Saying ‘No’ to Torture

“A ‘No’ uttered from the deepest conviction is better than a ‘Yes’ merely uttered to please, or worse, to avoid trouble.”

-M.K. Gandhi-

Rilke told a young poet to “learn to love the questions” because it takes a lifetime to find the answer, if we do.  When the topic of torture enters the room, it arrives as a stranger. We are afraid of it. We can’t look at it in the eyes. We want to close our ears to hear anything else. Suddenly, we no longer have a choice to ignore it, and we know all at once why we are apprehensive: it is a mirror of ourselves,  our estrangement, our fear of one another.

What is torture? We don’t need to ask the question. This is what we leave for the law to interpret: how far can we go before we break the law? How many bones, people, spirits can we violate without violation of our constitution?

I wonder:  How can I violate another without violating my own spirit?

Is it merely circumstances that change a woman or a man into an instrument of war?

By playing roles in the Stanford Prison experiment “guards” acted so sadistically toward the “prisoners”  that the researchers ended the experiment just a day later. What did these experiments teach us: the ethics of social research to end an experiment when men become cruel or that given an opportunity to act out cruelty without consequence, men will do it. But who were these men? Who chose them?

Abu Ghraib recalls smiling soldiers–men and women playing at soldiers without fear of consequences- triumphant with guns and duty’s call:  atop of piles of bodies and fierce barking dogs.

Guantanamo Bay.

Bagram Base.

Who were these men and who chose them for our sacrifice?

What do we get out of torture? Is it for a right to have expensive toys, prestige, honor?

Is it to humiliate for power?

What does it leave us?

Is it enough to love these questions?

Should I ask, how? How does a human being learn cruelty, learn to torture? Surely it is not just our obedience in our school systems, obedience to the military. It is fundamentally a dis-obedience: to our conscience.

What about animals? Do they not feel pain and fear while we turn a blind eye to their suffering?

What about our families? What about the thousands of children across the country today without a voice, beaten, humiliated in our neighborhoods. Is that not torture? Seeds destined for externalization. Where do these children go later? Whose lives do they touch–and are they reaching out with a gentle hand

or a resigned fist?

I want us to have an answer when we are asked to torture, even if it was never formulated as a question in the first place.

I want to remember that I have a choice when something is expected of me that violates my conscience.

I want to love the answer.

Written in solidarity with Berkeley Says ‘No’ to Torture Week, October 10-16, 2010.