Lessons from Hannah Arendt and Lewis Carroll –

Humpty-Dumpty sat on a wall

Humpty-Dumpty had a great fall

All the king’s horses and all the King’s men

Couldn’t put Humpty together again.

(cf. Lewis Carroll – Through a Looking Glass)

*

One of my (many) favorite bits in Lewis Carroll: this poem by Humpty Dumpty in Through The Looking Glass:

I sent a message to the fish:

I told them “This is what I wish.”

 

The little fishes of the sea,

They sent an answer back to me.

 

The little fishes’ answer was

“We cannot do it, Sir, because – “

‘I’m afraid I don’t quite understand,’ said Alice.

‘It gets easier further on,’ Humpty Dumpty replied.

 “I sent to them again to say

It would be better to obey.”

 The fishes answered with a grin,

“Why, what a temper you are in!”

 I told them once, I told them twice:

They would not listen to advice.

 I took a kettle large and new,

Fit for the deed I had to do.

 My heart went hop, my heart went thump,

I filled the kettle at the pump.

 Then some one came to me and said,

“The little fishes are in bed.”

 I said to him, I said it plain,

“Then you must wake them up again.”

 I said it very loud and clear;

I went and shouted in his ear.’

…

But he was very stiff and proud;

He said “You needn’t shout so loud!”

 And he was very proud and stiff;

He said “I’d go and wake them, if –”

 I took a corkscrew from the shelf :

I went to wake them up myself.

 And when I found the door was locked,

I pulled and pushed and kicked and knocked.

 And when I found the door was shut,

I tried to turn the handle, but – ‘

 

There was a long pause.

‘Is that all?’ Alice timidly asked.

‘That’s all,’ said Humpty Dumpty. ‘Good-bye.’

 *

“Unrestricted freedom of conscience exists nowhere, for it would spell the doom of every organized community. All this sounds so plausible that it takes some effort to detect the fallacy (in the notion of “just obeying orders”). Its plausibility rests on the truth that “all governments”, in the words of Madison, even the most autocratic ones, even tyrannies, “rest on consent”, and the fallacy lies in the equation of consent with obedience. An adult consents where a child obeys; if an adult is said to obey, he actually supports the organization of the authoirity or the law that claims “obedience”. The fallacy is all the more pernicious as it can claim a very old tradition. Our use of the word “obedience” for all these strictly political situations goes back to the age-old notion of political science which, since  Plato and Aristotle, tells us that every body politic is constituted of rulers and ruled, and that the former give commands and the latter obey orders…In our context, all that matters is the insight that no man, however strong, can ever accomplish anything, good or bad, without the help of others. What you have here is the notion of an equality which accounts for a “leader” who is never more than primus inter pares, the first among his peers. Those who seem to obey him actually support him and his enterprise; without such “obedience” he would be helpless whereas in the nursery or under conditions of slavery – the two spheres in which the notion of obedience made sense and from which it was then transposed into political matters – it is the child or the slave who becomes helpless if he refuses to “cooperate”… If I obey the laws of the land, I actually support its constitution, as becomes glaringly obvious in the case of revolutionists and rebels who disobey because they have withdrawn this tacit consent.”

 …

 “Hence the question addressed to those who participated and obeyed orders should never be, “Why did you obey?” but “Why did you support?” This change of words is no semantic irrelevancy for those who know the strange and powerful influence mere “words” have over the minds of men who, first of all, are speaking animals. ..If we think these matters through, we might regain some measure of self-confidence and even pride, that is, regain what former times called dignity or the honor of man: not perhaps of mankind but of the status of being human.”

Hannah Arendt, Personal Responsibility Under Dictatorship in   Responsibility and Judgment,  Schocken books, New York, 2003))

If I could, I would memorize the entire text of that lecture.

*

And today’s bonus? The series in The New York Times on slavery in America and how it continues to impact daily lives. In which, among other things, you will learn why “The United States remains the only high-income country in the world where (medical care) is not guaranteed to every citizen.” Along with the original wall that gave its name to Wall Street. Here.

*

Oh, and Frontex?

Later.

*

Illustration: drawn from Royal De Luxe 1993-2001, Actes Sud 2001