Witless for Peace
When I heard about the torture-murder of Quaker Peace
Activist Tom Fox in Iraq, I couldn’t help thinking of two fictional
episodes. The first was a scene from the first film adaptation of H.G.
Wells’s The War of the Worlds. In it, we have already beheld peace-loving
earth people approach the ominous Martian spacecraft waving a white flag and
making gestures of friendship and peace, only to be disintegrated by death
rays. Next, here comes the local parson, fancying that maybe he can succeed
where the others failed. So he clutches his Bible to his chest and recites
the Lord’s Prayer as he paces toward the same flying saucer. Guess what?
He’s rayed down, too. What was he thinking? Probably whatever Christian
peace activist Tom Fox was thinking when he stepped into the Iraqi lion’s
den.
Did the fictional parson and the late, quite real Mr. Fox believe they would
be magically protected by their faith? If so, then I suggest we can accord
their actions no greater respect than we do when we read that someone has
died from venom during a snake-handling service. Both were shoved into the
arms of utter rashness, fool-hardiness, by the dreamy considerations of
their faith.
But then I think of the other episode, a hypothetical scenario from the
ethics courses I used to teach. It had to do with just how self-sacrificing
one had the obligation to be in a situation of scarcity. The scene is one in
which a lone lifeboat remains afloat amid shark-infested waters. Someone
swims up to your boat and wants to come aboard. You all tell him, no, there
is no more room! He will capsize the boat and all will die! He grabs the
side and tries to climb in anyway. What do you do? Do you grab the oar and
beat him off with it? Or do you say, “No, wait, you can have my place!” And
then jump? Congratulations! You have now thrown overboard the only person
with a conscience among the survivors! You may rest assured that the guy who
took your place will not show such a tender conscience toward the next
person who tries to get into the boat!
I think Tom Fox jumped out of the boat. He threw his life away. I gladly
admit he possessed the courage of his convictions, but his convictions were
erroneous, as absolute pacifism always is. Heeding the impulse to become a
martyr, the pacifist steps into the line of fire as if to say, “Goodbye,
cruel world!” He is a creature of world-weary moral decadence. Not the kind
of decadence that leads to debauchery, but the variety that is too good for
the only world there is. At least the former kind of decadence has gusto! At
least it is “yes’-saying, life-affirmative! By contrast, like Ignatius the
martyr who begged his friends not to try to free him, and like the Cynic
Proteus Peregrinus who threw himself into a funeral pyre, Fox’s kind of
decadence is pale and world-negating. The pacifist is self-crucified on his
ivory tower.
I cannot help comparing Fox’s pointless death, with the candle-lit vigils
that will mark it, with the death of Nascar driver Dale Earnhardt. The late
“Intimidator” has his own candle-lighting cult. But does he deserve it? How
did he die? It was an auto crash during a race, something not altogether
unexpected in such a sport. It is not much different from playing Russian
Roulette. Do we venerate the hapless fools who perish in that “sport”? I
don’t see why anyone would. To use Aristotle’s categories, you have to try
to distinguish “bravery” from “foolhardiness.” And Earnhardt and Fox were
foolhardy, not brave. The risks they took were self-gratifying daredevil
stunts. I hope Fox is enjoying his golden Nascar trophy in the sky.
What motivates the sick souls of martyrs who wear a sign around their necks
saying “Come get me!”? I think they are motivated by survivor guilt. They
look at the world around them and see how fortunate they happen to be,
compared with the wretched degradation of most of the world’s suffering
masses. And they say to themselves, “What right have I to be well off and
healthy when so many are not?” One feels not thankful but guilty, apparently
afraid of the bad karma one is to accrue when the cosmic tables turn. And so
as to get the great reversal of fortune out of the way, they jump out of the
boat.
The priest in Camus’s The Plague died this way. He labored manfully helping
the plague victims until he began to show (false, mimicked) symptoms
himself. Finally he died of a disease he did not actually have because his
neurotic conscience made him identify with the victims of the disease: who
was he not to contract the plague when so many others did? So he negated
that “privilege” by assuming their cross like Simon of Cyrene.
The poor of Saint Francis’s day saw easily what a pampered fool he was to
have renounced affluence to embrace poverty, as if there were something
noble in it. The real poor knew better. They would not have hesitated to
take little Frankie’s place in the life boat.
Tom Fox’s fans no doubt feel somehow vindicated by an incident, his death,
that should instead demonstrate beyond all doubt that their whole approach
is a pathetic farce. Such activist-martyrdom only reinforces the grip of the
wicked on the system by sacrificing the righteous to it. Will the terrorists
be strangely moved to repent? No, they are already laughing about it. Martyr
deaths of Fox’s sort do nothing to advance the cause of peace; they only
reinforce the resolve of bloodthirsty fanatics who see correctly what we
cannot bring ourselves to see: becoming too heavenly-minded has rendered the
West impotent. To give Tom Fox’s death any honor or meaning at all, one must
do the very thing Fox would have hated most: avenge him seventy-seven fold.
So says Zarathustra.
