You don’t have to stay inside of that machine

John Fea recommends Reinhold Niebuhr’s “spiritual discipline against resentment.”

This is, of course, excellent spiritual and psychological advice. Resentment is a path to certain misery, for oneself and for others. It is incompatible not just with happiness but with the possibility of happiness. Choosing to root your identity in resentful ingratitude is, after all, a lot of thankless work.

Niebuhr’s specific advice on the subject is to avoid resentment by maintaining a firm distinction:

… between the evils of a social system and situation and the individuals who are involved in it. Individuals are never as immoral as the social situations in which they are involved and which they symbolize. If opposition to a system leads to personal insults of its representatives, it is always felt as an unjust accusation.

Or, roughly, “Don’t hate the player, hate the game.”

Or, as Ephesians 6:12 puts it: “Our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the powers of this dark world and against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms.”

That verse is also one starting point for David Dark’s notion of “Robot Soft Exorcism,” which Evan Rosa describes as “a metaphor-slash-parable-slash-theory-slash-way-of-life.” Rosa tried to summarize this for the Yale Center for Faith & Culture:

According to David Dark (Belmont University), each of us occupy a variety of robots — roles, titles, occupations, institutions, conglomerates, ways of being, social norms, etc. — and these robots exert a cultural force, sometimes benign, but then again, sometimes violently destructive and degrading of human life. And in order to appreciate and honor our shared humanity, those of us in violent, impersonal robot systems need to be softly, humanely, respectfully, lovingly exorcised from those violent systems.

Where Niebuhr speaks of “immoral society” and evil social systems, David asks us to imagine robots.

Don’t think of, like, cute little R2D2 droids. Think of massive, violent, deadly war machines — something more like the “Jaegers” from Pacific Rim. Now imagine that inside of that giant robot is a mortal human — part pilot, part passenger, part prisoner.

Dustin Kensrue captures this well in his song exploring David’s metaphor/parable/theory. The song is also called “Robot Soft Exorcism“:

Looking down through armored glass
Above a field of fire and ash
And from this height it’s hard to even tell
Just what it’s like outside the suit
The terror and the torn up roots
The lives you’ve helped to make a living hell

… Staring up across the wreck
A single figure stands erect
They shout and wave, so tiny and absurd
And moved by curiosity
You crack and lift the canopy
And straining, you can just make out their words:

Thеre’s another way
To face thе unforeseen
You don’t have to stay
Inside of that machine

Robot Soft Exorcism is an invitation to the individuals inside the killing machines. “Come down,” Kensrue sings. “Come out”  This is an invitation that we can only extend if we remember the difference between the human and the machine, between the individual and the evil system, between the “flesh and blood” and the powers of this dark world.

The problem is that while David and Niebuhr and whoever wrote Ephesians may all agree on the reality and importance of this distinction, the pilot/prisoner way up there in the robot’s cockpit isn’t likely to see it that way. The people most caught up in evil social systems — the individuals both driving and being driven by them — tend not to make or to understand this distinction. They identify with the system. It identifies them. And they perceive themselves and the system as identical.

Thomas Merton understood this. “When I criticize a system, they think I criticize them,” he said. “And that is of course because they fully accept the system and identify themselves with it” (quoted in Follow the Ecstasy, by John Howard Griffin).

It doesn’t matter how scrupulous we are about avoiding the “personal insults” Niebuhr warns against, or how careful we are to distinguish between the individual and system — any criticism of the system will be perceived as a viciously personal insult by those who “fully accept the system and identify themselves with it.”

It is helpful, and hopeful, to maintain the distinction between those evil systems and the individuals caught up within them because that distinction is real. Because it is true. And because reminding them that “You are not the system” or “You are not the robot” may, in some way, help them to realize that they are separate from the system and, thus, remind them that they can separate themselves from it — that they can survive choosing to separate from it.

But we should not cling to any illusion that maintaining this distinction will prevent them from feeling that any criticism of the system is a “personal insult” and an “unjust accusation.” They will take offense, whether or not it is given, because they are determined to do so — because their identity requires them to do so. Taking pains not to offend those determined to be offended is a mug’s game.

The futility of that can be seen in Niebuhr’s own illustration of this, which is the standard misleading nonsense still taught about William Lloyd Garrison in schools — usually as the only thing taught about Garrison in schools. Moral Man and Immoral Society is, in many places, a terrific book, but this passage steps on a rake:

Individuals are never as immoral as the social situations in which they are involved and which they symbolize. If opposition to a system leads to personal insults of its representatives, it is always felt as an unjust accusation. William Lloyd Garrison solidified the south in support of slavery by the vehemence of his attacks against slave-owners. Many of them were, with the terms of their inherited prejudices and traditions, good men; and the violence of Mr. Garrison’s attack upon them was felt by many to be an evidence of moral perversity in him.

Yeah, sure, Garrison was the “violent” one because he used strong language to condemn those engaged in the systematic kidnapping, theft, rape, and torture of millions of his neighbors.

No, Garrison did not “solidify the South in support of slavery by the vehemence of his attacks against slave-owners.” That’s disingenuous Lost Cause garbage that Niebuhr was taught in school in the early 20th century and that I was taught in school in the late 20th century and that is still being taught in schools in the 21st century even though it has never been anything remotely close to true. It’s the same bizarro-world illogic that Matt Bors mocks in his “You Made Me Become a Nazi!” cartoon. It’s like arguing that the students in Tiananmen Square wouldn’t have been killed if that rude Tank Man hadn’t angered the battalion by yelling at them, blocking their way, and swatting them with his grocery bags.

Slave owners were quite solid in support of slavery all on their own and if they hadn’t had Garrison as a pretext for feigning offendedness they’d have found or invented some other pretext to pretend to feel insulted by.

Using this foolish, false legend about Garrison as an example undermines Niebuhr’s main point here, which remains important for anyone attempting to extend the invitation to a Robot Soft Exorcism. His point here is not really about overlooking the evil of complicity with injustice, but with what kind of approach is likeliest to succeed with those individuals who are complicit:

It is impossible completely to disassociate an evil social system from the personal moral responsibilities of the individuals who maintain it. An impartial teacher of morals would be compelled to insist on the principle of personal responsibility for social guilt. But it is morally and politically wise for an opponent not to do so. Any benefit of the doubt which he is able to give his opponent is certain to reduce animosities and preserve rational objectivity in assessing the issues under dispute.

That’s logical but, as Thomas Merton noted, this is not a context governed by logic. It is, rather, a context governed by identity. When you’re asking someone to change their identity, logic goes out the window and they’re gonna get upset with you — no matter how generous and charitable, respectful and loving you manage to be in giving them every benefit of the doubt. They will be insulted no matter what you do. They will take offense whether or not it is given.

But just because it won’t likely help to be respectful and loving does not mean we have license to be unloving or to deny them the respect and dignity they and their system deny to others. (Or that we should want or enjoy such license.)

Merton keenly understood the bad-faith pretense and dishonesty of those who chose to take personal offense at his critique of the system, but he did not take this as an excuse to give up on them or to abandon them to their pretense and resentment and their ongoing captivity and complicity in evil systems. He simply saw it as another factor he would have to account for, another obstacle he would have to find a way to overcome in pursuit of their salvation.

That increased degree of difficulty did not change what Merton saw as his responsibility to extend to that same invitation to those piloting and imprisoned by evil systems: Come down. Come out. Olly olly oxen free.