The other night as I was walking through the TV room on the way to the fridge, I noticed that the final episode of that silly show, Lost in Space, was airing. In it, they had the swashbuckling younger man of the group confronting an alien who was most certainly going to end his life (Surprisingly, it didn’t!) As there was no way out, he closed his eyes and said out loud, “Lord, forgive me for all the people I have hurt in my life.” It was supposed to be a funny moment, as we know this Interstellar Don Juan had most certainly sinned, but it also told us that even the adventurers amongst us not only have a conscience, but realize that they are fundamentally selfish. Even these ne’r do wells, we understand, have moments of self- recrimination.
This does not mean that they hate themselves, but the seeds of self-hatred have been planted. Recall Pontius Pilate as he washed his hands after the judgment of Christ. His wife had told him that she had had a dream telling her that her husband should leave this innocent man alone. He had to do his duty and quell the mob, but he felt fear from his wife’s dream, and guilt. This, too, does not mean that he had a sense of self-hatred, but the seeds were there.
I have lived with an autonomous Indian tribe in Venezuela, and have read extensively about many more, and it does not seem that they have self-hatred. Rather, they have fear of consequences from the spirit world and, like Pilate’s wife, have dreams that make them feel afraid, or simply bad. Anthropologists have said that the ancient world and the world-view of the primitive are different from “us”– the “us” taking in, at the very least, developed cultures with Western influence – in that they are socialized by shame rather than guilt. Shame is the feeling of public social disapproval, while guilt is an inward sense of self-disapproval. This is part of what Jesus meant when he said that the law (of God) would be written on men’s hearts rather than in books. This is the interiorization of right and wrong apart from public display. It is where I believe we can find the beginnings of self-hatred.
In a book I am just completing, The Man Who Created the Middle East, by Christopher Sykes, we learn of the life of Sir Mark Sykes, the English aristocrat who was co-author of the much maligned Sykes-Pico agreement of 1916, when England and France were deciding how to partition the crumbling Ottoman Empire. Many of the troubles we now see in the Middle East (a term popularized by Sykes) have been blamed on this treaty, rightly or wrongly. More to our point, what was most remarkable in this book was a quotation from Sykes that appeared on the first page of the first chapter: “I hate my kind, I hate, detest human beings… their very stench appalls me … The stupidity of the wise, the wickedness of the ignorant, but you must forgive, remember I have never had childhood…” This from a man who inherited a mansion and 40, 000 acres of prime English territory, villages and villagers included. How did this hatred of his own class, the ruling class, and by extension himself, come about? And how did it affect his most notable mark on the world?
When one reads the journals of the conquistadors, one never gets the feeling that there is self-hatred anywhere among them. Rather, we see unblemished and self-righteous imperialism in full bloom. But something happened shortly after the Middle Ages. While there had been people in Christendom who daily repented of their sins since the time of the Church, we don’t see a majority express a persistent self-abasement until somewhere around the time of the Pilgrims. A leap in the interiorization of sin had taken place after the Renaissance, or so it seems from the writings. Even if this timetable is off by a century or two, we certainly see this sense of lingering dark guilt in the novels of the 19th century, which were written primarily by the elite educated classes. For reasons too vast for this essay, and perhaps beyond my scope anyway, by the time of Mark Sykes’ birth in 1879, the sense of guilt that had been set in modernizing man by high religion had been replaced by a clinging sense of self-loathing. This has very obviously progressed to the common man of the Western world today, but it had begun with the most educated and privileged among us.
For Sykes, he detested the blind arrogance of the European colonizers. At the same time, we can see the extreme arrogance of Sykes and his outlandish sense of self-worth. This clashed with his guilt over the doings of his own ruling class, just as this sense of righteousness underscored his own moral and intellectual superiority. Thus, we clearly see the strong underpinnings of both self-love and self-hate operating on his life at the professional level. His goal was to kick his own class in its colonizing butt, which would then justify his self-love and privilege.
Confusing, yes, but so relevant to our own times and nation as to be painful. We have now among the elites in government and education a sense of self-hatred so strong that they wish to destroy the culture that enabled its development. “Get rid of that which gave me this uncomfortable self-hatred, and I shall be free!” Just as with Mark Sykes, a deep-seated sense of privilege has these people believe that they have the right to destroy that which has made them, and made them so miserable. They must demolish that which gave them their fear of gay elements within themselves, and their racist beliefs, and their class snobbery brought about, they think, by capitalist wealth. Then, with the society abolished that brought them to their sufferings of guilt, our leaders in thought and actions believe that they will elevate themselves to some kind of amorphous utopia.
