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About That “Spark of Divinity”
I agree with Nancy Pelosi. There’s a “spark of divinity” in every person on earth, even the worst.
One reason I stopped listening to Mark Levin is that I couldn’t stand his habit of calling bad guys “cockroaches.” It reminded me too much of Rwanda. The frenzy of murder that overcame that country in 1994 was preceded by a radio campaign denouncing the Tutsis as cockroaches.
All mass-evil starts that way, doesn’t it? First, you dehumanize. You treat whole groups of people as something less than individuals created by God and endowed by Him with unalienable rights; you treat them as a menace. You make it okay to loathe them and heap contempt on them. You make it even seem like anyone who denounces and kills them is doing society a favor.
There’s an argument to be made that when we’re talking about actual, violent criminals, we are doing society a favor when we kill them. But, personally, I think even there—barring the case of stopping a crime-in-progress (like a school shooting)—we actually do more harm than good to society when we give the state power to put people to death.
I don’t mean that violent criminals don’t deserve death; they do. The fact that they’re persons—that they have reason and free will; that they’re made from love and for love—means that they’re capable of real evil. Animals aren’t. I think it was Shakespeare who wrote: “Lillies that fester smell worse than weeds.” The more dignified a being is on the ontological scale, the worse its corruption. But the power to kill is corrupting too.
On the whole, I think our society would be much better off if we were to recover the conviction that each and every person, even the worst, most destructive criminals, carries a spark of divinity. So, I’m with Nancy Pelosi on that point.
I propose that we all agree to stop dehumanizing M13 criminals by calling them “animals,” if the Democrats will agree to stop dehumanizing babies-in-the-womb by calling them “clumps of cells” and stop treating them in law as anything less than individuals who come with a spark of divinity and an unalienable right to life.
We’d be so much better and more humane a society.
Published in General
Seconded, and amen’ed.
I think you should specify that you agree with her words. Her actions suggest that she doesn’t really believe that. But I agree with her words.
Hypocrisy should be encouraged among the more nasty and vicious among us.
https://www.nationalreview.com/2018/05/trump-animals-comment-ms-13-why-it-offends-left/
I agree with this:
Can doing so be a problem? Yes if it is based on something other than their actions. MS-13 is not a race, not a creed, not a sex, not a ethnic group. It is a group people join by choice that does horrible things. Inhuman things.
Of course, I’ll let a Holocaust survivor, guide me, as quoted in the essay:
S0, I am sorry if people who have not faced that sort of evil don’t want to call a spade a spade. I’ll stick with the judgement of the person who lived it.
Some human beings use their divine spark to become monsters.
I only disagree with calling members of MS13 animals because it’s an insult to animals…
Yes, we’re all created with a spark of divinity, but at what point can we say someone has fully dehumanized himself? Does he have to eat the liver out of the girl he’s just raped and beaten to death?
I agree with C.S. Lewis — you can so thoroughly lose touch with the divine that your soul turns to ashes — becomes a negation of good. It is at least as important to call evil, “evil,” to honor the spark of divinity in humans.
Our humanity isn’t just biological; it’s ontological. It’s not just material; it’s also (and even more importantly) spiritual.
I agree that some people become monsters by misuse of the powers that come with personhood. They degrade themselves and they hurt society. They can wreak terrible damage. But they don’t become animals, nor do they cease to be human beings.
They may forfeit their right to life. But I still think we’d be better off, as a society, without the death penalty.
I also think we’d be better off if we made a point of characterizing behavior, rather than persons, as contemptible or loathsome.
Bryan, another point: Not everyone who has lived such evil shares the views of those you quote.
I’m thinking, for instance, of Jesus, who died for us “while we were sinners.” There are countless others too, such as Maximilian Kolbe, Corrie Ten Boom, Victor Frankl, Immaculee Ilibagiza—witnesses who, in the face of monstrous evil, still believed in and upheld the human dignity of their abusers.
Fredrick Douglass’ memoir laments the inhumanity that the institution of slavery induced in slave-owners as much, if not more, than in slaves.
The best moral tradition—the one that accounts for humanity’s greatest moral achievements—springs, I would argue, from that basic belief and commitment.
Oh please…
Now that Trump has called people names we now have to have an ontological debate about the divinity of mankind?
