Nedra and I watched President Obama’s eulogy as it was taking place and we were
both very moved by it. He used a
language familiar to those who go to black AME churches. He used the term grace to express the
wonderful response (forgiveness) of the relatives of those slain and the
response of many elected officials to take down the Confederate battle flag
from state buildings. He also put in an
alternative to the idea of God’s grace by saying we all had a “reservoir of
untapped goodness” within us that emerged. I prefer that to God’s grace because
grace is a gift of God that cannot be petitioned by prayer or given as an award
for behavior or belief. Grace also shifts positive change in society from individual
and collective responsibility to something like a miracle over which we have no
control or access. I also have problems with a “reservoir of goodness within us.” Is goodness innate? If it is acquired, what about those children
raised in homes where the parents are bigots? I would have invoked something different to
explain the sudden shift in southern responses to their Confederate symbols. I would say that we all have a capacity for
empathy. We see it in toddlers. If one cries the others cry. It might be genetic because there is a
spectrum disorder of autism where such a response of empathy is diminished or absent.
Governments can terrorize or brutalize their citizens as Nazis did when they
beat up, humiliated, or killed Jews and many Germans looked the other way out
of fear of being visited by the Gestapo if they protested.
I have long believed that aggression,
brutality, torture, and war crimes are issues that need honest research. All governments duck this because they depend
on spying, lying, misinformation, unexamined patriotism, secrecy, and
justifying the harm they do as “collateral damage.” It is
easier to blame economics, ideology, religion, politics, or some other social process
than to admit that our capacity for harming others or suppressing our empathy
for others has an outlet at the governmental level. It is also easier to rationalize that the
wrongs of society are due to original sin, innate aggression, or human nature
than to do the hard work of finding out why some people are decent, prefer
peace to war, help others, avoid harming others, practice virtue as its own
reward, and seek social changes to bring about equality of opportunity for
all. I am grateful that President Obama
appealed to our “better natures” even if he called it an act of grace. I am hoping
that psychology departments, psychiatry departments, and even the National
Institutes of Health will do serious academic research on empathy, mass
behavior, and the suspension of humane values that pervade so much of state and
cultural practice.
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