I have mentioned before that I belong to a book club which meets once a month. The members suggest books and vote on the selections for the next six month period. Of course that means one will be reading some of other people's selections as well as one's own.
It happens that this month's selection is "The Push", by Ashley Audrain. The plot revolves around a child who is without any sense of empathy or feelings for anyone but herself. It hints at possible reasons, but the reader is left wondering as to the cause of the child's problems. The mom had pretty severe postpartum depression, so attachment disorder possibly is part of it. Other extended family members had issues too, so maybe there are genetic factors. The reader is left with a lot of "maybes". The bottom line is that Very Bad Things happen. The child is very good at manipulating people and projecting sweetness and light. All in all, a pretty dark story.
Which brings us to the topic of conscience. Is it possible to develop a conscience without any empathy or fellow feeling? I can say that the book is just a story. But it isn't far from some things that have happened in real life. I'm sure you have heard in the news about the six year old child who shot his teacher:
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/other/school-downplayed-warnings-about-6-year-old-before-teacher-s-shooting-staffers-say/ar-AA16Bdr0
"On one occasion the boy threw furniture and other items in class, prompting students to hide beneath their desks, according to the account. Another time, the teacher alleges in her account, the boy barricaded the doors to a classroom, preventing a teacher and students from leaving."
"The teacher banged on the classroom door until another teacher from across the hall forced it open from the outside, according to the teacher’s account. It was not clear whether the teacher asked for any specific action from administrators after that incident."
"The teacher also described strained resources at the school. The lead special education teacher was frustrated because she has a high caseload, according to the account. Some aides regularly missed work, including for as long as a week at a time."
"The teacher further alleged in her account that the boy was not receiving the educational services he needed, that it was difficult to get help with him during outbursts and that he was sometimes seen wandering the school unsupervised."
"The boy’s family said in a statement Thursday, the first public remarks his relatives have given about the shooting, that the 6-year-old was “under a care plan” that “included his mother or father attending school with him and accompanying him to class every day.” That stopped the week of the shooting, the statement said."
Fortunately the teacher is recovering from the gunshot wounds. But the incident seems to have been a perfect storm of school administration non- action, not responding to the teacher's pleas for help, and and the parents' lack of responsibility. The mother had a gun which she had purchased legally. She said it was secured. But she stored it on her bedroom closet shelf. I am sure there are a whole lot of lawsuits waiting to happen.
Which leads us again to the question of conscience, its development, and the culpability of someone in whom a conscience is seemingly unable to be formed.
Some years ago, a similar discussion came up when my online book group read "We Need to Talk About Kevin." It was interesting that, in this group of mostly academic women, they were bent finding an explanation for Kevin's behavior without wanting to fall into "blame the mother." So a lot of the discussion could only "safely" involve parsing the father's inadequacies.
ReplyDeleteI think some people are just born with an emotional defect. But as I understand it, it is possible for psychopathic personalities to act as if they have a conscience because it creates a more normal, stable life for them and keeps them out of trouble/jail. They learn normal responses and how to mimic them. I see it as moot to try to figure out if their conscience is real or not. They've made a choice. Maybe a heroic one given their deficiency.
The extent to which any of us are acting out of true conscience and empathy, or just because we don't want to rock the boat and get wet is probably something none of us wants to have probed too deeply.
Most people who have been married a long time, have a long close relationship with a sibling, or even have a long close friendship go through at least one bad patch where "faking it" was essential to keeping things together.
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ReplyDeleteThe church's traditional wisdom has been that conscience takes time to develop; that's why this kid, traditionally, would be deemed too young to make his 'first confession' and receive communion. I don't think it's a case where conscience is "switched off" until age 7 and then suddenly "switches on", but I think the church has it right that conscience, like physical and mental capacities, grow and develop in children.
ReplyDeleteI think, when I was six, I had the building blocks of conscience, but I also had a lot of development in front of me.
I'm grateful for the detail you provided of this kid's backstory; I had heard the shocking headlines of the shooting but didn't know anything else to the story. His severe behavioral problems certainly make sense in understanding how someone so young could do such a thing.
