Our Vanishing Conscience
From Voices of Thunder again:
It was the Church Father St Augustine [354–430] who established the idea that the conscience was the voice of God. God ‘speaks in the conscience of good and bad people alike,’ he claimed, defining the conscience as the ‘voice of truth’ that speaks ‘in the silence of the heart,’ while noting that ‘truth is what God is.’ To the influential sixteenth-century Protestant theologian John Calvin, ‘a certain feeling of the godhead’ existed in everyone: God had planted in all men a certain understanding of his divine majesty,’ meaning that everyone had ‘knowledge in [their] conscience of [their] own wretchedness.’ If to Calvin the conscience stood ‘between God and man,’ to many Protestants in mid-seventeenth-century England there was no meaningful distinction between ordering someone to act against their conscience and telling them to defy God. . . . .
If to be guided by one’s conscience was to follow God, it also translated into being one’s ‘own master.’ ‘What hast thou to do with another man’s conscience . . . or what hath he to do with thine?’ asked the 1650 pamphlet: ‘A man standeth or falleth to his own conscience . . . conscience’s work is to make every man his own keeper.’ Almost six hundred works with the word ‘conscience’ in the title were published in England between 1640 and 1659, testifying both to the level of interest in the idea and to the role of the press in facilitating heated debates: ‘the presses were more free than the pulpits,’ observed one tract [. . .] ‘Over the soul God can and will let no one rule but himself,’ Luther had insisted in 1523: ‘every man is responsible for his own faith, and he must see to it for himself that he believes rightly.’ Calvin reiterated the claim that consciences are ‘exempt from all power of men’: Christ’s ‘death is made void,’ he argued ‘if we yield ourselves into subjection to men.’
Lexicographers may be compelled one day soon to mark the word conscience in the dictionary with the label “chiefly literary.” The twelve times I’ve come across the word in the living wild within the last five years have all been packed into the two paragraphs above, it seems—except, notably, in these words from the late Justice Antonin Scalia. I am printing a portion of his comments out of the order they were delivered:
Freedom is a luxury that can be afforded by only the good society. When civic virtue diminishes, freedom will inevitably diminish as well. Take the simplest example: many municipalities do not have any ordinances against spitting gum out on the sidewalk. As far as the law is concerned, you are free to do that. But that freedom is a consequence of the fact that not many people are so thoughtless of others as to engage in that practice. If that behavior becomes commonplace, you can be absolutely sure that an ordinance will be passed, and that freedom will disappear . . . .
[Consider this common advice. It comes] in many flavors. It can be variously delivered as, “follow your star” or “never compromise your principles” or, quoting Polonius in Hamlet, who people forget was supposed to be a silly man, “to thine own self be true.” Now, this can be very good or very bad advice, depending on who you think you are. Indeed, follow your star if you want to head north and it’s the North Star. But if you want to head north and it’s Mars, you had better follow somebody’s else’s star. Indeed, never compromise your principles—unless of course your principles are Adolf Hitler’s, in which case you would be well advised to compromise them as much as you can. And indeed to thine own self be true, depending on who you think you are.
It is a belief today that seems particularly to beset modern society that believing deeply in something, following that belief, is the most important thing a person can do—get out there and picket or boycott or electioneer or whatever; show yourself to be a “committed” person (that is the fashionable phrase). I am here to tell you that it is much less important how committed you are than what you are committed to. If I had to choose, I would always take the less dynamic—indeed, even the lazy—person, who knows what’s right, rather than the zealot in the cause of error. He may move slower, but he’s headed in the right direction. Movement is not necessarily progress.
More important than your obligation to follow your conscience—or at least prior to that obligation—is the obligation to form your conscience properly. Nobody—remember this—nobody ever proposed evil as such. Neither Hitler nor Lenin nor any other despot you can name ever came forward with a proposal that read, “Let’s create a really oppressive and evil society.” Rather, Hitler said, Let’s take the means necessary to restore our national pride and civic order. And Lenin said, Let’s take the means necessary to assure a fair distribution of the goods of the world.
