In Facing A Chaotic Political Situation, Must We Listen To “Somebody” Or Let Our “Conscience” Rule?

 

By Dilshan Fernando –AUGUST 27, 2020

Dilshan Fernando

“Conscience” is a deeply misleading notion. Because most of the time conscience refers to the guilt we experience if we are engaged in an immoral activity which is against the social norms. Or else it refers to an injunction to enjoy, pursue hedonism, against the social controls and demands. To take a notorious example, conscience either orders us to return to the harmonious married life if one is involved in an alternate love affair or it injunctions us to break away from the boring and monotonous married life, and seek enjoyment in an alternate love affair. Or else in a political context, conscience functions in such a manner that, if I am engaged in a public protest on the streets, tired whole day fighting for rights, it’ll make myself guilty all the time convincing me that these peripheral struggles will not change anything and that my energy is just a waste and that I should just go enjoy myself at the bar; or else if I am just sitting at home watching late evening news after an unbothered day at my comfortable air-conditioned office, it will make me guilty all the time for not actively participating in the struggle on the road. Simply, conscience either makes us guilty for not adhering to the Law or commands us to breach the spell of the Law. It is never fixed, but makes us guilty for not doing otherwise. This therefore is nothing other than the Freudian Superego that haunts us all the time. From the psychoanalytic point of view, breaking the spell of Superego is never easy and often warrants us to distance ourselves, critique, and traverse the fantasy that provides the coordinates to it. In this sense, letting our conscience to rule will add insult to injury and will never assist us to bring some meaning to the chaotic political situation concerned.

The necessary consequence of the illusory nature of our own conscience means that we as the general public don’t know what to do in sudden political upheavals where we are forced to take a stance on. Leaving apart the due critique on Mass Media which carry us on various Ideological paths when we are faced with a forced choice, let’s alternatively focus our attention to the crucial question: to whom should we listen to in such a chaotic situation when we cannot even trust our own conscience? Let’s for the moment atleast carry the assumption that, we should listen to “somebody” who is in some sense in a better “position” to make a call. Let’s save it to later, what this position might be.

Professor Rohan Samarajiva (the former Chair at ICTA) in a provocative article titled “How to spot a Potential Public Intellectual” published in 2017, compelled us to ask two questions (rules of the thumb as he called it) to recognize if a popular public-addresser is actually a Public Intellectual. According to Prof. Samarajiva, one has to ask firstly “whether the intellectual is basing his or her contribution on some kind of evidence?” and secondly “Is the presented evidence of adequate quality?” to spot such an intellectual. In a country where blowhards are abundant, his rules seem very pertinent. However, let’s analyze his proposal concerning our recent chaos concerning the so called “Constitutional Coup” in 2018, where it once seemed that all politicians and their spokesmen became public intellectuals in interpreting the constitution and defining democracy. Truly the (middle-class) public was in panic, and rightly so, simply because, during the chaotic period, when any public-addresser gave an ‘opinion’ about the crisis, they all did by referring to a specific and identifiable provision of the Constitution. It was a crisis of credibility since everyone, from an average parliamentarian to the modest partisan of the respective political camps based their articulations on either Constitutional provisions, or Parliamentary Standing Orders or at least some previous political precedents which in the sphere of politics are extremely crucial. Let me present an alternative approach: For example, in assessing President Obama’s legacy it is important not only to note only what he did, but also what didn’t do – not attacking Iran or Venezuela when the political pressure was still mounting. Therefore, on a later stage if one refers to President Obama’s omission to attack Iran to justify (or evidencing) a future proposition also to avoid another attack – let’s say as a reason to not to attack North Korea also – is no less important than a previous case law concerning Cuban missile crisis. To further complicate Prof. Samarajiva’s position, let’s ask the even more difficult question: does “knowing it all” – propositions backed by qualitatively higher evidence – pushes one to a higher ethical decision? Exploration of this question can be best accomplished again by reference to Cinema – this time to War on Terror (WT) films, especially Eye in the Sky by Gavin Hood. I ask your patience to go through this cinematic path.

The best way to approach this question on my view, is by looking at how this question gets played out in the crucial decision-making scene in the film Eye in the Sky (2015). With strong connotation with the American stage drama 12 Angry Men, Eye in the Sky shows an eternal playing with the political hierarchy – from the British Prime Minister to Colonel Powell – to make a decision whether to ‘capture’ or ‘strike at,’ a well screened terrorist named Susan Helen Danford. Those who watched the film may remember that this capture or strike (fake) dilemma is problematized and challenged by the existence of Alia – a small Kenyan girl – in the vicinity of the attack. The scene runs in the guise of a better judgement of collateral damage to avoid fatally injuring poor Alia, but also dealing sufficiently with the imminent threat of Danford.

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