Defining Cruelty in the 21st Century - Case Study Example

Emily Ashiq English Composition II 3 November Argument of Definition: Defining Cruelty in the 21st Century In a world where the issue of Rights – both in the sense of correctness and entitlement – has assumed renewed significance, the idea of cruelty merits revisiting. Just as ensuring political correctness and guaranteeing certain fundamental freedoms across borders are important; it is just as important to be aware of what not guaranteeing these can imply. What happens when right/rights do not prevail? In such a situation of failure, cruelty is what fills the vacuum. For us to accept such a contention, we must redefine what we mean by cruelty first and explore its various dimensions. ‘Cruelty’, according to The Blackwell Dictionary of Western Philosophy, derives from the Latin cruor meaning ‘spilled blood’: Cruelty is traditionally conceived as an activity of inflicting pain upon other persons […] it is opposed to care and beneficence, and is regarded as a paradigmatic evil (154). Here too, we find that cruelty is defined as the opposite of ‘care and beneficence’. The absence of a caring and beneficent order of life is what paves the way for engendering cruelty. Therefore, from the etymological origins, which signify solely the spilling of blood or physical violence, we have today moved on to thinking of cruelty as any act of causing pain to others and traveled even as far as to accept the absence of caring as being ‘cruel.’ The 17th century philosopher Spinoza, in his treatise Ethics, defines cruelty as the following: ‘Cruelty or savageness is the desire whereby any one is incited to work evil to one whom we love or whom we pity (Bunnin & Yu 155).’ Does this definition hold true four hundred years later? Spinoza appears to be looking at cruelty from a personal and psychological point view. The idea of cruelty as wanting to hurt the ones we love: an idea that is present in the popular imagination even today. However, while today ‘love’ may be generally accepted to carry within it an inherent sense of loss or pain, ‘cruelty’ is not confined to being such personal issue. The idea of cruelty, even within domestic walls, has wider socio-political significance. Domestic violence is an issue that many countries across the world are still grappling with. In a recent progressive pronouncement by the Supreme Court of India, in the case of Samar Ghosh vs. Jaya Ghosh, 2007, the idea of ‘mental cruelty’ was judicially evolved. Although the court declared that it was not possible to objectively define ‘mental cruelty’, the term could include instances of cruel behavior like undergoing sterilization without prior consent of one’s spouse or taking a unilateral decision on whether or not to have any more children. In fact, even ‘feeling of deep anguish, disappointment, frustration in a spouse caused by the conduct of the other’, if found occurring over a sustained period of time, may amount to ‘mental cruelty’ (Shukla). Interestingly enough, in this case, it was not the wife but the husband who sought relief for the mental torture he was undergoing as a result of his marriage. According to Dictionary.com, in the legal sense, ‘cruelty’ is ‘conduct by a spouse that causes grievous bodily harm or mental suffering.’ The idea of ‘cruelty’ as being associated with hurting those we love, or at least those we marry, then, has come a long way from the times of Spinoza. Now, thanks especially to the Feminist movement, the personal is also political. Domestic violence can no longer be concealed under the guise of one’s ‘own business’. Globally, the law takes this kind of violence very seriously and as we find from the Dictionary.com definition, even equates ‘cruelty’ with violence found in the home, especially between spouses. Another issue that is often brought up with relation to cruelty is the ending of life. The question of whether capital punishment is cruel or not is one fraught with many controversial ideas. The death penalty that is still practiced today all over the world, has been question on humanist grounds, especially post the Enlightenment. The killing of the offenders is done by selected officials ‘on behalf’ of society. However, does this not violate the sacrosanct right to life enjoyed by every human being, including the murderer? There are some, who follow the ideas of John Locke, and argue that by taking another’s life or by violating their right to life in any way, the criminal offender forfeits his or her own right to life. But those on the other side, opposing the death penalty, argue that this means there is no inherent value attributed to human life and it is defined only in terms of retributive justice: a rather problematic stance to take. Also, while punishment to deter crime is necessary, it need not entail ending the life of the offender (Bunnin & Yu 98). Gandhi was a famous opponent of the death penalty: ‘An eye for an eye will make the whole word blind’, is one of his commonly repeated sayings used to protest against the death penalty. George Orwell in his essay ‘A Hanging’ also provides a grim account of the hanging of an Indian prisoner in Burma to argue, through literature, against the death penalty. Despite such strong ideological backing – even the United Nations General Assembly has adopted resolutions encouraging member nations to abolish the death penalty (‘General Assembly’) – the death penalty continues to exist today. However, according to Amnesty International, presently only 21 countries today exercise the death penalty (‘Death Penalty in 2011’). It remains to be seen as to how and when the idea of ‘cruelty’ in this context of capital punishment will be unanimously agreed upon and defined. On a related, if less significant note, corporal punishment, especially in schools, is also being questioned and gradually replaced. In countries like Canada, New Zealand, Korea, Kenya and South Africa, it has been banned entirely (‘France’). Cruelty is also largely synonymous today with cruelty against animals. To ‘go cruelty free’ means, in other words, to be a responsible consumer who is aware of products and manufacturers that