Chronic Adaptability

Rabbi's Notes - December 2005

by Rabbi Margaret Holub

Torture is in the news every day now -- it's absolutely breathtaking to see (headlines which will be ancient history by the time you read this) "Supreme Court Agrees to Hear Guantanamo Detainee Case;" "Cheney Lobbies to Exclude CIA from 'Cruel, Inhuman and Degrading' Clause in Defense Appropriations Bill;" McCain Pledges to Add Anti-Torture Amendment to Every Upcoming Bill if Bush Vetoes; " or the lead article in this week's New Yorker: "A Deadly Interrogation: Will the CIA Answer for a Detainee's Death?"

I'm looking at the New Yorker's table of contents right now: the torture article appears next to a profile of an actor, a review of the film version of Pride and Prejudice and an essay on medical malpractice. It is eerie to see the vocabulary of torture -- "interrogation techniques," "black sites," "ghost detainees," "extraordinary rendition," memos, manuals, political disputes about "waterboarding" and "stress positions" -- become ordinary parts of our speaking and reading life. It reminds me of a period in the mid-eighties when it rather suddenly became ordinary to see actors playing bit parts as homeless people in movies and TV shows and for the homeless shelter and soup kitchen and the police "clean-up" of homeless people become regular parts of the domestic landscape. Just a few years earlier the thought that people could be homeless in the United States of America was a shock. Then, somehow, homelessness became an ordinary and permanent piece of the landscape of our lives, and the bread lines and police sweeps became as inevitable and as acceptable as the hospital and the animal shelter.

With torture, we skipped the public shock phase entirely. In fact, I find myself in the position as an organizer of trying to manufacture shock where there is none. And, to be perfectly honest, I have to work myself to be shocked. For days at a time I can find torture interesting -- a provocative set of philosophical and political conundrums, a strategy challenge. And then for a minute or two I will come out of my own torpor and realize, "Oh, my God, right now while I am writing this paragraph, someone is being tortured. Tortured."

A year before I met Mickey he had a cancerous nodule on his vocal cord. He had it removed surgically and then had a round of radiation. Two years later, a year into our relationship, the nodule recurred. We went together to a blunt and brutal expert doctor in San Francisco, who told us in a ten-minute consultation that Mickey would have to have his vocal cord removed, have a tracheotomy for six months and then five or six reconstructive surgeries that would, at best, give him a permanent hoarse croak. At that same consultation, Mickey scheduled the surgery for about six weeks later. I remember lying awake with him all night that night in shock at what lay ahead. During the ensuing weeks Mickey talked about "acceptable losses" -- that what is unthinkable and unbearable when you first encounter it becomes after awhile thinkable and then inevitable.

Mickey had a last-minute reprieve, as it happens, and fifteen years late he is as voluble as ever. And I have thought a lot since about "acceptable losses" and the ways that we acclimate to the unbearable. I see people all the time facing bad diagnoses, family crises, work reversals and more -- reeling at first and then getting "with the program." I suppose it is an adaptive strength to be able to transcend shock and start to do what needs doing, even in a dreadful situation.

I've heard it said of stress that what was meant evolutionarily as an emergency response to being chased by a predator has become chronic in our modern lives, so that the adrenaline never turns off. I wonder if likewise this adaptation to the atrocious and unbearable, designed originally for surviving terrible personal news, has also become chronic and universal, so that we hardly shrug when our government tortures somebody or people are begging on the streets? Shocked? Hardly… Oh, that again… Wow… Too bad…

One way to think about Hanukkah is that, in the midst of a degenerating political landscape, someone finally said, "This is unacceptable" and fought to change it. One way to think about Purim is that someone risked her life to challenge a buffoonish king in thrall to his evil advisor. One way to think about the martyrdom of the ten sages during the Roman occupation is that they refused to cave in to the dominant values of the occupier. One way to think about the brave souls who faced off against the Nazis in the ghetto uprisings is that the losses never became acceptable to them, and they resisted to the end.

I don't know quite how we can shake off our chronic adaptability to the unthinkable and unbearable. But this seems as good a question for Hanukkah 5766 as any. Happy Hanukkah, my dear community, and I wish you and all of us a great kindling this year.

© 2005 Rabbi Margaret Holub

(home) (calendar) (info) (articles) (sponsors) (links) (bios) (reviews) (travel) (recipes) (projects) (photos) (art)