T E R R E U R

Monsters exist in margins. They are thus avatars of chance, impurity, heterodoxy; abomination, mutation, metamorphosis; prodigy, mystery, marvel. Monsters are indicators of epistemic shifts.

‘Heimweh’ the Germans call this pain; it is a beautiful word, it means ‘longing for one’s home’.  We know where we come from; the memories of the world crowd our sleeping and our waking hours, we become aware, with amazement, that we have forgotten nothing, every memory evoked rises in front of us painfully clear. But where we are going we do not know. Will we perhaps be able to survive the illnesses and escape the selections, perhaps even resist the work and hunger which wear us out - but then, afterwards? Here, momentarily far away from the curses and the blows, we can re-enter into ourselves and meditate, and then it becomes clear we will not return. We travelled here in the sealed wagons; we saw our women and our children leave towards nothingness; we transformed into slaves, have marched a hundred times backwards and forwards to our silent labours, killed in our spirit long before our anonymous death. No one must leave here and carry to the world, together with the sign impressed on his skin, the evil tidings of what man’s presumption made of man in Auschwitz.

Sometimes being immune to the influence of others is a foundation for integrity, but it can also breed indifference and license cruelty. Studies show how much less influenced — that is, how much less aware — the powerful are, how much less their brains engage in mirroring activity. Mirroring is how we replay the actions of others in our minds to connect to what they are doing and feeling. Or we don’t, and fail to make a connection; this is a cerebral process as well as an emotional one. It may be instinctive, but it can also be practiced. Or abandoned. Inequality makes liars of all of us, and only a democracy of power leads to a democracy of information. But underlings know both versions of the two-sided; the powerful seem to know only one, or refuse to know the other. They can conjure an act of erasure: these things have not happened if no one of high status knows. If power generates a cushion of obliviousness around it, those of us with power — and most of us are powerful in some way — need to counter this. That means, first, treating people with respect regardless of their status: not taking the invitation to disdain or ignore. It means being aware of how your status may cut you off from what others know and may share among themselves; it means knowing that you do not know. It also means questioning the insulating tendencies of power. A more radical response is to try to undo the inequality. It means being critical of the forces that create inequality and remembering that they create an asymmetry between who listens and who is heard. The unexamined life is not worth living, as the aphorism goes, but perhaps an honourable and informed life requires examining others’ lives, not just one’s own. Perhaps we do not know ourselves unless we know others. And if we do, we know that nobody is nobody.