Hate vs Conscience: The Trial of the Century
That phrase, “Trial of the Century,” is overused, I think. As we’ve come to understand it, the phrase points to the kind of reckoning society uses when dealing with particularly notorious criminals who have harmed many people. These trials address the damage done to victims in a way that sends a message to our collective future that, for this century at least, we will not tolerate what has happened. Most of us might think of the Nuremberg Trials after World War II as a good example of such an event in human history. They should serve, at least in some way, as a model for what will be needed to address the harm that the current malignantly narcissistic administration is perpetrating on millions of people here and abroad.
That said, we must not lose sight of a much more important trial that will be taking place outside of the courtrooms. This trial started long ago and has been steadily building toward the crescendo that helped elect Donald Trump. The litigants in this trial are us—all of us. And when I say “all of us” I do actually mean that no human on this planet can remain outside of the reach of this trial. All ages, genders, nationalities, political affiliations, religions, and ethnicities are party to this trial. This trial will—mostly—not be argued in court but rather in our discourse with one another: in the laws we will enact, how we will learn to treat and help one another, what we will choose to hope for as a future for all humankind. In short, the outcome of this trial will decide the fate of our societies and even our species in ways we cannot yet imagine. Just as in Nuremberg, it all comes down to the trial between Hate and Conscience.
We’ve used both of these words—hate and conscience—a lot lately, especially in the messages on social media. But it pays to note how they operate in order to understand what messages they are sending and why those messages are important. Those messages are the weapons that these adversaries use in the battles that will ultimately decide how this trial will end. We are all affected by them, whether the effects are emotional, psychological, or even life-threatening. Those who have chosen to respond by ignoring what is going on around them are, in the end, going to be affected every bit as much by what is said and done as those personally engaged in the battles.
Hate, generally speaking, is a group activity. Even the lone sociopathic purveyor of gun violence hates in ways that some known group responds to. And hate is not a natural thing; it must be given a focus and constantly fed its three main forms of nourishment: fear, arrogance, and anger. It is nurtured most effectively within echo chambers that can effectively block outside voices that can challenge the messages fed to the group within its walls, even if the messages come from alternative sources of hate. Remove those walls, turn off those messages, and hate rapidly diminishes in strength and power. But those who flock to those echo chambers of hate come in order to share in that strength and power; they often see their shared hate as a kind of protection in an uncertain world, a world where their own power to oppress may have diminished. In return for their existence within such groups, they must give up whatever personal freedom they have. Free will is surrendered to the leaders of the group, and as a result, personal conscience is lost. Yes, conscience is the biggest enemy of those controlling such groups. Every member of the group, fed those messages of fear, arrogance, and anger, can also come to fear their own internal voice of conscience, since it will almost certainly contradict the messages of the organization that they believe gives them power and safety.
Where hate is a group activity, conscience belongs solely to the individual. It belongs to no group, club, organization, political party, or even to any religion. Where some might argue that organized groups can have a conscience, I would answer, respectfully, no. If the group seeks to have a “conscience” then it would be something that all its membership would be required to follow, and thus would supersede anyone’s personal, individual, and real conscience. Groups have goals, perhaps they even espouse lofty ideas and ideals, but it remains the burden of the individual to act on them in response to their own consciences, if these haven’t already been given up as a requirement for group membership. Because of the nature of conscience, it is almost impossible to track or poll. Statistics require grouping responses into well-defined categories, and the uniquely individual nature of personal conscience defies this. Conscience is also unpredictable and powerful. The Women’s Marches in January 2017 were, as much as anything, an almost spontaneous reaction of the moral outrage that is the response that conscience has to acts of hatred. The other demonstrations that have taken place since that time serve to underscore this. Organizing such events is very difficult and often short-lived. Moral outrage is not the same thing as hate. Hate must be fed constantly; moral outrage is just a reaction to events that affect us as individuals and does not actually need to seek nourishment. Moral outrage is not the natural state of one’s own conscience, but when aroused its power and focus will often overcome hate and the oppression it employs in the long run. The long history of human resistance to the power of hate shows us this. The goal of conscience therefore is not well-being and safety rooted in group power, but rather well-being and safety built upon justice. Our recent history indicates that these two forces—Hate and Conscience—are now on trial worldwide. Each must argue its own case before humanity at large. The importance of this trial’s outcome cannot be overstated.
Much has been said lately about the “polarization” of society. This is merely the “choosing of sides” in the Trial of the Century, choosing between those seeking the power to oppress versus those seeking the justice to ensure freedom. It is a trial between Hate and Conscience. Hate sees how disorganized conscience-bearing people are and feels invincible. Individuals, responding out of conscience, react with moral outrage when they are threatened as individuals. Hate proudly marches in the streets in lock-step mobs. Conscience watches on quietly, unaware of the vastness that its own moral outrage can summon when the hatred spills over into the violent oppression that is always used to overcome justice, freedom, and conscience. But where hate is fed on fear, conscience lives by hope, and this must be understood by all of us as we await the outcome of the real Trial of the Century. Pass the word...and vote.