Witches
Proxy scapegoats; living effigies that we burn to justify our neuroticism and absolve ourselves of responsibility.
While they are described as an obstacle to stability and progress, these heretics do not actually represent an external threat. They are icons of our shortcomings that we displace onto others in lieu of accepting that our misfortunes are a product of our own sins.
In the film Monty Python and the Holy Grail, there is a scene where a group of peasants, poor and downtrodden, enthusiastically usher a helpless woman through town claiming that she is a witch. Along the way, men, women and children of all ages cease their activities and join in the rabble driving towards the town square, seeking permission to burn the witch from a knight tasked as consul for the region.
When questioned by the knight as to why they believe that she is a witch, the rabble claims that it is because she looks like one. The would-be witch complains that the rabble dressed her as a witch against her will, and they even fabricated a crude false nose out of a carrot and string. The knight heeds her protest and when he is about to dismiss them, the rabble begin to invent stories about things that she has done, not only to justify their forced costuming, but to further compel the knight to permit them to burn her.
The knight is not persuaded by their claims, but instead guides them through a series of leading questions that he believes are designed to identify a witch. After numerous painstaking exchanges, he determines that if the witch weighs the same as a duck, this must mean she floats in water, which means she is made of wood, and the reason that we burn witches is because they are made of wood. They place her on a nearby scale that the knight recently built for just such a purpose, and when a duck is placed on the other plate, the scales balance perfectly. She is officially labeled a witch and they carry her off to burn her. Absolutely brilliant.
While this scene is humourous in its own right, the genius of its commentary is rarely discussed in explicit terms. You see, the knight is just as foolish and fearful as the rabble, but he has concealed this beneath a moderate temperament and sophistry. The humour of the scene is the irony on display. King Arthur witnesses the entire affair and even chimes in to contribute, which is readily applauded by the knight. Everyone in the scene is the same; the peasants, the knight, the king and his accompaniment, they are all corrupt idiots, and they all wanted to see a witch burn.
Her identity was fabricated, and yet it was entertained. The claims of her witchcraft were ridiculous, and yet the trial continued. The knight’s methodology was ludicrous, yet it carried the day. How convenient it is that the knight happened to have a nearby scale he designed himself! He demonstrated its accuracy to the townsfolk…by having it balance the weight of a full-grown woman with that of a duck. King Arthur celebrates the wisdom of the knight and invites him to join his quest for the holy grail.
Everyone wanted a witch to burn, and they each found their own way of justifying it. Some used crude means, others more sophisticated, but everyone got what they wanted in the end, and they felt righteous doing it. The knight even found a way to legitimize his broken scale as an effective tool for identifying witches; it is doubtful it would be useful for anything else.
A question of great importance about the entire endeavour, everyone and their part in it, is why?
Why indeed.
The crux is that we value the potential good fortune, the elimination of misfortune, and the absolution that we believe accompanies the cleansing of a categorical threat – a heretic.
If we perceive ourselves as cursed, suffering ill will, or experiencing misfortune, we generally seek to discover its genesis and remediate it. Rather than accepting that it may be our own shortcomings or a fact of an uncontrollable existence that we find ourselves where we are, we opt to displace the blame onto someone else. We ascribe our problems to them and then, if we can find a way to attach a NARRATIVE of malevolence to them, we will sprinkle on a little moralistic justification for their termination, and we have ourselves a worthwhile witch.
An extremely important feature of this framing is that any moral embedding is entirely arbitrary. The morality is a necessary ingredient in justifying the immolation, it is never a coherent articulation of morality. It merely grants us the permission and the clear conscience to destroy others. It constitutes either a collectivist morality or the Machiavellian mechanism favoured by psychopaths, as seen in DARK TRIAD personalities.
If we were to reverse engineer the situation, we are confronted with some philosophical quandaries that provide some pertinent insights. Let us remove witches from the equation; witches no longer exist. In the absence of a nemesis, who are those inclined to burn witches supposed to target as a meaningful substitution? There appears to be three options: one or more deities, themselves, or nothing in particular. Keeping in mind that introspection and self-criticism are sufficiently absent from those who hunt witches, none of these are particularly good options.
Blaming a transcendental entity beyond ourselves can go one of two ways – acceptance that it is their will, or a refusal of their will. The former does not a witch hunter make, so we are not talking about the same sort of person. The latter has to deduce that they are either worthy of such misfortune, which is the sort of introspection absent from witch hunters, or that perhaps there is nothing worthwhile to hear our prayers. Absolution cannot be sought in such circumstances, which undermines our prospects of righteousness. We may as well be a witch at that point, a hell spawn that we are deservedly sending to a fiery afterlife. This absolutely will not do.
Accepting the burden of responsibility defeats the purpose of witch burnings. If we are to consider that it is our own conduct, or lack thereof, that has produced our misfortune, then we are rightfully deserving of our suffering. Resentment for reality itself may be present, but it is born out of an acknowledgment that we are ultimately responsible, and so most will merely manage the pain, like we all do. Very few will lavish in reducing others to combustibles based on resentment of reality alone, and when they do, we are not gathering in the streets to follow them.
After we have dismissed our gods from consideration, and we find that taking responsibility is unappealing, we may conclude that there is no explanation in particular for our misfortune. We are now in a position to ascribe blame to anyone or anything, the others options having been eliminated. For the nihilistic, the hunt is never holy, it is a act of desperate hope. Nothing specific can be recognized as the source of our misfortune, but we figure that maybe, if we cleanse the world in a more general sense, then lady fortune may show her face. We integrate whichever narrative we find the most appealing with our perceived trauma and for a moment, we are instilled with a sense of hope that we scramble to realize.
To the point: there appears to be a human predisposition, perhaps even a necessity, for the traumatized and downtrodden to imagine that witches exist among us, especially if they are inclined to displace personal agency. Their identification and destruction appeal to us, irrespective of circumstance, and we will find a way to absolve ourselves and establish hope through their sacrifice. It is us or them, and they would do the same if given the chance, right? Our ability to lie to ourselves in lieu of accepting responsibility is one of the most abundant sources of avoidable human suffering.
When a human has been reduced to a witch, we may do with them as we please, they have become a pariah, unworthy of care and good for a single purpose. We would rather destroy others than take responsibility or accept the uncontrollable aspects of reality.
See: HERESY, VICTIMHOOD
Posted: 23 Feb 2023
