| OCR Text |
Show Rationality and the Structure of the Self, Volume I: The Humean Conception 251 physical harm. Associating or fraternizing with brutal people can have a similarly corruptive effect. 4.2. Sadism and Self-Brutalization Actively inflicting harm on others - and so satisfying sadistic desires - is thus an expression of brutality that accelerates this brutalizing process even more. Just as with externally inflicted harm on oneself, inflicting harm on others accumulates in one experiences and memories of aggression and harm, and these experiences and memories have a similarly harmful conditioning effect on the integrity of the self. They similarly disrupt the equilibrium and coherence of the self by disrupting the equilibrium and coherence of the external order the self experiences, and replacing it with affective images of pain, violence, or disorder. And just as with externally inflicted harm, the more numerous and familiar these corruptive experiences become, the more they vitiate the equation of well-being with stability and order, and the more they desensitize one to the danger they represent to the stability and integrity of one's self. But to these already brutalizing effects, inflicting harm on others adds self-brutalization: the infliction on oneself of the experience of inflicting harm on others. Quite aside from the effect of any moral emotions such as guilt, shame, remorse, or self-dislike, or justified retributions one may or may not experience as the result of having inflicted harm on others, the experience of inflicting that harm further desensitizes one to the self- and other-destructive consequences of one's behavior. Unlike the experience of being harmed, the experience of inflicting harm on others is actively self-initiated. It habituates one, not only to the experience of external aggression directed against one's self, but to the experience of actively directing that aggression against the external world that provides the conditions of coherence of one's self. To inflict harm on the world as one views it is thereby to inflict on one's self the same harmful experiences and memories of pain, violence, and disorder. One further desensitizes oneself as one further habituates oneself to these experiences and memories, by originating, performing, and repeating them. Since one's own infliction of harm on others is itself an experience that issues from and reinforces the sense of self one already has, further self-brutalization is inevitable. So satisfying sadistic desires is finally more destructive of the self than being their victim, because it absorbs, reinforces, and accelerates the brutalizing process of corruption, destabilization, and desensitization of the self to external factors that destroy its integrity. 4.3. Malice But in addition to being necessarily self-destructive, satisfying malevolent other-directed desires can also be impulsive rather than deliberate. Such desires are not sadistic but rather malicious. Lying, hypocrisy, spiteful gossip, © Adrian Piper Research Archive Foundation Berlin |
