Moral Consequence
Monday January 23, 2006
Last weekend I was visiting a friend in Manchester, and we went to see Woody Allen’s latest film, Match Point. It is an impressive, and deeply serious film, unafraid to tackle large themes: the role of luck in human life, ethics, justice and betrayal. Without giving the entire game away – I’d hate to ruin the film for anyone else – one of the major themes running through the film is that of justice. The whole film is built upon this deep human desire to see justice done. Many films, of course, are driven by this desire, and end with the good exalted and the bad thwarted in their schemes. We all like these kinds of stories. They reassure us that if we behave well, the universe (or the law) will be nice to us and – more to the point – that if others behave badly, the universe (or the law) will respond with equal, if not greater, force in putting them down. But in Match Point we are frustrated in our desire for justice. Woody Allen, however is, at his best, a subtle film-maker. He does not just ride rough-shod over our expectations for justice, but also forces us to consider whether there might be something other than justice when it comes to thinking through questions of ethics. For, if the villain of the piece doesn’t exactly meet with justice – through sheer luck, as it turns out – the question that is raised in the final scenes of the film is this: will he not, nevertheless, suffer the moral consequences of his actions, consequences that are not at all the same as our idea of justice?
After the film we went for a drink and fell into a fascinating discussion about the Buddhist notion of karma. Karma is often taken as a kind of cosmic or divine justice. I think that this is mistaken, and am uneasy with the human passions that lie behind our idea of divine justice. My objections to this idea of karma as divine justice are threefold:
- It is a wholly untestable hypothesis (was that brick falling on my head the result of my bonking a neighbour on the head in a previous life or was it the result of the workman overhead simply having an off-day, or was it both? I do not see how these questions could ever be resolved.)
- There is no adequate mechanism by which actions and their fruits might be so directly connected (this lack of mechanism is something that Buddhists have wrestled with. The Yogacara attempted to provide such a mechanism, but it seems hardly adequate)
- The idea of justice itself is often a mask for unwholesome and vengeful thoughts.
When it comes to the first of these points, the causes of events are multiple and there is no way of stepping outside this mass of causes to see if it is operating justly or not. Certainly there is nothing in my experience that might be able to demonstrate the presence or the absence of this cosmic justice. There are those who do terrible things and whom the cosmos seems to favour. There are those who are virtuous and whom the cosmos seems to treat with nothing but cruelty. Early Buddhist thought, more subtle than some more recent commentators, recognises five niyamas or levels of causality, of which karma is only one. How the various causes and levels of causality interact to lead to the arising of any one particular event is, in the end, a pretty obscure, if not unanswerable, question. This brings us to the the second point: even if we decide that there is such a cosmic balance of justice, something we are hardly equipped to do, then we are at a loss to explain its mechanism. But it is the third of these points that I find particularly disturbing. Whilst reading certain Buddhist texts, you can almost hear the delight, the malicious relish, in which the author describes the hellish torments that await evil-doers and the enemies of the dharma. Some of Nietzsche’s penetrating criticisms of Western moralisers could also be levelled against many Buddhist texts: how much of this talk of divine justice is born out of compassion, love and deep understanding, and how much is born out of a desire to apportion blame, a malicious glee at the sufferings of those of whom we disapprove, an unwholesome hope that those who oppose us will suffer future trials?
Having said all of this, I think that karma is an important moral fact of our existence, and that its operation is inescapable. Not as cosmic justice, but as something that I would tend to call “moral consequence”. Perhaps to explain what I mean by this, I should relate a story that has haunted me for almost a decade, a story that, when I first read it, reduced me to tears.
It was the story of a man who fought in the US forces in the 1991 Gulf War, although it was reported several years after the war had ended. In 1991 he was not yet out of his teens and his job in the war had been to sit at the driving seat of a bulldozer and to bulldoze sand into the trenches of the defeated Iraqi forces, burying men alive in the sand. In the interview he seemed confused, terrified by what he had done, clutching at the straws of duty and serving his country and patriotism. “I did if for my country,” he said. “It was a good thing to do. I had to do it.” But it did not sound convincing.
Some might say that in times of war, such acts are necessary; others might disagree; still others might admit that in some cases such acts are necessary, but this was not such a case. But none of these questions were the ones that really stuck me about this story. Regardless of the accounting-systems of justice what was clear was that the moral consequences of this man’s actions were inescapable. That is why I wept when I read the story. Because whilst there may be no divine retribution or cosmic balance of justice, beyond such acts of measuring the good against the bad, there is always moral consequence.
What, then, are moral consequences? A narrowing of the heart and of the mind. A limiting of horizons. The fruits that come from our turning away from the cries of suffering. I do not believe that it is possible to knowingly bury somebody alive – for whatever reason – without there being moral consequences, consequences that transform our moral being. And added to the tragedy of all those who are killed is the tragedy of a life that is locked in by the fact of having performed the act of killing.
It is possible to kill without there being either human or divine justice. Yet when it comes down to it, lives are made and remade by acts, and once we have acted we cannot undo what we have done. This, to me, is at the heart of what I call moral consequence. All those thousands who return home from wars and are unable to speak of that which they have witnessed, that which they have done: this is moral consequnce. The isolation I feel from others when I act harshly, the often unacknowledge pain that accompaines any thought I have of hatred: these too are moral consequences. Such moral consequence, it seems to me, is also the operation of karma, as an inescapable aspect of human life; but it has nothing to do with justice, either earthly or cosmic.
The young man in this story found himself falling into this terrible action compelled – like the rest of us – by forces that he was unable to fully understand. It is easier to have compassion in such a case than in the case in the Woody Allen film. For there are those who go about their wrong-doing in a more systematic, autonomous and calculating fashion. And, as the film demonstrated, there is no cosmic justice to redress the balance of their wrong-doing either, nor does human justice necessarily live up to this task. But whether actions that knowingly cause suffering to others are born out of malice, confusion, fear or the idea of necessity that is so often put forward by our politicians, the fact of moral consequence remains, a fact that remains capable of drawing forth a compassionate response. For perhaps moral consequence is more terrible than anything that the imagination of justice – either human or cosmic – could possibly contrive.
#2 · VirusHead
29 January 2006
I think of karma as less about justice (at least in the way we think about it) and more about education from the cosmos. Each time we disrupt things in a harmful way, it comes back to give us another chance to learn.
In your example, there are moral consequences because the soldier knows deep down inside that it is wrong.
The addition of the reincarnation into this idea means that even the hopelessly pathological, narrow and destructive beings have to come back again and again until they get it right.
Isn’t that what enlightenment is all about- interrupting the wheel?
#1 · Nacho
26 January 2006
Will, thanks for this post, I agree with it very much. I tend to see Karma in just such a way, stripped from its supernatural consequences. In fact, we don’t need any supernatural stuff in order to have a viable concept of Karmic consequences. I posted on this back in October here:
http://www.woodmoorvillage.org/2005/10/karma_caramba.html
I like your emphasis on moral consequences, because lots of people don’t talk about it as you have. I tend to think of this also as the consequences of our beliefs. I find myself in an interesting situation in which I don’t consider myself Buddhist, but find much ethical ground in Buddhist exemplary, and indeed I ground myself in it, but eschew much other Buddhist thought. My take on Karma is just such an outcome. Thanks for the post, I haven’t seen Allen’s new movie but I will as soon as I can.
Best,
N