Homo Conscius by Timothy Balding

Author:Timothy Balding
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: beauty, murder, humor, novel, meaning, truth, evolution, black comedy, genocide, dying
Publisher: Upper West Side Philosophers, Inc.

Mass Murder on a Lovely Morning

Victor sat in the café and thought: when reasonable, decent people are faced with hatred, torture, murder and other atrocities, or even simple acts of vandalism and common crime, they feel helpless and mumble about the need for “education,” “values,” “morality” in order to prevent their endless renewal. These were important, of course. But education could also be impotent against great evil. The Nazis, for example, had comprehensively proved it in their reforms of Germany’s school curricula in the early 1930s, and this regardless of their devotion to Schiller, Goethe, even Shakespeare. And the great murderers of the twentieth century were hardly deficient in it. Pol Pot had studied engineering in Paris, while many of his fellow assassins had gone to the Sorbonne; Stalin had attended a theological seminary; Hitler went to the same school, at the same time, as Ludwig Wittgenstein; Mao Zedong had been to both law school and teacher training college. Between them, they had knowingly provoked the deaths of at least one hundred and thirty million people. As for values and morals, the number of murders for which learnéd priests of various ranks and religions could be held responsible was simply incalculable. No, reasoned Victor, the real key to the elimination of violence was clearly not to be found in learning! It lay, he was convinced, in the way the brain actually functioned and, he suspected, in this imprisonment in subjectivity that he remarked all around him.

What did the great political assassins, pursuing their objectives without apparent deviation or hesitation about their actions, have in common? These men, Hitler, Mao, Stalin, Pol Pot, so many others, were spectacular liars of course. But what struck Victor forcibly was that they had not doubted and had perhaps lacked entirely the capacity to doubt. They had not mellowed over time and allowed counterviews to influence their thinking and behavior. They had not sought counsel from wise men with contrary views - they had shot or hanged them. Contradiction was impossible, whether from outside or inside their minds. They were absolutely blind and deaf to anything that didn’t comfort their vision of things. They were locked forever in their criminal subjectivity and refused—or were incapable—to hear opposing views, even in relation to the simplest questions.

“You look very thoughtful.”

Helen had come in to the café to share a further moment with him before her clinic opened. They had again spent the night together at her place, and he had gone on ahead to buy his precious newspapers and order coffee for them.

“Yes, I’m thinking about mass murderers,” said Victor.

“The usual cheerful stuff, then?”

“Indeed.”

They had enjoyed a marvelous evening and night together and felt good about each other. They had made love again—Victor thought that, for once, the expression was appropriate—on waking, and their bodies still tingled from the thrill of it.

“So, why mass murder on such a lovely morning?” Helen asked. “On any day, actually. You seem to have an unholy interest in such questions, if you ask me.

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