Human Dignity by Peter Bieri

Author:Peter Bieri
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Wiley
Published: 2017-01-29T16:00:00+00:00

Betrayed Intimacy as Lost Dignity

The step into an intimate relationship is a dangerous one. Intimacy means that a foreigner possesses knowledge of me. And because it includes knowledge of my weaknesses, it is dangerous knowledge, as it gives the other person power over me and makes me vulnerable. The other has seen what I am like behind the façade I show to the world in order to protect myself. She has got to know the impulses and desires that exist inside me, beyond the internal censors, and whose public knowledge would make me vulnerable. She knows of my uncontrollable prejudices, my ugly envy and my excessive hatred. She knows how much blind compulsion, utter unreason and intolerance there are behind my façade of sobriety and control. She knows my weaknesses and incapacities and has learned how petty, unforgiving and unfair I can be. She knows my dark sides. By allowing her to get to know them, I have in a certain sense surrendered myself to her. Intimacy can thus become a weapon. A person might be blackmailed with the threat to betray his intimate secrets, and feel humiliated when this exposure of private information in front of others actually occurs. All of this can mean a loss of a person's dignity.

The logic and dynamic of such a loss of dignity can be observed in Edward Albee's piece Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? George and Martha, who have been married for a long time, know everything about each other. No weakness has remained hidden. One person's weakness is the other's strength. Their relationship largely subsists of their mutual knowledge of failures, misleading self-images and life-long delusions. It is a folie à deux. It has worked and got them so far because it has always been their private matter – an entanglement that only concerned the two of them. This changes when a young couple, Nick and Honey, arrive for a late-night visit and break down the protective wall of intimacy that George and Martha had erected around themselves.

Martha, the daughter of a college president, as we learn from George, despises her husband because he did not make it to head of department. ‘Martha tells me often, that I am in the History Department…as opposed to being the History Department…in the sense of running the History Department. I did run the History Department, for four years, during the war, but that was because everybody was away. Then…everybody came back…because nobody got killed.’

Martha: George is not preoccupied with history…George is preoccupied with the History Department. George is preoccupied with the History Department because…

George: …because he is not the History Department, but is only in the History Department. We know, Martha…

Martha: George is bogged down in the History Department. He's an old bog in the History Department, that's what George is. Ha, ha, ha, ha! A swamp! Hey, swamp! Hey swampy! God knows, somebody's going to take over the History Department, some day, and it ain't going to be Georgie-boy, there…that's for sure. Are ya, swampy…are ya? I had it all planned out…He was the groom…he was going to be groomed.

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