In short, it is your responsibility [graduating seniors] not just to be zealous in the pursuit of your ideals, but to be sure that your ideals are the right ones, not merely in their ends, but in their means. That is perhaps the hardest part of being a good human being. Good intentions are not enough. Being a good person begins with being a wise person.
Yet anyone today can understand, we think, what both Scalia (a Catholic) and the Protestants are talking about. We’ve all seen Pinocchio. The talking cricket as Pinocchio’s ‘conscience’ seems a straight-up crib from Augustine—with just one supernaturality substituted for another. But Augustine, and Calvin, also refer to ‘conscience’ as the place where this tiny cricket-deity ‘voice’ is ‘heard.’ Not only that but, to some Protestants at least, conscience was an individual possession—a space for private communication with a public God. Add to these characteristics the notions that consciences ‘work’ in some way also—they are not merely places or voices, or places with voices—that they are possibly in the business of guiding their owners, who can be good and bad, that they can be bulwarks in need of defense and supervision, and that they can be ‘formed,’ and I think you will agree that this jigsawed jumble of contradictions makes complete sense to you, but that it shouldn’t.
And there we generally leave it, for centuries at a time apparently, until a Reformation or Revolution kicks up the subject again. There is a distinct possibility, I think you’ll agree, that these inward gazes, en masse—our cyclical searches for conscience—may serve as signals of upcoming Reformation or Revolution. Perhaps if we understood our consciences better, we could better see upcoming social unrest and take the necessary actions to accommodate the unexpressed desires of the people, without first going through the repetitive exercise of killing everyone in a war and re-discovering other old habits of ours that stand, time and time again, between ourselves and real progress, not just cosmetic progress. To that end, then—that is, the future of humanity—let us see if we cannot cheerily succeed where so many others have failed and finally understand conscience.
Bear at the Picnic
Suppose you are picnicking in the park with your family—and a half-dozen other families, say—dotting the rolling green grounds with colorful carpets and baskets and noises. From your lucky position on a hill under a tree, you spot a bear in the distance ambling toward another of the picnicking families, unbeknownst to them. The bear sighting travels down the hill, making other families point and look—at the bear, at themselves, and at any others close by. Now, you don’t have to exhibit any bravery in this moment. You do not have to run and fling yourself as a human shield over that delicious-looking family. You do not have to shout—neither in warning nor in fear, nor the usual amalgamation of both. You can run away silently, in a flight-response. Or sit, frozen. It is also irrelevant what you are ‘thinking’ in and around that moment. What matters is that you can understand the extension of yourself implied by the situation. Even if feelings are muted by the inauthenticity of it, if you can understand that my intent was to arouse this sense in you—a sense of “me and we”—then you ‘have a conscience.’
It’s not about empathy. If you empathized with the bear-adjacent family, you would feel what they do: blissful ignorance, whatever that feels like. It’s not really about ‘positive’ feelings or thinkings at all. Root for the bear if you’d like—it need not be present, actually. What matters is the ‘mind’ that is extended around the picnickers and oneself together, perimeterizing and highlighting a social ‘scene’ along with one’s individual ‘place’ in that scene. (The bear is introduced so that your scene at least includes you, the bear, and the yummy yummy family.)
My scene will not look exactly like someone else’s in that moment, nor would it look the same for me a day later, nor—depending on what’s happening—even a moment later. But we can’t help mentally ‘being with ourselves and each other’ wherever we go, participating in ‘scenes’ with other human beings. If you have a toddler in tow, their scene may look much smaller, but it is a scene nonetheless.
The ‘Scene’ of Conscience
We think of our consciences—when we think of them—as telling us what to do, deciding between right and wrong words, acts, and even thoughts. But we know that our behavior in a ‘scene’ also depends at least in some part on what we take that scene to be. If you don’t see the bear, you are in a different scene in what may turn out to be a very important respect.
