Liberating violence

Let me make the difference a bit more explicit to you, because it can be lost on people who have been brought up in the comparatively more permissive West.  I will make it more obvious in this way, by a narration, but I am sure there could still the temptation to say that two opposing motivations (fearing dishonor and wanting to be liked) are fundamentally the same.  

 

In the Air Crash Investigations show last night, they showed a Korean Air cargo jet that crashed in the UK.  Apparently the pilot was a captain in the Korean military before he transferred to become a captain in the airline business.  But in fact he had not trained on airliners.  He should really not have been put in the position of captain, but for him to be relegated as first officer would have been a loss of face.  Anyway, the instruments were faulty, but he had previously been reprimanded for not paying attention to his instruments, so even though he may have sensed that something was wrong, he continued to take his readings from his instruments.  Meanwhile the first officer told him that he was banking 90 degrees.  The first officer’s instruments were correct.  But the military trained pilot ignored the first officer and followed his own instruments.  The first officer didn’t say anything more, because he did not want the higher status captain to lose face.  So the plane ploughed into the ground.

 

Well, firstly, I do not want to deny that there is a sense of awe and honor, loyalty, etc. in obeying cultural laws like these created in the Korean military.  But I also want to point to a qualitative difference between behavior that is commanded by fear and behavior that is commanded by a principle of wanting to get along and be liked.   One might well argue that the differences are philosophically subtle, and that we ought to just say that whatever anybody does, it is for the sake of the pleasure principle.  Somehow this would make the Korean pilots out to be like jolly old fellows, just rolling along and wanting to be liked.   In fact, perhaps it is more likely that the first officer feared, as the narrator of the show insinuated, dishonor more than death.

 

But I do see this theoretical flaw appearing the theorizing of contemporary Westerners again and again.  It posits that we are all jolly old clowns, just rolling along and wanting to be liked.   It’s very strange to impute that motivation to everyone, in my view, and this is a lens that does tend to fuzzy rather than clarify the vision!

I actually think Bataille is speaking to people like me – people of the stricter authoritarian orders, who need terrifying visions and terrifying injunctions....to help them free themselves from terror.

 

It’s a strange solution but one that seems to work.