Disgust Again

Disgust Again

Returning from beautiful Barbados, I am struck anew by the moral squalor in which this country now wallows. Also, the government is pretty bad. An access of moral disgust: that curious puzzling emotion. I put it to one side when I wrote The Meaning of Disgust, not having much to say about it. I still don’t. But I am excessively familiar with the emotion itself; it causes a kind of existential despair, as if there is no hope for the human race. University administrators, journalists, bloggers, ex-colleagues, ex-friends, people I have never met—all elicit it in abundance. Thanks a lot. I wish I had a theory of it, but it eludes comprehension. You feel sick to your stomach, also righteously angry. I have toyed with the parasite analogy: if physical disgust is brought about by the perception of parasites, maybe moral disgust brings unethical behavior into the category of the human parasite—morally indifferent, blood-sucking, repellent, ugly. But the analogy is thin; and bodily parasites are much less vile than the human agents who elicit moral disgust. Perhaps we are shocked by their sheer effrontery, their blatant disregard for human decency. They seem to revel in their nastiness. People are said to “resign in disgust”—I know the feeling. I just watched the most recent instalment of the Alien franchise: these are the ultimate parasites, the apex parasite. They have no redeeming qualities. They provoke the kind of feeling that human “parasites” do—incredulous hatred and disgust. I really find it hard to believe that human beings can act this way—and they look perfectly normal! But like those parasitic aliens they creep up on you, stealthily, lethally, without conscience or compassion. It is hard to believe there can be anything this bad, but there is. People are aliens—and they look and sound like regular Americans, smiling, laughing. Moral disgust is an intense emotion that matches the objective nature of what it reacts to. It does justice to the extremity of the evil. It’s what the moral sense does when it doesn’t know what to do with itself.[1]

[1] However, I do think it’s vital to keep the emotion alive; without it, things could be a lot worse. The most morally disgusting thing is the absence of moral disgust. Didn’t Jesus say, “He who is without moral disgust shall never enter the kingdom of heaven”, or words to that effect? So, keep it alive, foster it, don’t let it wither away.