Session 11(b): Evil, Christianity and Human Nature

Concurrent Session 11b: Evil, Christianity, and Human Nature
Chair: Gregory Wilson

Revelation, Rapture, and the Bad Infinite
Neal Curtis
School of Arts, Communication and Culture, Nottingham Trent University, United Kingdom

This paper uses François Flahaut’s discussion of the creation narratives regarding the omnipotent power of chaos. Early creation myths conceived of this chaos or limitlessness ambiguously. It was destructive because it was not limited, it exceeded every boundary and category, but at the same time it was the source of differentiation, from which the ordered world sprung. This ambiguity, or duality as Flahaut refers to it, becomes the dualism of Christian thought where ambivalence is erased in favour of a division between the idealised, good infinite, which belongs to God, and the destructive, bad infinite belonging to the Devil. Important for Flahaut, however, is that in our struggle to resist the bad infinite we plunge directly in to it. Specific examples of this struggle with the bad infinite will be the addressed through an analysis of the political theology of Carl Schmitt whose distinction between friend and enemy was nothing more than the vigilance required to ward off the return of Satan, a vigilance that lead him to plunge directly into the bad infinite by joining the National Socialist Party in 1933. Secondly, the paper addresses the increased popularity of Millenialist beliefs in the US, whereby the world is understood to be approaching the ‘end time’ and the final conflagration with Satan. In this scenario increased levels of global violence are celebrated as signalling the Second Coming. Significantly both the political theology of Carl Schmitt and Millenialist beliefs are closely tied to the neo-conservative project in the US and the rhetoric of the war against terror.

The graphic depiction of incest, murder, anal rape, and other forms of violence has led Rolf de Heer’s Bad Boy Bubby (1993) to be condemned as the most vulgar and offensive film in contemporary Australian cinema. However, in this paper, I locate the depiction of these taboos as part of a sophisticated critique of the pro-family, pro-religion rhetoric being promulgated by Focus on the Family Australia, a Christian organization whose formation in 1993 signified the further entrenchment of Australia’s “religious right”. De Heer chronicles the misadventures of Bubby, a thirty five year old man whose life has been spent living in a locked basement with his mother, a sadistic religious fanatic who treats him as a sex toy and uses other forms of physical and mental cruelty to maintain her control over him. I argue that the film positions Bubby as a “noble savage” who innocently mimics the violence and sexual behavior he witnesses without comprehending the suffering that results. De Heer uses the structure of the picaresque to follow Bubby’s progress as he escapes the toxic influence of his family and interacts with characters in the real world who “re-program” him to perceive suffering, compassion, and love. Thus, the real subversiveness of the film lies in its inversion of conventional moral perceptions. Indeed, it frames morally transgressive characters, such as a sexually liberated caregiver, an atheist, and the foul-mouthed members of a rock band, as the source of Bubby’s redemption. Meanwhile, characters that openly espouse Christian rhetoric are depicted as the true sources of evil because their actions injure, exploit, and marginalize those most in need of compassion. Therefore, Bubby is neither bad, nor mad, but simply a victim of institutions that are championed by social conservatives as the core values of Australian society: the family and religion.

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In this paper, we describe how I-D orientation, a personality variable derived from cultural differences between societies with immediate- and delayed-return systems, can predict certain types of evil behaviours. Although immediate-return systems inherently involve frequent feedback about progress toward clearly defined, proximal goals (e.g., hunting), delayed-return systems do not and entail long-term planning and consequent uncertainty and lack of control (e.g., agriculture, college degree; not be confused with immediate and delayed gratification). Humans have spent the vast majority of their evolutionary past exclusively in immediate-return systems. In the comparatively few years since the Neolithic Revolution, however, most humans have been forced into delayed-return systems. Thus, a more delayed-return I-D orientation represents the extent to which individuals function in particular ways that are demanded by the predominantly delayed-return systems of cultures in modern societies yet are potentially in conflict with genetic predispositions that evolved in the immediate-return systems of cultures in ancestral societies. Our research has demonstrated that individuals with a delayed-return I-D orientation, but not those with an immediate-return I-D orientation, tend to be (a) unwilling to help victims in emergency situations when other bystanders are present or appear unconcerned, (b) obedient of institutional authorities that expect them to ignore the pleas of people suffering from cruelty and injustice, and (c) derogatory in general toward out-group members. Given that these particular behaviours. appear to be carried out by individuals who function in certain culturally determined ways, we further contend that the evil inherent in such behaviours. may not be a true reflection of human nature. We conclude with a discussion of some of the implications these arguments have for individual differences in the susceptibility to various forms of social influence in general as well as more practical concerns about social problems such as cult indoctrination and terrorism.