24. THE BIG JOKE
“Their morals, their code; it's a bad joke. Dropped at the first sign of trouble. They're only as good as the world allows them to be. You'll see - I'll show you. When the chips are down these, uh, civilized people? They'll eat each other. See I'm not a monster, I'm just ahead of the curve.”
- Heath Ledger as Joker, in The Dark Knight
Am I strong enough?
Am I strong enough to put others ahead of myself, to ‘suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune,’ and keep feeding that good wolf even when the losses and hurts begin to pile up?
See, it’s easy to sit in a café, sip a latte, and dream about the hero we’ll be when things get bad. The reality is often far less noble. People look at the collapse of Syria1, or Yugoslavia2 and wonder how neighbour could turn against neighbour.
The answer is obvious. They did it to survive, choosing themselves and their group over others. As Chuck Palahniuk wrote, “Hitting bottom isn’t a weekend retreat, it’s not a goddamn seminar3.”
When things get really bad, survival instincts kick in, which means putting one’s own interests ahead of others. So, people do small things, like hoard toilet paper in a pandemic because it makes them feel secure4. And they do bigger things, like look the other way when the police and security forces round up their neighbours because they don’t want trouble.
Sure, the better angels of our nature sometimes shine through. While some choose themselves in times of crisis, there are also those who put others ahead of themselves. In the Syrian Civil War, ordinary people volunteered to carry stretchers into war-torn areas to rescue those who would otherwise die5. And during the COVID-19 pandemic, millions of nurses, doctors, and other healthcare professionals around the world battled the virus from the frontlines, despite the greater risk of getting sick.
The group survives because of people like this. The bittersweet irony is that when things get extremely bad, these people are often the first to die. Writing about his time in a Nazi death camp, the psychologist Viktor Frankl wrote,
“On the average, only those prisoners could keep alive who, after years of trekking from camp to camp, had lost all scruples in their fight for existence; they were prepared to use every means, honest and otherwise, even brutal force, theft, and betrayal of their friends, in order to save themselves. We who have come back, by the aid of many lucky chances or miracles - whatever one may choose to call them - we know: the best of us did not return6.”
To survive as a group, we must put the interests of others ahead of our own. Yet to do so means being willing to die.
It’s a hell of a thing.
Again, am I strong enough?
Are you?
Anne Barnard, “Neighbors Said to Be at Violent Odds in Syrian Crackdown,” The New York Times, March 28, 2012 https://www.nytimes.com/2012/03/29/world/middleeast/refugees-say-neighbor-shoots-neighbor-in-syrian-crackdown.html, accessed 31 Mar 2021.
Marija Ristic, “Lovas Trial: “It was Neighbour Against Neighbour,”” Balkan Transitional Justice, Feb 24 2012, https://balkaninsight.com/2012/02/24/neighbors-shoot-each-other-during-war-in-eastern-croatia/, accessed 31 Mar 2021.
Chuck Palahniuk, Fight Club, New York, Henry Holt and Company: 1997.
The Conversation, “The psychological reasons people are panic hoarding toilet paper amid the coronavirus pandemic,” PsyPost, Mar 16, 2020, https://www.psypost.org/2020/03/the-psychological-reasons-people-are-panic-hoarding-toilet-paper-amid-the-coronavirus-pandemic-56114, accessed 1 Apr 2021.
Jared Malsin, “The White Helmets of Syria,” Time, http://time.com/syria-white-helmets/, accessed 4 Jun 2023.
Viktor E. Frankl, Man’s Search for Meaning: An Introduction to Logotherapy, 3rd edition, New York, Touchstone: 1984.
Alastair as usual you make us think! Eloquently articulated and thought provoking. I strive to be good enough but must admit feel like I have been beaten down by service to wish to focus on my little corner of the world. Thank you for challenging our spirits!
I’m not sure if I would be strong enough or not. The powerful influence of surviving and protecting your family probably cannot be understood until it’s happening. This is why we need to work hard to avoid these situations coming to pass. This is all “left of bang” effort.