Is this ‘scene-making’ just one’s perceptual machinery perceiving or one’s imagination machinery imagining? No. Because when others see the bear at the picnic, and we all know that we see it, and we all know that we know that we see it, then that is the scene—on site. The scene that I have set up is a story that artificially generates that scene for us, the writer and the reader. In neither the literary nor the ‘real’ case would we find that our scenes ‘appear’ the same, either emotionally or physically, if we were to inspect them after reading or experiencing in person. Those differences are caused by the perceptual and imagination machinery of each individual, among other things. What will be common (in both cases) is the scene-ness—a social stage, rink, ring, a cordoning off of the environment, a collective synesthetic squint that brings into focus human sights, shapes, sounds, movements, and needs.
I’d bet that you could easily imagine today a half-dozen picnicking families, strangers to each other, all arriving at about the same time as you in the little parking lot just behind your shady tree—and not talking to each other, only amongst their private familiar parties. And I’d bet that you could easily imagine today those same families being unusually talkative in the lot if they all had to high-tail it to their cars while the bear eventually got spooked and ran away. Well, of course. They just watched (we)—and were in (me)—a ‘scene,’ together!
But, contrary to what you might have heard, the bear didn’t make them a team (or a troupe). They automatically are one when they have joint attention. The bear made them a much more cohesive troupe-team (because of course social fear and social anxiety will do that). If you and the other families had seen a blisteringly bright and clear double rainbow emerge together instead—and for some reason that event made you all stand, turn, and head for the parking lot at the same time—you might be less talkative, but the communicative potential energy among those strangers would be, I think you would agree, much greater than it was on arrival.
The ‘Voice’ of Conscience
Once our scene is formed—automatically—our troupe has only to know how to act in it. Scene-ness is unavoidable. We expect it from everyone, even though we don’t expect everyone’s scene to look exactly the same. But we also expect certain behavior from people in certain scenes (and general ones). If we all witness you turn and zoom to your car, leaving your family behind and leaving everyone else to manage the emergency, you might later feel what’s called a guilty conscience. But not if you’re 6 years old. Or in a wheelchair (maybe).
Where could these expectations come from except from each other, through teaching and learning? The use of ‘teaching and learning’ does not indicate that we pick up these expectations in front of a school marm tapping a glared pull-down map with a pointing stick. If you observe adults in a few different ‘emergency’ situations, you may eventually imitate their behavioral patterns as an adult, with some spin of your own. That’s teaching and learning, directly from adults.
Consciences are formed and maintained by human communities (which include you). The Protestant Reformers certainly knew this, if only implicitly, but individualism in matters of conscience was an argument they could not let go of, leading to a desperate search for—and pretend finding of—immaculately conceived learning, in their ‘hearts’:
The Church was not a building but was the people of God, his living ‘body’ on earth. ‘Those that enter into church fellowship’ need to ‘have some knowledge of each other, explained Spirituall Experiences, so that they can be sure they are all ‘fit materials to make a church.’
Uh huh.
Looking to demonstrate the genuine nature of their belief, those giving their testimonies knew that it would be pointless to cite the moral character or the religious dutifulness that fell into the category of meaningless ‘works.’ The only evidence that carried weight was a confession of the truth of their inner being, one in which their heart as well as their mind was demonstrated to be ‘in union with God.’
I suspect that “The Catholics are right!” would be testimony found to be lacking in said evidence of said union, after some mumbled platitudes about inclusion.
In his preface to Spirituall Experiences, Powell defines an authentic [ah, that word!] spiritual experience as that which is ‘written by the Spirit of God upon the hearts of believers! It is the ‘inward sense and feeling, of what is outwardly read and heard; and the spiritual and powerful enjoyment of what is believed.’
Fervor and ‘enjoyment’ are often go-to proxies among radical individualists for the existence of imaginary ray-beams of supernatural wisdom shooting, ex nihilo, out of people’s mouths and muscles—criteria that are as boobishly idolic and as disconnected from moral wisdom as the soiled statues, cassocks, mitres, and zucchetti they sought to replace.
