Category: Society

The Art of Brutality

What do we make of deliberate acts of violence and cruelty on the screen – if we can stand to watch them?  A.O. Scott, the movie critic of The New York Times, commented on two particularly violent episodes in The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo:  “While the film may want to draw a moral distinction between the episodes — one an unprovoked and heinous assault, the other an act of righteous vengeance — their intensity renders them equivalent.

“In other words, movie violence has a way of existing for its own sake. It can’t really be rationally defended or condemned, only experienced and judged according to taste.”  (See, “Brutal Truths About Violence.”)

I can’t agree.  I happened to see the film over the weekend, and what Scott called “an act of righteous vengeance” was, yes, vengeance and, yes, it seemed justified by the sexual assault against which it retaliated.  But as the victim returned to her rapist, bashed him, trussed him, taped his mouth, and then proceeded to crudely tattoo over his body a “confession” of his crimes, I was mesmerized by what I could only call an example of the refined art of cruelty.  At that moment in the film, we did not know all the past experiences that shaped her revenge, but it was clear that this was no mere act of violence.  It was shaped by intelligence and passion to destroy the soul of the rapist.

To be sure, Scott has a point.  Much violence on the screen seems generic and manipulative, punctuating the rhythm of the narrative.  And it can be merely aesthetic, allowing us to appreciate how a bullet emerges from flesh like a flower unfolds.  But in the hands of a good director, it can have meaning — as it usually has meaning in life.

I could hardly bear to witness the cruelty, but I was mesmerized by the fierceness of its intent.

Some Interesting Facts

It turns out that the members of the tea party movement, on the whole, are older, wealthier and better educated than average Americans. Who would have guessed?

Thursday’s New York Times reports on a survey that gives us important, real information, not just anecdotes.  Surely I wasn’t the only one to have conflated them in my mind with younger, more rebellious hot-heads, willing to chant and picket and travel long distances on buses to have their voices heard. (See, “Poll Finds Tea Party Backers Wealthier and More Educated.”)

They are suffering financially less than most:  “Tea Party supporters over all are more likely than the general public to say their personal financial situation is fairly good or very good. . . .  But while most Americans blame the Bush administration or Wall Street for the current state of the American economy, the greatest number of Tea Party supporters blame Congress.”  Presumably, that’s because Congress voted for the bail-out, the event that mobilized the tea party in the first place, and then it went on to extend jobless benefits, provide relief for home-owners, pass healthcare reform, and is now planning to re-regulate Wall Street.

According to the survey,  “More than 90 percent of Tea Party supporters think the country is headed in the wrong direction. . . .  Ninety-two percent believe Mr. Obama is moving the country toward socialism.”

This explains a lot.  For the wealthier among us, the country truly is going in the wrong direction. The massive distribution of wealth that occurred over the past twenty years benefited them disproportionately.  No doubt, many are convinced their surge of wealth was attributed to the deregulated market.  But now, having more to lose than others — from increased national debt and social welfare programs that will eventually require more taxes – they want to go back to the reign of unfettered market forces that was a source of profit for them.  Regulation, benefits, and debt will detract from their prosperity.

They see the contradiction of the bailout more sharply than most.  Though, no doubt, many of them benefited from the successful efforts to curtail the financial catastrophe, they are more immune to the argument that failing to rescue the banks would have led to a deeper crisis.  Their faith in markets leads them to believe that more banks probably deserved to fail.  The government should not have prevented the markets from doing their job properly, weeding out the weak and foolish, while letting the deserving rich get richer.

Knowing who the tea partiers are helps us to understand their motives. Being wealthier, they have interests to protect, linked to several decades of free market ideology that support their beliefs.  Being older, maybe they also want to kick up their heels and ventilate their frustration.

Why should only the kids have the chance to party?

What Does “Freedom” Actually Mean Today

Freedom, a key concept in our society, has a multiplicity of meanings.  We are, to begin with, “the land of the free and the home of the brave.”  I was brought up on the basic distinction between “freedom from” and “freedom to.”  I learned Roosevelt’s “Four Freedoms.”  My fourth grade teacher instilled the idea that freedom and responsibility go hand in hand – and that was just the beginning.  Like most people, I’ve been puzzling out its various meanings all my life.

For a psychologist, it has multiple meanings as well.  Freedom of choice is important if we are to know what people really want.  Freedom from coercion or manipulation helps us know what people truly think.  Psychological health requires that people feel free.  And we debate perpetually the question of free will.  But can we measure those things, or tell when we have gone too far or not far enough?

Recently, though, something strange has happened to the idea – or the word.  People seem to feel increasingly free to think what they want, regardless of the evidence, or free to express themselves without concern for the consequences.  Our increasingly polarized political world encourages freedom from restraint.  The internet elicits free opinions, free judgments, free comments, while supplying free news, free music, and free porn.

Over the past 20 years, as the energies of free market forces have been deregulated, investors were increasingly free to profit from risky instruments.  The unrestrained credit bubble produced our Great Recession.  Today, the tea party movement clamors for greater freedom from government.

