thoughtfulThere has been some debate over whether waterboarding constitutes torture or not. This enterprising fellow decided to test it on himself to determine the truth of the matter. After a few tries that were merely somewhat unpleasant, he discovered one that revealed the secret:
Waterboarding gets you to the point where you draw water up your respiratory tract triggering the drowning reflex.
Conclusion: torture.
I said "bad people" in the title of this post because, once you start torturing people, you officially become one of the Bad Guys.
I've been aware of the U.S. torturing people for some time. I generally disapprove of the practice. It's a sword without a hilt; unless you know exactly what you're doing, it does more harm than good -- not just to the hapless victim, but also to the torturer and allies. It's too hard to get right and too easy to get wrong. Someone who knows he will be tortured can do things to mangle the information, even if he eventually breaks. Sorting out usable truths from "will say anything to make it stop" requires an extraordinary grasp of human psychology and biology. No self-preserving despotic organization will let that information into the hands of their torturers. They don't dare: it reveals them for what they are, causes defection, makes the possessor difficult or impossible to control, and generally qualifies as one of those records that breaks the record player. They'll give the torturers just enough information to do serious damage to self and victim ... but not the organization. Of course sometimes people discover the rest of it on their own...
A brilliant fictional example of high-quality torture, its benefits and backlash, may be found in the science fiction novel An Exchange of Hostages by Susan R. Matthews.
Now about that "button" I mentioned ... here's where spirituality comes in. The world contains a number of souls, most of them fairly ordinary. It contains some holy people, most of them active in their vocation. Some are small and quiet. A few are so holy and so powerful that everybody knows what they are even while they're alive: prophets, saints, messiahs, and so forth. Different cultures have different names for them. Some good examples include the Dalai Lama and Mother Theresa. Then there are the hidden ones, petty saints and latent saints and sleeping messiahs and such. They live good, quiet lives ...
... unless somebody else pushes the button. Because they've got an auxiliary vocation that only actives under extreme circumstances. You know, in case of emergency, break glass. Then all sorts of interesting new abilities become available. A newly awakened holy person can change the world; indeed, that's their purpose. Gandhi was a quietly decent fellow until pushed too far, whereupon he snapped -- in a dramatically nonviolent way -- and sparked a revolution.
Not all activists or revolutionaries are holy people, of course; but holy people make awesomely powerful opponents. Different people have different activation parameters, but the big one is the threshold of death. When the soul is stretched away from the body by extreme circumstances, for a split second it touches both this world and the next. That's enough to trigger the emergency upgrade function for a latent saint.
Suddenly, there's not just a helpless victim there, but someone who can smack your lights out soul-to-soul, or pull your guts out through your ears with a few choice words. You do not want to be leaning over a newly awakened saint with a bucket of water. Really.
Scholars of religion and history may be familiar with this effect. It's been recorded. It doesn't happen often, because latent saints are rare. You can torture a fair number of people before you hit one, and right up to that point you may think torture is safe for the torturer. But the possibility is always there. If recognized by an astute observer, the awakened saint is usually killed. Occasionally that even stops the cause, although it more often just creates a martyr. Usually they aren't recognized, though, and are eventually let where they can talk to people, and then mayhem ensues.
I happen to have a science fiction character of my own who's a master torturer. He calls it "the Leviathan Effect." It's like when you go fishing for tuna and hook a shark that smashes your boat to flinders. And it's really, truly a gamble of the odds. Chances are you won't hook a latent saint ... but if you keep fishing, sooner or later you will, and you will not enjoy the results.
For the non-religious, set aside the spiritual connotations of "saint" and simply consider that any population contains some extraordinary individuals, some of whom will only be notable as such under extreme conditions. Think of it, if you will, as the psychological equivalent of being able to lift a car off a trapped child. Human beings are strange creatures and we don't understand all of their abilities.
So there's the threshold of death, the big red shiny button marked "Do Not Push." And now I know that the U.S. troops are not just fooling around with moderately miserable pressure tactics that constitute so much of torture -- no, they're jumping up and down on the red button. Routinely. In addition to watching the continual scroll of human rights violations and political fallout, I'm now watching for something else: the ripples in the wake of an awakened saint.
December 29 2007, 23:25:09 UTC 13 years ago
Remember that people can 'snap' in either direction. It's far more common for people to reach a threshold of extreme violence. But the other direction exists, and a snap towards extreme enlightenment can be just as dramatic.
Whether the awakened saint treats the assailant with sublime indifference, or with compassion, the effect on the assailant can be devastating. It doesn't follow the script they've been given; torturers tend to be rigid-minded people, and they don't often deal well with things that are totally outside their experience. That's why nonviolent resistance techniques work. They erode the assailant's ability to justify his actions, and they give an opportunity for soul-to-soul contact. They're hard to *perform* -- but if you can do them right, they've very effective. Hence the "turn the other cheek" advice in the Bible: in the right hands, that's a tremendously powerful trick.
Consider for example this famous picture:
http://friendsofstjohn.podomatic.com/2007-07-05T15_34_05-07_00.jpg
The body language is a flawless example of compassion from a victim of torture. Now imagine how the man with the hammer is going to feel when he wakes up with Jesus cradling him and murmuring something like, "Hey, buddy, are you okay?" That's humiliating and incomprehensible.
With an enlightened snap, the torturer realizes that somehow the power has been taken away from him, but he doesn't know how. And while he might succeed in killing his victim, he's not going to be able to get back that sense of power. No matter what else he ever does, he'll always remember the one he couldn't master. He'll either be pushed into rediscovering his own decency -- in which case he'll suffer terrible guilt for his actions -- or he'll chew himself to bits trying to get rid of a sublime experience that can't be banished and can't be tolerated by an evil personality. The former is shattering; the latter is maddening.
As you might guess, I'm fascinating by this type of deep interpersonal, and intrapersonal, conflict both in fiction and in history & current events.
December 30 2007, 01:04:42 UTC 13 years ago
December 30 2007, 03:55:57 UTC 13 years ago
It's easy to forget the transcendent snap because those tend to be rare, and often hidden. Violent snaps get more attention, and are more common, thus are better known.