What do you call people who call other people names? Name-callers? What shall we do about them? Seriously. What?
I don’t know if it turns to ashes. An evil soul is still indestructible, as already Socrates showed.
And I’m all in favor of calling evil evil.
I’m not in favor of dehumanizing individual persons. Not holding them accountable for their acts is one way of dehumanizing them. Classifying them as animals or cockroaches or clumps of cells is another.
I am sorry, but having met Evil people in my work, there are some people who are Evil. They are no good. Since you mention Jesus, they are the unrepentant murderer of the three crucified that day. Everything about humans is not a behavior, and some people are monsters.
Choosing the path of the monster is choosing to move away from the best self God has planned. It is choosing to deny what makes us like God, which is what makes us human. It is to give into to the base drives. It is to put one’s self into Hell on Earth. Those who refuse redemption have no place among us.
On the Death Penalty, I strongly disagree. Some people need killing. I think great limitations need to be placed around that, because the state killing others is terrible and needs oversight. Morally, I think it is justice to end the lives of monsters. Even the Bible supports killing the monsters. The ancient myths support killing the monsters. There is wisdom there.
Now we can just disagree. I think I have said my piece and I think you have said yours on this part.
On the theological/philosophical point, I agree with you that it’s mistaken to dehumanize anyone. I’d discourage that sort of language, largely for the reasons you describe.
When, however, the dehumanization is directed specifically at an organization like MS13, I am not going to make that discouragement loudly.
I’ll put it this way: If @katievs and I had a private meeting with the president in which he asked us how he could improve his communications, I would not bring up the MS13 comment. If Katie brought it up, I would be politely quiet. If asked what I thought of the matter, I’d say “She has a point” and see if we could change the subject.
Whereas I’d be: They are animals, and stick your guns, and never apologize to the Left for anything. (I am mixing issues, I know).
Agreed there.
But, I’d gladly trade a prohibition (I’m talking cultural, not legal) on dehumanizing M13 for a prohibition on dehumanizing in-utero children.
Opposing the death penalty is an honorable position and one with which I am sympathetic, but it’s not the one taken in your OP. Your post asserts that we should not even use the word “animals” to describe those whose connection to the “spark of divinity” has, by any reasonable standard, been severed, usually by choice. President Trump is not rhetorically denying these people their humanity; they have voluntarily forsaken it.
My suggestion isn’t meant mainly for Trump; it’s for the Democrats.
My point is less that Trump shouldn’t have called them animals as it is that acknowledging the divine spark that resides in every human beings has implications for the left too.
It means abortion is not okay, and neither is violence against Trump supporters. Or calling police pigs.
It’s also not okay to disdain white people, because some white people once owned slaves.
My point is that I think society would be better off if we conscientiously refrained from using language that de-humanizes.
And even more that what’s true of violent criminals is a fortiori true of innocent children.
Again, I agree that people who live lives of violent crime forfeit their right to life; they are worse than animals; they are monstrous.
I still think we’d be better off if we made a point in our public rhetoric of focussing on behavior rather than beings. One reason I think that is because “where there’s life, there’s hope.” People can change. And people who do are some of the most potent forces for good we have.
Think for instance of the force recovered addicts are in the fight against addiction.
Think of that former Nazi prison guard who goes around speaking with a former Nazi prisoner. Or that victim of rape who speaks publicly with the guy who raped her.
Almost all conversion stories start with someone recognizing potential for goodness in a person who had lost all belief in that for himself.
The ‘spark of divinity’ is the potential for redemption. They act like animals, with no moral values. So they are rightly described as animals. That does not mean they are forever inhuman animals. If they repent, and change their ways, they deserve to be readmitted in to the human race. Until then, they remain ruthless immoral animals.
MS-13 engages in behavior so barbaric that anyone in that gang have thoroughly dehumanized themselves. I have no problem with the president using such language. I believe in this country we have become so civilized that we can’t comprehend how barbaric and evil human beings can be.
It’s like these idealist lefty hippy types who get themselves killed, because they don’t understand how barbaric much of the world is.
I deal with evil people as well in my job and I agree that there are people who are truly evil. But isn’t the point of the cross (or at least one of the points) that every person can be redeemed? It’s difficult to meet with these people and deal with them, but the thought has often occurred to me when I’m in that situation, “If Christ allowed himself to be tortured and killed for this person, then surely I can sit here, meet with them, and do my job, for the sake of the law, if not for them.” My burden is light, by comparison.