violate animal rights and avoid buying from them. Then there are organizations like the ASPCA or American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, who have been working from as far back as 1866 to protect animal rights in the United States. However, this also engenders controversies. The idea of ‘preventing cruelty’ as being kind – a corollary of the idea of cruelty as absence of mercy that we have been discussing all along – brings into play many other factors. Who, for instance, is benefited from this prevention of cruelty? In countries where the majority of the population lives in abject poverty and do not get adequate nutrition, the suggestion of making veganism the norm is almost criminal to the starving millions. Similarly, there are ideological clashes that also happen because of this prioritizing of categories that need to be protected from cruelty. For instance, feminists have on numerous occasions found PETA’s advertising offensive and sexist. The infamous ad of a woman being compared to a whale saw widespread protests staged by feminists against PETA. On one such occasion, PETA Campaign Manager, Lindsay Rajt, is quoted to have defended the ad saying: ‘What would really be cruel would be to not tell people about the health benefits of going vegetarian (Mirk).’ Again, we find the idea of restraint as cruelty – or more specifically in this case, the withholding of information being portrayed as ‘cruelty.’ On another end of this debate is the idea of cruelty as something desirable. With the resurgent visibility of BDSM or Sado-masochistic sexual practices, the notion of giving and receiving pain as part of sexual enjoyment is also commonly recognized and accepted today. But one must remember in such cases that there are usually well-defined codes and rules that govern such exchanges. Cruelty, even in these situations, needs to be regulated by mutually agreed upon rules. Unrestrained cruelty is still not acceptable socially, morally or legally. The greater opening up of previously taboo subjects like BDSM has, caused further debate and discussion on these issues and the line dividing what is acceptable and what is not has, if anything, hardened. In his book The Science of Evil, Simon Baron-Cohen explores and expands this idea of cruelty as restraint or, in his words, as symptomatic of the suppression of the ‘empathy circuit’ in an individual that allows him or her to inflict cruelty upon others (Baron-Cohen). Baron-Cohen sensitively explores the psyche of criminal offenders who have been accused of cruel acts and by comparing them with persons with conditions like autism or Asperger’s Syndrome lends them a human face. Baron-Cohen also explores in detail the medico-ethical issues associated with his contention but significant to our discussion is this idea of the expression of cruelty as essentially a withholding of empathy. We again return to the idea of cruelty as the absence of ‘caring’. In fiction also, humanness has been associated with empathy. In Philip K. Dick’s science-fiction novel Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?, the only real differentiating marker between the advanced humanoid robots and human beings is the quality of empathy. The novel explores this idea in great detail and also its various corollaries – what happens when humans begin to empathize with androids? What if androids can simulate empathy? What if the standards of testing empathy – in the novel the Voigt-Kampff Empathy Test – are themselves anomalous and ineffective? These moral questions, although explored by Dick in a fictional setting, reveal crucial insights into conceptions of humans and humanity, all of which are grounded on one fundamental idea: that to be human is to be capable of empathy. Or in other words, to be able to ‘care’ is what separates humans from androids. This is yet another take on the idea of cruelty as the absence of caring. Cruelty, we see therefore, has evolved over time and across space in its meaning and implications. Different cultures, different schools of thought, different events around the world have caused newer dimensions of the term to be raised and debated upon. From its more limited Latin etymological origins, through Enlightenment ideas of cruelty, to the more liberal and wide interpretation it enjoys today, ‘cruelty’ and what it entails has been examined time and again to yield newer meaning. The exploration of cruelty leads us down controversial paths like rights of humans over rights of animals, or the rights of the state to take a prisoner’s life, and so on. Even today, real-life instances of cruelty like the controversial Guantanamo Bay Detention Camp or organizations like Khmer-Rouge exist and pose difficult philosophical and ethical questions on the idea of cruelty and justice. But as Pulp Fiction described it, ‘cruelty’ is no longer ‘going medieval’ on someone; in an increasingly rights-based world, it has come to mean the mere absence of caring. This notion, as we have studied, has been implicit in its meaning traditionally, but is only of late gaining prominence. We are now in an age where not guaranteeing someone what is ‘right’ and their ‘rights’ or fundamental freedoms or entitlements can be tantamount to exercising cruelty. Works Cited: Baron-Cohen, Simon. ‘On Empathy and the Origins of Cruelty.’ The Montreal Review. Oct 2011. Web. 1 Nov 2012. Bunnin, Nicholas and Yu, Jiyuan. The Blackwell Dictionary of Western Philosophy. Malden: Blackwell, 2004. Print. ‘Cruelty.’ Dictionary.com. Web. 1 Nov 2012. ‘Death Penalty in 2011.’ Amnesty.org. Web. 1 Nov 2012. Dick, Philip K. Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? ‘My Blade Runner.’ Joanfuste.com. PDF File. ‘France.’ EndCorporalPunishment.org. Web. 1 Nov 2012. ‘General Assembly Committee Backs Global Moratorium against Death Penalty.’ UN News Centre. 15 Nov 2007. Web. 1 Nov 2012. Mirk, Sarah. ‘Feminists vs. PETA: ‘Sexist’ Ads Draw Portland Protest.’ PortlandMercury. 27 Aug 2009. Web. 1 Nov 2012. Orwell, George. ‘A Hanging’. The Hindu: Op-Ed. 31 Aug 2011. Web. 28 Oct 2012. Shukla, Rakesh. ‘Defining Mental Cruelty.’ Infochange India. Apr 2007. Web. 1 Nov 2012. Read More