The courts, too, have been active in this crusade.  The Supreme Court’s abolition of restrictions on corporate contributions to election campaigns promises to unleash a flood of money.  Corporations now have free speech too. Though it is unclear what that means apart from spending money.  And those who run the internet are free to restrict access.  No longer can the FCC impose “network neutrality” by requiring that Internet access providers treat all content equally.  (See, “An Internet for Everybody.”)

So what does “freedom” mean today?  It is as if the concept itself has been deregulated.  As a legal concept, an ideological rallying cry, a moral value, a psychological truth – anything goes.

Does our mental health require that we retire the word from active use?  Or will we continue to be badgered, anxious, and confused by a key concept we no longer understand?

Or Spinning to Escape Blame

The statements being made this week before the Financial Crisis Inquiry Committee by our financial leaders look and sound like apologies.  But are they really?

Alan Greenspan testified last week: “I was right 70 percent of the time, but I was wrong 30 percent of the time.”  The next day, Chuck Prince, former chairman and CEO of Citigroup testified:  “I’m sorry that the financial crisis has had such a devastating impact on our country. . . .  And I’m sorry that our management team, starting with me, like so many others, could not see the unprecedented market collapse that lay before us.”  And then Robert Rubin, former Treasury secretary and former director of Citigroup, went on to say:  “We all bear responsibility for not recognizing this, and I deeply regret that.”

What exactly is being regretted in these statements?  Greenspan seems to suggest that his mistake was not being infallible.  Prince says he and his team failed to see into the future, while Rubin seems to regret that everybody was wrong.

This may play well on TV, and it may be enough to blunt public outrage.  But as some in the press have noted, these statements actually fall short of being true apologies.  For one thing, as The New York Times pointed out in an editorial, it’s simply not true that everybody was wrong, or that there was no evidence of reckless behavior.  The Times concludes:  “the ‘apologies’ are distractions.”  (See, “Who’s Not Sorry Now.”)

As a psychologist, I would like to add that in addition to being inaccurate and overly general, key failures in any real apology, these statements lack the stamp of authenticity.  There is a total absence of remorse, or even embarrassment.  They acknowledge mistakes and limitations, not personal failures.  And they provide absolutely no indication that those same mistakes couldn’t happen again – and again.  Any parent, truly concerned for the moral integrity of his or her child, could not possibly be taken in by such statements.

So what purpose do they serve?  What do they seek to distract us from?  I suspect that what they are trying to ward off is “punishment” in the form regulatory oversight and consumer protection.  The general apologies might suggest to an ambivalent Congress and a distractible public that the lessons of past mistakes have been learned and will be corrected.  Nothing more need to be done.

When we wake up and realize that we have been “spun,” it may be too late to act.

A Question For Citigroup’s Board

Thinking about the impending appearances of Chuck Prince and Robert Rubin in front of the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission, Andrew Ross Sorokin of The Times posed a harsh question:  “As a thank-you present for running the bank into the ground, the board gave Mr. Prince a parting gift valued at $12.5 million…. Mr. Rubin and Citigroup’s other directors decided to pay the $12.5 million bonus knowing very well that Citigroup’s market value had dropped by $64 billion during Mr. Prince’s tenure.

“So the simple question for Mr. Rubin and Mr. Prince is, Why?”  (See, “Now to Explain the Party Favors.”)

The question reads like a lawyer’s rhetorical ploy, designed to convict with sarcasm rather than really inquire into the underlying motives.   But, seriously, there is a question here, and do doubt there are answers, even if we have to dig for them.

Sorokin makes clear that the Board’s action was not a crime, so answering the question is not about collecting evidence so much as simply understanding the behavior.  Could it be a reward for a good-faith effort, if not an actual achievement?  Could it be a way of saying: “We don’t think you are to blame”?  Or, rather, could it be that not giving a bonus would have been considered a slap in the face, akin to an insult, and the Board did not want to humiliate Prince?

Or is it just a convention, something expected, like a Holiday gift to the doorman or one’s barber?  Wall Street bonuses, like salaries, have acquired a symbolic status, and it would have to be a sizeable tip not to be embarrassing to the giver or the receiver.  On the other hand, conceivably, it wasn’t a bonus at all, as it seemed, but part of the compensation plan negotiated in advance, what has become known as a “golden parachute.”

My guess is that it was business as usual, something the Board took for granted.  If so, it reflected their sense that the assets of the organization were theirs to dispose of in accordance with traditional practice. They probably felt that they didn’t have to justify such matters.

Such underlying beliefs reflect a sense of proprietorship.  Technically and legally speaking, they are surrogates for the stockholders, accountable to them.  But I doubt they feel that way – certainly in the absence of any significant shareholder action to hold Boards accountable for their actions.  To all effects, they became the owners.

In other words, I suspect, the Board never asked the question of what the bonus was for – or even thought it.  It didn’t need to be asked because there was no question about it worth thinking – except perhaps the final figure arrived at, and that was probably suggested by a subcommittee if not a consultant to HR.

The Board probably rubber-stamped the amount, as it rubber-stamped the entire procedure.