Coral polyps are soft, fleshy creatures that form exoskeletons to survive. Similarly, human beings are vital souls whose efforts to repel evil and cultivate goodness yield formal systems that demarcate a society.
The bright colors of a thriving reef come from the algae that corals farm for nutrients. In human societies, the cultural colors of comedy, tragedy, eroticism and remorse all require fixed boundaries to exist.
The intricate spaces of coral reefs provide shelter to small fish, because large predators cannot penetrate the narrow fissures. In a human society, a cultural system of taboos and expectations protects the weak by limiting and directing the actions of the strong.
Blast fishing explodes dynamite to stun fish so that many can be netted quickly. Collateral damage is the destruction of coral reefs with their dependent ecosystems. For generations, Western societies have employed a blast-fishing approach for material progress at the expense of spiritual infrastructure.
The Judeo-Christian ban against idolatry, the charge to revere the name of God were exploded to make way for the supersize ego. Holy sabbaths, interdiction of envy crumbled in the path of economic expansion. Honoring father and mother, refraining from adultery blew up when familial bonds got in the way of individual self-interest. It’s not just that the Ten Commandments are no longer held sacred: there is no longer any concept of the sacred.
People who still seek wholeness and holiness find themselves immersed in a toxic waste and shudder daily at the shocks of brutality let loose in their midst. Suddenly grotesque violence explodes. But from repetition we have become numb even to that.
Not all of the destruction is accidental. Ideological campaigns to erase all formal boundaries have explicitly targeted moral restrictions. Big players blast away at ethical barriers in the name of freedom. For large egos, freedom requires the total elimination of all structures.
No boundary, ergo no transgression. No transgression, ergo no guilt. No guilt, ergo no pain. The sales pitch has been a promise to eradicate pain. It is as a form of pain that guilt has been banished. The lure of numbness generates enormous profits for peddlers of drugs and distractions. Millions too zoned out to react to their own destruction float into the nets of profiteers.
In this wasteland devoid of impeding structures, Homo neuroticus thrashes about. Neuroticus used to be a rare breed and was called “crazy” in the vernacular. Psychologists of a previous era observed an association between neuroticus and guilt, but they didn’t have many specimens to analyze. Freudians assumed that neuroticus must be the offspring of guilt, because the two were often seen together.
Neuroticus is insensitive to humor, grief and remorse. It must contort itself to get sexual pleasure. It expends furious energy to control everything in its environment. But it cannot control itself.
Neuroticus experiences its own impulses as irresistible. Its ego prevents it from admitting that it could ever do anything wrong. With no cultural boundaries to limit its movements, neuroticus becomes larger and larger and hungrier and hungrier. No joke can live in the vicinity of neuroticus. No sorrow clings. Mercy has fled.
Can the bleached skeleton of this cultural desert revive?
The wrecking would have to stop. We would have to cultivate once more a moral system of formal behaviors that define right living.
The part of us that fights evil is our conscience. Our conscience is the spiritual organ that corresponds to our physical nervous system. Just as your nerves react when you’ve injured yourself and produce pain, so your conscience reacts when you’ve incurred spiritual damage by doing wrong. A healthy conscience can feel qualms, remorse, contrition. A robust conscience can move you to repent and change your behavior. The ability to feel guilty enables you to survive spiritually, just as the ability to feel pain enables you to survive physically.
Neither the body nor the soul can live long in a state of numbness or indifference. Temporarily you may feel relief from evil when moral limits disappear from your habitat. But then the murky haze of a featureless landscape disorients you.
You become neuroticus. Anything and everything in the cloudy murk triggers a spasmodic reaction. Soon you too are lashing out aimlessly, inflicting harm on those around you.
Guilt is not the parent of neuroticus. Guilt is its guide through the deep. When you have a sense of where the boundaries are, you can direct your actions purposefully.
Bring the reef back. We could laugh again. We could weep together. We could live.
Hate the urgings of self-will. (Rule of Saint Benedict 4. 60)
