during the power struggles between Parliament and King that led to the outbreak of the English Civil War and, in 1649, to the beheading of King Charles I.
* * *
After our confessions, we expected relief, but we found none, only guilt and grief, insecurity and insufficiency, a piercing ache in our muscles and in our nerves. Our philosophy of praxis, a supple and muscular guide to navigating and directing the currents of multitudes, had given us no prowess in soothing or smoothing the friction of dyads and triads.
* * *
It would be pretty to think that conscience is a universal and even regulator of our moral metabolism. Indeed, that is what a lot of the instructional literature we consume as children tells us, at least those of us in the middle classes of secular, liberal, modern societies. And for those who believe in the great religions of love and compassion, when conscience is gone, there is always god.
The ancients knew better. The gods are just as willful and unpredictable and jealous and short-tempered as we are. They mete out punishments arbitrarily, they play favorites, and they think nothing of sentencing one of their own to an eternity of having his organs ripped from his chest, torn to shreds yet every day growing back, fresh hope for the talons.