Look, I don’t think it’s a big deal to call people animals or monsters, if you only mean they are humans acting like animals or monsters. That’s a helpful metaphor, but like all metaphors, it loses its value if you start to forget it is a metaphor. That blurs the truth you initially sought to make clear. If you start to actually believe that they are animals, or act as if they are animals, then the danger that katievs mentions in the OP becomes a real possibility. And anyway, if they are animals or monsters, wouldn’t that fact absolve them of their immoral acts? If they truly are animals or monsters, then they can’t help it, and you can’t really blame them. Maybe you’ve got to do something about, because it’s a practical problem, but you can’t really call them immoral.
Would you trade it to the Democrats, though, in exchange for their agreement to stop using dehumanizing language regarding in-utero children and police and Trump-supporters and racists?
What I mean to say, friends, is that we can gain a lot more than we lose in this rhetorical battle if we grant Nancy Pelosi that point about every person having a spark of divinity. I say we should run with it.
Sorry, this just sounds like so much sentimentalism. I don’t believe for an instant that Democrats (the Left) will give up on abortion if we just refuse to call demons like members of MS13 “animals.” Do you? Really?
Every accommodation we make with the Left gets pocketed by them as another victory in the culture war. Nancy Pelosi and people like her are enemies of freedom. I concede nothing to her.
They would never make that trade. Using dehumanizing language to describe innocent people is not the same as using it to describe evil people. Dehumanizing an unborn baby, in my opinion, is a sign of a broken moral compass. The fact that Nancy Pelosi can muster up moral outrage when Trump calls a gang of truly evil people animals, but can’t seem to muster up the same outrage for unborn babies says more about her, then Donald Trump.
Can I say, I love Ricochet, when people can disagree in one place, and agree in another, and we are not all placed in “other” categories. Seems topical to say in this thread somehow. :)
I will grant you that when I heard Granny Pelosi declare the ‘spark of divinity’ in MS13, my first thought was of the divinity of the innocents she rabidly demands be exterminated.
But pointing out that hypocrisy is a waste of time. They just don’t care. You won’t change their minds or hearts by granting her point. She doesn’t even believe it herself, she just thinks it will work on the religious right.
Katy,
What are the odds of Pelosi agreeing to this? There is, of course, a debate in mathematical circles whether infinity to one actually represents a probability. I am a believer in the transfinite so I’m fine with it.
Of course, Hell may freeze over first anyway.
Regards,
Jim
That thought is a waste of time and energy; such a trade is not on offer from Pelosi and the Left. It would violate their core principles.
Actually, it’s very instructive to see who is willing to call animalistic behavior for what it is and who defends the indefensible.
There are people in this conversation who had an absolute cow with Trump’s Charlottesville remark about there being “good people” on both sides and now are appalled because he’s being too tough on murderers, drug dealers and rapists? And those same people are also guilty of the “Trump says too many nice things about foreign dictators” are now all apoplectic about blunt talk on Mexican gangbangers?
Would y’all get your priorities together?
The dehumanization of MS-13 members is not not something being done by people calling them ‘animals’….they have chosen to dehumanize themselves.
I’m pretty sure that during WWII, Americans regularly referred to Nazis as ‘brutes’, ‘beasts’, etc….and I’m quite sure this terminology was used during WWI, there is even a movie whose title, referring to the Kaiser, was The Beast of Berlin. Yet somehow, this did not lead to American-led genocide against the Germans following the conclusion of either war.
Although actually, I’d argue that the term ‘animals’ is probably too mild in this context.
In the film Runaway Train, the older of the two criminals is called an ‘animal’ by the girl they have taken hostage. His response:
“No, worse! Human, HUMAN”
The movie ends with an on-screen quote from Shakespeare:
No beast so fierce but knows some touch of pity.”
“But I know none, and therefore am no beast.”
I think ‘monsters’ would have been better than ‘animals’, but it would have garnered the same response from the Left.
True, Jesus went to the cross for evildoers, but unlike a starry-eyed idealist, he knew exactly what they were and what he was doing. Oh, and speaking of animals,