Perhaps I'm reading between the lines, but what I sense here is that the parents, and perhaps the school, were trying to find a way to keep this troubled young person in "normal" school. I can feel some sympathy for that; no parent wants their children to be tarred with the label of having severe psychological issues, with all that suggests about his inability to have a normal childhood and, eventually, a normal adulthood. Nevertheless, in hindsight it seems they misjudged the risks of their approach.
I believe this school was in a large city in Virginia? Perhaps that school system has the typical problems of large, urban school systems: inadequate funding and resources. It's not difficult to believe that some school districts wouldn't have adequate mental health services available. Our society doesn't, either, from what I can tell.
I guess I don't see conscience as playing much of a role in this kid's decision to shoot his teacher; I see severe behavioral problems, seemingly inadequately managed by the adults who were responsible for him.
I agree with you that this kid was too young to have developed a conscience, so was the kid in the book, at least at first.What both had in common was a seeming lack of empathy. which can be a building block of forming a conscience.
DeleteAnd yes, the boy's behavior problems were mishandled by the responsible adults!
DeleteYes, it would be hard to be the parents, and we haven't walked in their shoes. And really hard to be the teacher. I wonder if she will go back to the classroom after experiencing something like that.
DeleteConscience development along with intellectual development and social development take place over time and may vary with the circumstances.
ReplyDeleteCivil law distinguishes among manslaughter, premeditated murder, and crimes of passion when assessing guilt and punishment. In manslaughter distinctions are made between unforeseen consequences and consequences that should have been foreseen. In crimes of passion there is recognition that extreme emotion may impair moral judgement.
Insanity may also impair one’s judgment and moral responsibility for one’s actions.
Consciences may vary from culture to culture, and among social groups within a culture. All of that is influenced by intellectual and social development. Honor killings are a moral requirement in some cultures.
Military training and experience seem to involve the undoing of some conscience development. The training is sometimes ineffective, i.e., recruits do not kill enemies when they could, or they kill civilians when they should not.
DeletePost-traumatic stress disorder may involve the chaos of morality on the battlefield as well as the destruction of human life, social life, and rapidly changing threat situations.
Jack, good insight on PSTD that happens in war.
DeleteKatherine, are you saying that a character trait, such as empathy, can either help our conscience to flourish, or alternatively can impair our conscience?
ReplyDeleteI have not thought very deeply about this, and would be grateful for better ideas. Here is how I think about it: conscience, which we might think of as a sort of morality rule-base, provides input to the will. Our emotions (if we think of empathy as an emotion?) also provide input. The part of us which receives the input from these "upstream systems" is our will. Our will somehow processes these inputs, which may complement one another or may conflict with one another, and makes the decision to act or not act.
DeleteYes, I think our character traits can either help or hinder our conscience development. Or maybe there is a feedback loop, in which our conscience influences our character traits. I think both can be true.
DeleteInfluenced by the Ignatian tradition of examination of conscience and discernment, I think of conscience as being more of a process than a collection of moral axioms from some guidebook, or internalized rules.
ReplyDeleteYes, we can decide how often we have failed to live up to some previously adopted guidelines. But more importantly in the Ignatian tradition we look to the patterns of consolation and desolation in our lives. We look for things that are from God and things that are not from God.
It is the angel on one side and the devil on the other side. Both the angel and the devil can quote scripture. They can both appear to be prophets. As Rabbi Herschel says about prophets there would be no possibility of free human moral decision making if we always could know for certain the real prophets from the false prophets.
We need grace, the gift of the Holy Spirit, to enlighten our decision making. A lot of that grace is found in Scripture, various Christian spiritualities, the lives of saints both living and dead, but it is also in the circumstances of our lives, the signs of the times, the needs of others. It is more likely to be found is soft whispers than in dramatic happenings.
BTW, I hope the incident with the boy shooting the teacher makes the point that people absolutely can't keep a gun in the house if a disturbed person lives there. Even if they think it is secured (obviously one's bedroom closet shelf is not secured!)
ReplyDelete