When I was 4 or 5, my conscience was awakened in a moment of wonder and horror. That combination created an instant repulsion that felt then, and now in retrospect, to be primal, a fundamental moment when I saw something terribly wrong and knew what was right.
The birds did it.
Two strings of wire hanging from a scrub tree at the edge of a road that descended like a corkscrew into an abandoned clay pit we used for sledding. On the wires, hanging upside down, rows of blue jays and cardinals some boy had shot and then displayed for all the other children of the neighborhood. Their blues and reds were fresh, beautiful. Wind ruffled their plumage.
For some 3 or 4 beats of time I did not know what I was seeing. Then in something more like pricks of a needle than blows from a hammer, I saw and looked and saw and recognized … evil. I did not have the words I use now, but I knew this was something I could never do.
How my conscience evolved from there is a mixed and mysterious story. Most important were my parents, but also the Catholic rigor of behavior seen over by nuns, the experience of the trials and errors of my circle of friends and my own careening, comedic sometimes fraught lessons. But always there was a steady voice in me that was ready to both restrain and admonish – cruelty is not to be any part of you.
In spite of these advantages, I acted in thoughtless and cruel ways to more people than I can remember. Sometimes I feel I am still digging out of some of those actions whose resonant memories fill me with regret. For whatever it is worth, I have never been cruel to any animal other than human beings, and there I have learned much through guilt.
The other part to this is a knowledge of the shadows I carry inside myself – call them sins, call them beasts, it’s all the same – an awareness of my character weaknesses, my desires for vengeance, my buried-not-very-deep capacities for violence. One answer for that is humility, another is self-awareness and another is prayer – Let me not become monstrous is one I say to myself frequently.
The study of history is unforgiving. The more one reads, the more instances of injustice and man’s bestial nature emerge, but in my lifetime, in this country, I have never before seen daily, hell, hourly examples of moral depravity on the part of a President and his underlings. In one regard, they are a constant reminder to always resist groupthink, to resist any pack behavior, to always retain independence of thought and judgment and one’s own moral direction.
It takes a long time to learn those lessons and personal failures galore, but once learned, they stick. Examples of how not to live or conduct oneself are legion. One only needs to pay attention.
