Does everyone have a conscience? If so, how did the ANC lose its collective conscience with such obvious and all-consuming ease?
If you ask your computer to look up the word “conscience” it comes up with, “sense of right and wrong; scruples; principles; ethics”. Conscience has also been described as a judgement of the intellect that determines whether one’s actions are right or wrong with reference to certain values; or the feeling of remorse that arises when one does something that goes against those values.
The various religious views of what constitutes conscience generally consider it to be a morality or honesty or goodness for doing good or charitable acts that is inherent in humans. Secular views generally consider conscience as genetically determined, with subject matter learned or imprinted at some stage of growing up.
So, are we all born with a conscience or do we first learn the difference between good and evil, and then develop a morality? In other words, the old nature-vs-nurture argument.
I definitely know I have a conscience. So often has it kept me awake, agonising over some stupid thing I have done that I couldn’t possibly dismiss its existence. Although I’m not sure if I was born with it or if I learned it as a child. My parents did make a point of teaching me wrong and right, but whenever I committed a completely “new” bit of immoral behaviour (I was quite creative), I always seemed instinctively to know it was wrong, even before I later found out in no uncertain terms from my irate father that it was unacceptable.
But the more I think about the topic, the more I wonder if it is a universal attribute. Does everybody have a conscience? And if so, why do so many people appear to be able to act contrary to it, yet still sleep like babies, remain happy and irritatingly self-satisfied?
More and more I ask myself, is there a simple way of switching the conscience off so I too can act contrary to my values and still sleep well? The activities available to me should I be able to neutralise that little voice within, certainly appeal to my more decadent instincts. It has been said that a conscience is what hurts when all your other parts feel good – so wouldn’t it be nice to turn off the pain and keep the rest?
Which comes back to my question: Does everybody have a conscience? When it comes to the ANC government it certainly doesn’t seem like it. Its collective conscience, if it exists, appears extraordinarily difficult to detect.
At the moment, it is impossible to engage with the popular media in this country, without coming across a plethora of articles on corrupt practices in and by government. But, I hear you cry, that happens in every country – it’s a universal thing. Sure. But what astounds me about the corruption in our government, is the sheer scale of it. It would appear there are no or very, very few honest people engaged in running South Africa.
Think about it - it is quicker to list the departments and politicians not involved in nefarious deeds, than it is those under a cloud of suspected financial and other impropriety, simply because the list is so much shorter.
Now Catholicism considers conscience as, "a judgment of reason, which at the appropriate moment enjoins a person to do good and to avoid evil". So where is this “judgement of reason” for example, when it comes to the ANC’s investment in Hitachi? It seems no matter how much the press screams about a conflict of interest, the lure of the cash is strong enough to suppress ANC’s collective conscience.
To be fair, it didn’t seem to have the same effect on the consciences of Barbara Hogan and Pravin Gordhan who are in favour of the ANC divesting from Hitachi.
And what of everyone’s favourite faux politician – Julius Malema? Can he possibly have a conscience? As one reads the never-ending editorials about his tenderpreneurship and other disreputable exploits and balances those against his professed support for the poor, underprivileged members of the electorate, it is patently obvious from the never-ending contradictions, he cannot possibly own that attribute - a conscience.
Or could there be a more sinister portent in the current behaviour of the ANC in general, and Julius Malema in particular?
I found this extract in Wikipedia:
“Hannah Arendt in her study of the trial of Nazi war criminal Adolf Eichmann in Jerusalem, notes that the accused, as with almost all his fellow Germans, had lost track of his conscience to the point where they hardly remembered it; this wasn't caused by familiarity with atrocities, or by psychologically redirecting any resultant natural pity to themselves for having to bear such an unpleasant duty, so much as by the fact that anyone whose conscience did develop doubts could see no one, no one at all, who shared them: Eichmann did not need to close his ears to the voice of conscience...not because he had none, but because his conscience spoke with a ‘respectable voice’, with the voice of the respectable society around him."
Tell me you did not get just a little nervous reading it.
With any luck there are still sufficient individuals (who have just avoided publicity so far) in government in possession of working consciences, who will sometime soon enjoin the ANC that now is the appropriate moment for it to listen carefully to whatever scintilla of conscience it has left. So that it will hopefully discover a judgement of reason that will enjoin it to stop its current headlong plunge into kleptocracy and start doing what it knows is right.
This is exactly what we should read and discuss more...the phsycological aspects of our country. Good one David.
There is no coincidence that the great writers on human conscience, like Arendt and Frankl and Weisel, were directly or indirectly affected by the Holocaust. I have enormous respect for how they survived and, more importantly for the generations who came after then, reflected on what it means to live in a world of incredible violence, human-made suffering, etc.
The moral regeneration that the ANC (and the rest of us) can't be reduced to a matter of fidelity in relationships. It is wider than that. More profound discussions of conscience are required. And, importantly, they need to include secular thinkers.
I keep hoping that the natural wisdom and justice inherent in us all will move ANC voters to draw the line. But then I worry because voters remained silent in Germany, and Zimbabwe, and Italy, and ... (a much longer list) until it was too late.
Whatever happens, sooner or later we'll hit the bottom, and lines will be drawn both within and outside the party. But how low will we have to sink? How much will we have lost? How many of us will be left to enjoy the ride back up?
To the ANC it is now a necessity to appease the grumbling masses before they start re-deploying the current crop of political leaders.
If a Jewish prisoner escaping from Auschwitz must slit a child's throat to succeed, is that wrong? If a Palestinian prisoner escaping from Guantanamo must slit an American boy's throat to succeed, is that wrong? If an African, with a long history of exploitation, profits at the expense of his past oppressors, is that wrong? If a Wall Street banker profits legally at the expense of the stupid, is that wrong?
Before we prefer one conscience to another, let us agree at least on what is wrong? My simple but thoughtful answer is this:- taking action, other than self defence, against another without their informed consent is always wrong, even when it is necessary.
A more detailed discussion of this position can be found at http://sketchesbyboz37.blogspot.com/2009/08/consent-axiom-by-trevor-watkins-i.html
Smuts Ngonyama famously let slip the fact that he "did not join the struggle to be poor" (which begs the obvious riposte "oh, so you joined the struggle to become rich, then, hey?").
Is it not possible that julius Malema & co DO actually try to do a lot of good for the poor (and DO eveything in their power to attract their support and votes) whilst at the same time amassing great personal wealth for themselves?
They could then assuage their consciences and justify their actions on the lines of "look at all the good that I am doing for "our people" - why should I live like Mother Theresa and be as poor as a church mouse?"
As Trevor indicates, the unwritten assumption of your piece is that we all operate undrer the same concepts of right and wrong, yet these are not defined.
This kind of leads into a discussion of ethics - ie rules based (whose rules?)- utilitarianism, Deontological or normative / kantian?
Of course there is another - rather more worring possibility - some of our political leaders may be Sociopaths or Psychopaths - people who feel no emotional connections to others and have zero regard for the rules and regulations of society.
This reminds me of the Yalta meeting towards the end of the second world war where the three main leaders (Roosevelt, Stalin and Chruchill) were deciding on how the world would be goverened after the war -
Rooseveld - Physically disabled clinical depressive.
Churchill - Alcoholic Manic depressive
Stalin - Sociopath / Psychopath.
*Sigh*