PERSONAL COLUMN

Let's all swing together

A. E. DYSON

When John Braine wrote in the SPECTATOR his 'goodbye to the left' (19 July 1968), he mentioned the influence of the Moors murders on his thought. It was this ghast- liness which opened his eyes to the wide- spread hypocrisy of saying 'we are all guilty', particularly when 'all' excluded the criminals themselves.

The theory that we are all guilty assumes that murderers and other violent people are forced into their acts either by the neglect of society or by society's intolerable laws and customs, and that society is, therefore, to blame. And sometimes, of course, society is culpably neglectful; but it is an odd muta- tion of human charity which can exonerate violent criminals on the grounds that they are victims of society while condemning the non-violent, respectable people on whom they prey. Indeed, it sometimes seems that in order to have disreputable people good, you have to have reputable people bad: only so can the drop-outs feature as alienated Messiahs in a progressive world.

Like John Braine, I found the Moors murders something of a turning point. What seemed astonishing was not the fact of evil —that is inescapable to any human being at any period of history — but the realisation that such evil could be 'understood' and condoned. In the past, almost all responsible moralists and educationists would have repudiated violence, particularly if they re- cognised answering impulses in themselves. It has been generally known that we must learn to control our instincts, develop self- discipline, guard against destructive habits of bitterness and lust. When people suc- cumbed to temptations they were judged sinful and condemned for it; and most usually they accepted this judgment with relief. There were also, of course, charity, mercy, and forgiveness towards sinners, but these did not involve doubts about the sins.

The underlying insight was that we are indeed all guilty, but that we are chiefly guilty of our personal sins. In their differ- ing ways, Hebrew, Greek and Christian all held this view, and it has usually been re- garded as common sense. Yet it is this which is now being challenged by the kind of 'pro- gressive' who prefers to transfer guilt from the person originating guilty actions to society at large. And the transference of guilt is a logical extension of the notion that the chief purpose of life is to indulge our 'natural' instincts and inclinations, and to regard as reactionary anyone who believes otherwise. We are to fulfil ourselves even if it kills us: and if, instead of killing us, it merely breaks us up, we are to resort to every kind of 'explanation' except personal guilt. Psychiatrists will speak soothingly of childhood complexes and sociologists will denounce competitive stresses and brutal exams.

All very well, perhaps, if we are naturally good, loyal, selfless and brimming over with integrity; but what if we are not? The Moors murders were significant to my mind not because they proved that evil existed, but because they proved how frighteningly detached we are getting from common sense. It is hard to see in what ways the murderers violated 'progressive' tenets; yet what other society has toyed as our does with a moral-

ity which can both logically produce wicked- ness, and then exonerate wickedness when it appears?

The people who most generously condone a few wrongdoers at the expense of the rest of us are very often, however, merely condoning themselves. There is a now classic argument which runs 'We are all guilty; therefore you are guilty; therefore I am innocent'—or, in slightly mellower form, 'Let's all swing together, especially you'. The assumption appears to be that if you com- pletely understand the criminal, and are on his side against society, you can share his innocence without enacting his crime. It is a strangely inverted variant of scapegoat theology, since whereas the scapegoat was really innocent but took guilt upon him, the inverted scapegoat is really guilty but is proclaimed pure. In each case, the initiate partakes of innocence: but it is a point of difference that whereas the scapegoat pro- duced righteousness, the inverted scapegoat produces self-righteousness, a quality alto- gether more widely admired in the modern world.

We are in the presence of the central mystery cult of the nineteen-sixties: 'we are all guilty except the person who actually did it, and me'. As long as 'protest' can be in- voked. and of course 'bourgeois society', the ritual will aways work. This, at least, is the only explanation I can see for the now fami- liar phenomenon of 'progressives' blaming innumerable modern acts of hooliganism, violence and disruption upon everyone ex- cept the actual perpetrators of the deeds and themselves.

The whole matter of guilt, and confusion about guilt, reaches deep into our current malaise. There is a distinctive kind of dis- content, expressed in loud and continued laments about 'alienation', a 'rat-race cul- ture', 'society's pressures upon the indivi- dual' and so forth which seems to accom- pany a diminished sense of personal respon- sibility and so of personal guilt. The roots go as far back as Rousseau and his romantic disciples, who initiated the replacement of traditional European wisdom by a rag-bag of half-baked notions very familiar today. It was they who gave prominence to the idea that if man is good, society must be evil; imperfections must be blamed upon the society one belongs to, and not on oneself. The Noble Savage was exalted above rational civilisation, and it was assumed that rules, laws and customs are intolerable restraints upon human freedom, not the necessary condition for freedom itself.

The insidiousness of this is that in many concrete instances society is indeed at fault,

and should be amended; but this is prag- matic reality. not universal law. In fact, if society is to be reformed from within rather Unit overthrown by violent revolution, we require precisely the ideals and disciplines that primitivists reject. Above all, we need a liveTY sense of personal guilt and shortcom- ing, which is the other side of moral effort and serious ideals. It would be true to say. I think, that personal guilt, far from being morbid, is one of the most priceless assets we possess. In the first place, it is realistic: we are all continually falling short of our ideals. If we can admit failure, we are still free agents, and the possibility of harder effort, greater success, remains. But more important, if we admit failure, we honour the ideals we live by: the alternative is to violate or destroy the ideals. Nothing is more healing than homage to excellence: to celebrate great men and achievements. great art. great intellect, is to be truly alive. But inevitably, this brings a heightened sense of personal limitation, and a measure of perceived and accepted guilt. Yet if this stimulates to new efforts, it is clearly not morbid. It is a challenge rather to that real creativity, measured against achievement, which makes the voguish cult of 'creative' self-expression without judgment seem such a sham.

But to have no sense of personal guilt is to see nothing worthier than oneself in the universe; it is to become a sterile divinity, embittered by those many limitations that nothing can change. There may be bitterness at natural things, like the colour of one's hair or one's human mortality; there may be bitterness at every real or imaginary re- buff that life throws up. Worse still, there may be bitterness at excellence. When. despite every precaution, the superior beauty. talent, virtue, intelligence, happiness of a fellow mortal impinges upon us, we might hate it as a crime against ourselves. This deep envy frequently disguises itself as social idealism. and it is no less dangerous when it does.

The attendant ravages are apparent not only in the basic formula 'We are all guilty, therefore you are guilty, therefore I am in- nocent', but in the other trains of thought to which this leads. It is not uncommon to hear progressives declare that coloured people 'must' hate white people and take revenge upon them, as if the virtues of ten- derness, rationality, forgiveness were quite unknown. Do the people who hold such views imagine that they are on the side of hurit,anity, coloured or otherwise? At such Moments, one sees that those who are in- clined to transfer guilt from particular indi- viduals to society can be more brutal, in their practical estimates of human nature. than those who believe that we all often are guilty, but can be good.

It often seems, too, that progressives holding such views take sexual promiscuity for granted. and lament the poisoning of sexual relations as yet another of society's sins. But this overlooks the traditional, belief

that promiscuity can itself be a cause of bitter compulsions, diminished tenderness and loyalty. wasted aims. If the sexua' failures of frustrated rebels are also blame, ort'society, may this not be a simple con fusion between cause and effect? Certain'.

the terms of traditional thought would sa- gest this; and it remains possible th• Christian beliefs are still too precious to b sacrificed upon the altar of anyone's 'self.