“Doctor. You have testified that the following symptoms exist in Lieutenant Commander Queeg’s behavior: rigidity of personality, feelings of persecution, unreasonable suspicion, a mania for perfection, and a neurotic certainty that he is always in the right. Doctor, isn’t there one psychiatric term for this illness?”
– Lt. Barney Greenwald
“I never said there was any illness.”
– Doctor Dickson
– The Caine Mutiny (1954)
Act III
(The Caine Mutiny takes place on a minesweeper during World War II where, during a terrible storm, the ship’s officers mutiny against the ship’s commander because they are certain he is crazy and unfit for command. Once they are back onshore, what seemed so certain at sea is open to question. The Caine Mutiny is about how, when personal perceptions are taken as truths, the most serious problems facing us are not actual concerns but one another’s attitudes.)
Adapted from Herman Wouk’s 1951 Pulitzer Prize-winning novel, the film of The Caine Mutiny was extremely well-received when it was released. One of a number of well-made, socially conscious dramas produced during the Fifties and Sixties, The Caine Mutiny is not alone in suffering, if not exactly critical re-evaluation, at least disinterested neglect.
Still, The Caine Mutiny illustrates the dangers inherent in people coming to believe that their perceptions reflect no bias or spin but actually are an almost objective view of reality. There is nothing positive about coming to believe unquestioningly one’s own opinion of what is going on as though it is rock solid, geological fact. It becomes especially dangerous when combined with ignorance, whether blissful or deliberate, of how one’s own pervasive self-interest and deeply held beliefs overwhelmingly affect one’s perceptions. Rarely does anyone even attempt, much less succeed at, leaving behind all his or her personal history and individual baggage in order to assess a situation with any degree of objectivity. I am in no way excluding myself from these generalizations.
The problem is not in there being differing perceptions but in how each individual regards his or her perception. If both parties in an argument believe that the way people view and think about the world is inherently subjective, affected by each person’s beliefs and experiences, then reasonable discussion – even if there are disagreements – should come easily.
The situation is very different, however, when one or both are completely certain about the uncertain, seeing no difference between his or her own perception and reality. This requires believing that the world is not defined by people but that it defines itself independently of them. In all things – people, actions, and beliefs – this argues that there is only one solid, knowable truth. In this view, a person’s sensibility is not a pertinent factor, because the truth is obvious.
The tragedy aboard the Caine was not the consequence of evil intentions or conspiratorial plotting. Instead it came about because of the growing certainty among the officers that the way they saw things was exactly the way they were.
If one person believes this way, he or she is a fanatic. Many people being so certain results in the tension of public disagreements being heightened, sometimes past the point of reason. When almost everyone is sure that what and how he or she sees the world is not filtered in any way but is absolute “truth,” civilization implodes. Implicit in the belief that one knows the truth – because it is so obvious – is the certainty that all those with different beliefs are not just lying but are doing so deliberately.
Core to the success of a democratic, representative government is the general assumption that most citizens are well-intentioned and that there is a shared interest in the common good. This is because the only way to move forward is by working together. When facing very serious issues, one finds there are always any number of approaches to dealing with them. If anything is to be accomplished, then, there has to be significant agreement as to the best approach. This requires that there be at least some trust among everyone.
There are many difficult problems facing our country that are real and terribly complicated. If there was a reluctant sense of shared responsibility, even with strong undercurrents of distrust, it would still be difficult to deal with these problems, as most have no obvious, easy, or in some cases even possible, solutions.
Unfortunately, that ballpark isn’t even on the horizon. Currently, the ongoing public discourse is almost never focused on the many difficult issues the country faces or how to deal with them. Instead, what is driving public debate is identifying the enemy. Damn the problems: Let’s look around at other Americans in order to uncover the troubling motivation and evil intention behind their advocating differing beliefs. Obviously, all of those with different ideas are not interested in everyone working together but instead are surreptitiously trying to destroy this country. Further, each group is equally sure that if it doesn’t triumph, the one that does will soon disenfranchise the losers.
Toward this end, many act as though the problems are actually not that difficult – it’s just that corrupt politicians, looking out only for their best interests, backed by greedy special interests, have artificially inflated them. Getting rid of those criminals, they believe, will leave merely problems with simple, “commonsense” solutions.
This is nonsense, but out-of-control nonsense. Americans have become so preoccupied with not trusting one another that we are creating dire situations where none exist.
We are all in this together, but that seems to be a position that almost no one subscribes to anymore.
The current great failing is not just the loss of some degree of trust in one another and the government but the viciousness of the attacks on the very idea of cooperation, respect, and trust. The idea of the Constitution is government through compromise. The current attitude is that compromise is cowardly and treasonous.
Convinced it used to be so much better, many ponder over how this country has gone so terribly wrong. Except that it hasn’t. There was no past golden age of strict constitutional adherence, when the rights of all citizens were sacrosanct. The idea that this was the way things used to be is an evil fiction. The reality is there are now stronger protections for the rights of more citizens than at any time in the past.
The long and honorable American traditions of debate, questioning authority, distrust, resistance, civil disobedience, constant and unabated questioning, the quest for change, and the demand for reform are no longer in service of any vision related to the general good. These attitudes are not aimed at making the world a better place but instead have themselves become
the destination.
Political outrage and dissent are no longer driven by a belief in our shared humanity and common community. Those who are disgusted with the powers that be no longer regard the goal as at least striving to make this a better society, one based on the beliefs and ideals that drove its creation.
Our eyes are no longer on the prize.
Instead of social justice, civil rights, or economic equity, it seems that we have descended into a Salem witch trials mentality, in which the drive is to identify our enemies, because by attacking them we defend ourselves. People are busy challenging the rights, citizenship, and patriotism of other Americans for any number of reasons. These include political affiliation, religious belief, sexual orientation, immigration status, personal ambition, family history, social and economic class, level of education, and the like.
After the Iron Curtain fell, the leaders of the many different ethnic groups in Eastern Europe did not begin by urging violence against other such groups. They began by lamenting and worrying about the horrible things those other groups were planning to do to them and their community. It took time to build up the hysteria over this impending genocide to such an extreme that it became obvious that the only hope for the safety of one’s family, community, and religion was preemptive violence.
I’m sorry, but the coming apocalypse is neither vast nor cosmic, prophet-mandated nor divinely ordained retribution. The apocalypse is us, and we all are working so hard to reach it.
(This column should have been published last week, but I was in New York City because Margaret Brown’s extraordinary documentary The Order of Myths was receiving a Peabody Award. The film is about Mardi Gras in Mobile, Ala., but its greatness is in its courageous and honest portrayal of race relations in the modern South. If nothing else, it makes clear that anyone who argues that the racial playing field in this country was leveled when President Johnson passed civil rights legislation is either painfully naive or deliberately ignorant. As an associate producer of the film, my job concerned logistics and not creative input.)
(A Tip of the Hat: During the production of Margaret Brown’s first film, Be Here to Love Me: A Film About Townes Van Zandt, she was awarded a Texas Filmmakers’ Production Fund grant from the Austin Film Society. The money from the grant certainly helped, but the true value of the honor itself would be impossible to calculate.)
This article appears in May 28 • 2010.