The believer, in other words, does not merely possess ‘brain knowledge’ about God, but has personal ‘heart knowledge.’
The seventeenth-century Protestant’s ‘conceptual understanding,’ the latter term being disappointingly clinical, I must say, relative to its ancient twin. Both terms make the mistake of trying to invent something that cannot exist: knowledge is knowledge; it comes with ‘heart’ and ‘understanding,’ and no doubt should be delivered with more, but it cannot aspire, on the one hand, to some above-itself notion of ‘understanding,’ nor on the other, to something it already is.
Searching for signs of the necessary ‘inward sense and feeling,’ women such as ‘D.R.’ were following the lead of the eminent Calvinist theologian William Perkins, who wrote in 1592 that God imprinted ‘certain marks’ on the hearts of his chosen people. Do you feel ‘such a love towards [God] . . . that you do hate and detest whatsoever is against his glory’? If so, these feelings attest to the presence of authentic belief: ‘as long as thou feelest these effects in they self, albeit very slender, and greatly languishing: yet assure thy self, thou art endued with true faith.’ . . . . We must not live by feeling but by faith’ . . . someone ‘may be the dear child of God’ even though they feel ‘nothing but his wrath and indignation.’ Despite such warnings about the potential unreliability of feelings, the careful self-analysis of emotions was a central feature of spiritual testimonies in this era.
No Respecter of Persons
Yet the Bible itself, throughout, contains interpretive admonitions against individualism like this. Deuteronomy 10:17 provides a key repeating phrase:
For Jehovah your God, He is God of gods, and Lord of lords; God, the great, the mighty, and the fearful; who accepteth not persons, nor taketh a bribe.
‘God is no respecter of persons,’ says Paul in Acts 10:34, and again in Romans 2:11, ‘for there is no respect of persons with God.’ (The assertion also appears in James 2:1 and 1 Peter 1:17.) Though the phrase is often translated as (and interpreted in modernity as) “God does not show partiality [or favoritism] (among individuals),” it struggles to bear this meaning outside of modernity (the word individualism first appeared in print in 1815). God generally covenants with people, not ‘persons.’ In the instances cited above, the phrase—addressed to communities of believers—distinguishes between collective identities like Jew and Gentile, not Nancy and Bob. And a more literal translation of the phrase—“God does not lift up [or accept or receive] the face”—suggests that God does not accept particular ‘faces,’ masks, roles, or other contrived proxies as bases for dispensing favor or punishment.
Forming Your Conscience First
Conscience is a socially formed, transmissive construct, not a self-born light. If conscience is something that can be formed, that does not mean it begins as nothing. A thing may be innate in potential yet still require shaping to function, like lungs that must breathe air or eyes that must open to light. The conscience, if it is anything, is such an apparatus: a natural orientation toward shared life, not yet moral until it has encountered and learned from other human beings. It is born ready, not born wise. Both Calvin and Scalia were half right, then: the ‘divine spark they described is real enough, but it burns only in the oxygen of community. What we call “forming” is not the creation of conscience from scratch, but the instruction of a learner already listening—the tuning of an instrument whose pitch is set by the voices around it, adjusted over time to the harmonics of a human world.
We do not so much receive conscience as we learn to hear it. Its voice comes from nowhere in particular—Augustine’s “silence of the heart” was never silent at all—but from the accumulation of faces, examples, prohibitions, permissions, and corrections we have lived among. Every “ought” we’ve ever overheard can leave a trace; every rebuke or forgiveness may leave a contour in the ear. To form one’s conscience properly is not to polish an internal gem but to join an ongoing lesson—to construct a truthful map of the human field: who counts, what counts, what the scene is, and how one’s own presence fits and serves within it.
A well-formed conscience, then, is not one that knows what to do in every situation, but one that perceives the moral situation itself correctly: the shared scene, the others present, the lines of attention and obligation. The malformed conscience errs not from evil but from isolation—it cannot sense the field, cannot hear the teachers anymore. It follows a star of its own making, confident, smilingly ignorant, and morally disgusting.