They will not, for they miss the point of the evolution of consciousness, particularly of Christian consciousness. Jesus proclaimed that with his new order, “not a letter of the old law will be abandoned,” but rather will be written, as said, in our hearts. This is the real movement. Self-hatred comes from the recognition of our own failings in light of Christian teachings. To destroy the basis for self-hatred is to destroy hopes of our liberation. Rather, we are to realize that our brothers and sisters are ourselves, and as such should not isolate ourselves from the lives and troubles and destinies of others. But we must follow the law that has been written in our hearts, the moral platform from which human action and thought should emanate.
When the woman is about to be stoned for adultery in the famous Gospel, Jesus asks the man without sin to cast the first. One by one they walk away in recognition of their own guilt, forced to identify with the woman. Once alone with the woman, Jesus tells her that he does not condemn her either. Rather, now that her life is given back to her, she should go and sin no more. The law, we are told, is to stay intact, but be enforced with compassion and forgiveness. Such laws were made to develop empathy and give us a way out of the old Roman belief that the victor – the resplendent self – has the right to enjoy the spoils. For the woman, if she were to continue in her adulteries, she would continue in the short-sighted ways of self-indulgence, ignoring the feelings of her husband, or the wife of the lover, for the whims of her wandering desires.
The law is still among us, and I do think we are still on a path of moral evolution. We have now come to a difficult impasse in our society, led by a self-hating but also self-loving elite who cannot stand the pain of their guilt and so wish to (and think they have the right to) throw the baby out with the bathwater. This, too, shall pass; this movement, too, will be recognized for the fundamental selfishness that is behind it. We then must learn to recognize our mutual failings and forgive those as we forgive ourselves, and then go forth to sin no more. The result will not be utopia, but rather a reflection of its promise, where good prevails even as we recognize and empathize with the failings of ourselves and others. In Buddhism, this might be called the Middle Way. In it we are to overcome self-hatred in the recognition of our shared condition, and work not against social and religious morality, but with it for the benefit of ourselves and for others.
This goal has been there all along, right before our eyes. What keeps us blind to it are the very selfish desires that the anti-capitalists and cultural nihilists pretend to despise, yet so often embrace. It is a tricky path we have been set to follow. To recognize light, we must understand darkness; as we mature morally, we also are allowed to see, and are tempted to follow, the opposite path. The alternative to the law written in our hearts is to live in a Romanesque world of the conqueror, or in the dark and hate-filled chaos promoted by many in our elite classes.
It is true that it is always darkest before the dawn. In spite of everything, history intimates to us that we are being led and aided by a greater power to someday realize the new Eden. Let us pray.
The other night as I was walking through the TV room on the way to the fridge, I noticed that the final episode of that silly show, Lost in Space, was airing. In it, they had the swashbuckling younger man of the group confronting an alien who was most certainly going to end his life (Surprisingly, it didn’t!) As there was no way out, he closed his eyes and said out loud, “Lord, forgive me for all the people I have hurt in my life.” It was supposed to be a funny moment, as we know this Interstellar Don Juan had most certainly sinned, but it also told us that even the adventurers amongst us not only have a conscience, but realize that they are fundamentally selfish. Even these ne’r do wells, we understand, have moments of self- recrimination.
This does not mean that they hate themselves, but the seeds of self-hatred have been planted. Recall Pontius Pilate as he washed his hands after the judgment of Christ. His wife had told him that she had had a dream telling her that her husband should leave this innocent man alone. He had to do his duty and quell the mob, but he felt fear from his wife’s dream, and guilt. This, too, does not mean that he had a sense of self-hatred, but the seeds were there.
I have lived with an autonomous Indian tribe in Venezuela, and have read extensively about many more, and it does not seem that they have self-hatred. Rather, they have fear of consequences from the spirit world and, like Pilate’s wife, have dreams that make them feel afraid, or simply bad. Anthropologists have said that the ancient world and the world-view of the primitive are different from “us”– the “us” taking in, at the very least, developed cultures with Western influence – in that they are socialized by shame rather than guilt. Shame is the feeling of public social disapproval, while guilt is an inward sense of self-disapproval. This is part of what Jesus meant when he said that the law (of God) would be written on men’s hearts rather than in books. This is the interiorization of right and wrong apart from public display. It is where I believe we can find the beginnings of self-hatred.
In a book I am just completing, The Man Who Created the Middle East, by Christopher Sykes, we learn of the life of Sir Mark Sykes, the English aristocrat who was co-author of the much maligned Sykes-Pico agreement of 1916, when England and France were deciding how to partition the crumbling Ottoman Empire. Many of the troubles we now see in the Middle East (a term popularized by Sykes) have been blamed on this treaty, rightly or wrongly. More to our point, what was most remarkable in this book was a quotation from Sykes that appeared on the first page of the first chapter: “I hate my kind, I hate, detest human beings… their very stench appalls me … The stupidity of the wise, the wickedness of the ignorant, but you must forgive, remember I have never had childhood…” This from a man who inherited a mansion and 40, 000 acres of prime English territory, villages and villagers included. How did this hatred of his own class, the ruling class, and by extension himself, come about? And how did it affect his most notable mark on the world?
