Casual Cruelty of Care

Cultural aphasia is emotion's nether side, eked out of acute narcissism and fear

- Prasanta Chakravarty

IN the context of the devastating religious civil wars between the Catholics and the Huguenots in 16th century France, Michel de Montaigne reflects on the farthest point of cruelty when “man should kill man not in anger or in fear but merely for the spectacle”. Civil wars are periods of protracted sickness in the sense that they are fought within countries, not between them, sundering towns, streets and houses. It is a time when the basic criteria of human interactions are questioned and divergent ambitions of different political factions provide the spark.

When normal rules of conflict are suspended, the distinction between principle and private interest is blurred. All that is sacred and sustaining in human exchange is carved up by populist concerns. The generous core of reassuring relations turns sour and suspicious. Seen from the other side, forthright and open public life turns secretive and centralised. Rumour and conspiracy turn venomous on all sides, muddying the expansive terrain of public spiritedness and participatory citizenship. Hence, Montaigne exclaims: “Other wars act outwardly, this one acts against itself, eating away and destroying itself with its own venom.” Such a time seeks and extracts martyrs.