2003-06-14 9:54 am

Do Unto Who?

I think that if we were able to see / experience the whole lifespan of another person, or understand perfectly what it was like to be that person, it would be impossible for us to do that person any harm. I think before we do somebody harm, or lie to them, or steal their car, or sleep with their wife, or throw weedkiller on their lawns, or blow them up, we are reducing in our heads their actuality as human beings. That they exist we have no doubt, but we are not thinking (REALLY thinking) about the fact that our actions will negatively effect the existence of another person; and I think that this mental process (which is automatic, perhaps even instinctive) would be prevented if we were able to do so.

Of course, this is impossible if:

1. We do not know ourselves what it is to be alive.

2. We do not have the necessary imaginative faculties to use the knowledge of 1. and apply it to the contemplation of other individuals.

That is why books and stories are so crucially important to the maintenance of a moral system. They train the imagination, and by examining a range of characters - laying bare how they act, and with what silly scruples they torture and hurt one another, or by what small gestures they aid and nurture each other - they not only train us to understand what it is like to be another person, but they also reveal the invisible network of motives and impulses that controls our behaviour. Once this network is understood, it quickly becomes obvious that most of the damage done between individuals occurs in the absence of understanding or sympathy.

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