When one reads the journals of the conquistadors, one never gets the feeling that there is self-hatred anywhere among them. Rather, we see unblemished and self-righteous imperialism in full bloom. But something happened shortly after the Middle Ages. While there had been people in Christendom who daily repented of their sins since the time of the Church, we don’t see a majority express a persistent self-abasement until somewhere around the time of the Pilgrims. A leap in the interiorization of sin had taken place after the Renaissance, or so it seems from the writings. Even if this timetable is off by a century or two, we certainly see this sense of lingering dark guilt in the novels of the 19th century, which were written primarily by the elite educated classes. For reasons too vast for this essay, and perhaps beyond my scope anyway, by the time of Mark Sykes’ birth in 1879, the sense of guilt that had been set in modernizing man by high religion had been replaced by a clinging sense of self-loathing. This has very obviously progressed to the common man of the Western world today, but it had begun with the most educated and privileged among us.
For Sykes, he detested the blind arrogance of the European colonizers. At the same time, we can see the extreme arrogance of Sykes and his outlandish sense of self-worth. This clashed with his guilt over the doings of his own ruling class, just as this sense of righteousness underscored his own moral and intellectual superiority. Thus, we clearly see the strong underpinnings of both self-love and self-hate operating on his life at the professional level. His goal was to kick his own class in its colonizing butt, which would then justify his self-love and privilege.
Confusing, yes, but so relevant to our own times and nation as to be painful. We have now among the elites in government and education a sense of self-hatred so strong that they wish to destroy the culture that enabled its development. “Get rid of that which gave me this uncomfortable self-hatred, and I shall be free!” Just as with Mark Sykes, a deep-seated sense of privilege has these people believe that they have the right to destroy that which has made them, and made them so miserable. They must demolish that which gave them their fear of gay elements within themselves, and their racist beliefs, and their class snobbery brought about, they think, by capitalist wealth. Then, with the society abolished that brought them to their sufferings of guilt, our leaders in thought and actions believe that they will elevate themselves to some kind of amorphous utopia.
They will not, for they miss the point of the evolution of consciousness, particularly of Christian consciousness. Jesus proclaimed that with his new order, “not a letter of the old law will be abandoned,” but rather will be written, as said, in our hearts. This is the real movement. Self-hatred comes from the recognition of our own failings in light of Christian teachings. To destroy the basis for self-hatred is to destroy hopes of our liberation. Rather, we are to realize that our brothers and sisters are ourselves, and as such should not isolate ourselves from the lives and troubles and destinies of others. But we must follow the law that has been written in our hearts, the moral platform from which human action and thought should emanate.
When the woman is about to be stoned for adultery in the famous Gospel, Jesus asks the man without sin to cast the first. One by one they walk away in recognition of their own guilt, forced to identify with the woman. Once alone with the woman, Jesus tells her that he does not condemn her either. Rather, now that her life is given back to her, she should go and sin no more. The law, we are told, is to stay intact, but be enforced with compassion and forgiveness. Such laws were made to develop empathy and give us a way out of the old Roman belief that the victor – the resplendent self – has the right to enjoy the spoils. For the woman, if she were to continue in her adulteries, she would continue in the short-sighted ways of self-indulgence, ignoring the feelings of her husband, or the wife of the lover, for the whims of her wandering desires.
The law is still among us, and I do think we are still on a path of moral evolution. We have now come to a difficult impasse in our society, led by a self-hating but also self-loving elite who cannot stand the pain of their guilt and so wish to (and think they have the right to) throw the baby out with the bathwater. This, too, shall pass; this movement, too, will be recognized for the fundamental selfishness that is behind it. We then must learn to recognize our mutual failings and forgive those as we forgive ourselves, and then go forth to sin no more. The result will not be utopia, but rather a reflection of its promise, where good prevails even as we recognize and empathize with the failings of ourselves and others. In Buddhism, this might be called the Middle Way. In it we are to overcome self-hatred in the recognition of our shared condition, and work not against social and religious morality, but with it for the benefit of ourselves and for others.
This goal has been there all along, right before our eyes. What keeps us blind to it are the very selfish desires that the anti-capitalists and cultural nihilists pretend to despise, yet so often embrace. It is a tricky path we have been set to follow. To recognize light, we must understand darkness; as we mature morally, we also are allowed to see, and are tempted to follow, the opposite path. The alternative to the law written in our hearts is to live in a Romanesque world of the conqueror, or in the dark and hate-filled chaos promoted by many in our elite classes.
It is true that it is always darkest before the dawn. In spite of everything, history intimates to us that we are being led and aided by a greater power to someday realize the new Eden. Let us pray.
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