I’ve had this agrument with a friend off and on for awhile. Is it possible to compassionately torture someone?
I still say no, though the dictionary and most everyone else I ask says yes. I don’t believe the two words can mesh.
I think of torture as something innately opposed to compassion. If you’re torturing someone, their best interests can’t really be on your mind.
Now, I don’t have a problem with ‘compassionately inflicting pain’ - well, sure, medical situations, BSDM, etc.
However, my dictionary says that one of torture’s definitions is ‘inflicting pain’. Which I’m not pleased with. It’s making me want to burn it page-by-page in a Nero Wolfe-inspired conflagration.
While I find some contradicions in the concept I can think of one thing that is tortorous but done in the name of compassion.
Forced rehabilitation of any kind.
oh, and church. Yeah church counts too. And so does making me visit my great-grandparents when I was little (they smelled funny). What else? Some might argue that every anti-suicide law is tortorous but enacted out of a sense of compassion too.
I think it all depends on who is on the recieving end and who is being asked to define it.
If you were torturing someone on someone elses behalf for a cause which was undoubtedly worthy would it be compassionate torture then?
For example if someone had planted a time bomb in a busy area and the only way to find the location of the bomb and diffuse it would be to torture the bomber would it be compassioate torture on the grounds that lots of lives will be saved if you don’t?
What if you were of the opinion that Jesus Christ was the one true savior and everyone else was going to burn in Hell forever unless they accepted Him? You honestly and truly believed this. Now, you wouldn’t want your friends to burn in Hell, would you? So you would do whatever it takes to make them see the light. If you had to argue with them, yell at them, then hit them, starve them, burn them, cut them just to make them come to their senses, that would be acceptable to you. It’s either do that, or let them burn in Hell and in Hell anything you do on Earth as torture pales in comparison.
Psychotic? To me, yes. To most people, yes. Criminal? No doubt about it.
But to that person, he honestly believes that the service being done will save their soul. It’s compassionate torture. Do he want to torture that person? No. But considering the alternatives, there’s no other choice.
There are a lot of less extreme examples, but to me compasionate torture means the torturer doesn’t want to torture but still believes that if he doesn’t do it, then the torturee will be even worse off.
For a fascinating take on the subject, see Gene Wolfe’s The Book of New Sun, four volumes: The Shadow of the Torturer, The Claw of the Conciliator, The Sword of the Lictor, and The Citadel of the Autarch.
And if you want to torture your mother right back, just respond to her as follows:
“Just as soon as they legalize same-sex marriage in this state.”
“Good! Is he a criminal defense attorney? Would he be able to defend me if I were charged with, say, breaking and entering at the house two blocks down the street, stealing a TV and a jewelry box, and attempted assault with a deadly weapon while trying to flee the burglary scene? Hypothetically, of course.”
“I slacked off going to church for a while, but I’m back into it again thanks to Reverend Moon.”
“You should see how much I had to pay to add those secret compartments to the floor panels! Man, it’s hard to hide heroin from those customs inspectors.”
“Okay, just be sure you start the stove in the right sequence. I got all my hair burned off 3 times before I learned how to work that sucker right!”
I read an interesting short story with compassionate torturers. The government put an ad in the paper asking for applicants, they filled an auditorium with people. Then the speaker at the auditorium explained the job, and said they were going to begin training immediately by torturing some kind of animal (can’t recall what it was, sheep or something) and if anybody had problems with that, they should leave then. A handful of applicants walked out, and were intercepted in the hall and told that they had passed the test, they didn’t want someone who would enjoy or be ambivalent towards causing pain - their psychologists had determined that torture was more effective if the torturer was obviously sympathetic and reluctant to do the horrible things to the subject.
The reasoning behind creating government sponsored torturers was that terrorism and other crimes where weapons of mass destruction were being used on innocents were proliferating, and law enforcement had reached the limit as to what information they could extract from suspects and they needed more to prevent loss of life. The first couple of times the reluctant torturers were used were pretty justifiable - in one case a terrorist had nerve-gas timebombs hidden somewhere in a large city, if they went off hundreds of thousands would die, and they had captured someone who knew where they were but refused to speak. Over time the torturers (those who didn’t kill themselves or retire due to work-related stress) became less and less sympathetic, even though over time they were being used for less valid reasons (to find kidnap victims, to locate fugitives, to ‘fix’ a hung jury) and became less effective.
I forgot how the story ended.
Anyway, in some situations I believe torture would be justified, though I understand that there are other means of extracting information that can be more effective than your typical ‘hurt them real bad until they give up and talk’ method (i.e. sensory deprivation). I would have no problem inflicting horrible tortures on someone who could prevent the loss of hundreds of lives but refused to.
Many Muslim extremests I have heard use a related excuse for killing or using hostages. I don’t know much of the Koran, but there are passages saying you have a straight ticket to Heavan if you die fighting the good fight. The murdered hostages are taken care of in the afterlife.
“Psychotic? To me, yes. To most people, yes. Criminal? No doubt about it.”
Agreed!! The great majority of muslims would likely agree.
Compassionate torture? It sounds like Compassionate Conservatism. Just not possible, except as a negating influence. I.e., you would call simple incarceration “compassionate torture” because it wasn’t torture at all.