moral contamination

I think a subject that is really at its core shamanic is the notion of moral contamination.   Even Nietzsche recognized this when he saw that some people were conduits or lightning towers for bad feelings and sensations.  And of course we can see it in the case of Marechera’s mother, who prostituted herself to put food on the table for her children.  In turn she was afflicted with madness, which she tried to escape by passing on the moral contamination to her children.  She actually hired a witchdoctor whom she beseeched to send her evil spirit into Dambudzo, of all her children, so that she might be free of it.

And if we are honest, this is what parents do to their children all the time, I don’t  mean necessarily or as a matter of course, although this might be true as well, but very often they do try to cast off their demons into their children, who are expected to pay the price for the parent’s unfortunate circumstances.   The parent can feel relieved when the child suffers instead of them, which is what he phenomenon of projective identification is all about.

Also, culturally inculcated superstitions about the sources of moral contamination create a whole invisible conduit system, whereby before even experiencing the moral contaminant, the privileged groups in society can pass their future dirt onto those lower in the system.  For instance, dalits are moral contaminants, who serve the systemic social function of taking away the dirt from the higher classes.  Suppose I am of the upper classes and am angry and upset, these people will be the manifest representation of this dangerous emotional scourge, and I will not have to feel it myself so intensely.

And there are superstitions about certain types of ethnic groups as well, who also serve to remove any sense of emotional contamination before it can be properly experienced.  (For instance, when it is deemed that women, unlike men, are “emotional”, what is really being said is that they are expected to remove the sensations of moral scourge away from men, before the men can experience these too much.  But this idea about gender is a superstition that designs and constructs an underlying conduit system to filter off society’s negative emotions.)  

All in all, I fear a culture or even a person who puts too much emphasis on moral contamination.  A healthy person, in my view, would not put any emphasis on it at all.