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opinion
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Witnessing
the carnage
We
like to believe that we are objective and rational in our opinions,
but most of the opinions we cherish are more likely to have been
shaped by the circumstances of our childhoods, admits Victor Paul
Borg |
I remember the butcher's fierce eyebrows and the way he had pressed
the pistol between the cow's eyes, the click of the hammer and
the sharp crack and the bullet crunching through the skull. The
massive cow, which had been standing unsure in the yard, slumped
to the ground like a sack of potatoes. I was seven or eight, clutching
my dad's leg and peering fearfully through the V of his legs.
My nose was crinkled against the acrid tang of warm, curdling
blood that mingled with the smell of dead flesh. When we drove
away on the Vespa I held tight to my dad's midriff and shot one
or two glances over my shoulder.
For years
afterwards, in nightmares I saw a narrow, winding road that became
a reality quest: I had to find that place again to see if it looked
as bleak and desolate as it did in my dreams. It took me ten years
to locate the old abattoir at the bottom of a snaking road in
Fontana, Gozo.
Everything
we call our personal values, every strand of our worldview, every
complex emotional reaction in our lives – fear, hate, anger,
disgust, love, joy, desire, and so on – can be traced to
a specific incident in our childhood. Later, in life, any related
or identical sensory experience triggers the emotional memory
of that childhood incident to produce an already-cast emotional
reaction. Paul Theraux wrote about this in his essay The Object
of Desire, but he limited himself to the imagery that shaped the
nature of his sexual desire – the same applies to every other
emotional reaction we experience. Call it an emotional trigger.
We may pretend
that our beliefs and opinions stem from rationale, but reason
in this sense is like an alibi – the motive is one of those
emotional triggers. We can just about argue for or against anything.
Building a rational argument is easy if you follow the path of
logic – all you have to do is select the reasons to support
your point. Any point.
The imprint
of that childhood experience at the abattoir, for example, has
forever made me a helpless defender of animals. In the world I
came from hunting meant manhood; toting a gun symbolised libido,
virility. When the song thrush I had shot fell gasping blood,
I slammed it against a rock to end its suffering, but I was shaking
and I never picked another gun. At eighteen I visited the abattoir
again as part of my course in agriculture. The stench of blood,
the screaming pigs, the whiff of dead in the air – it pulled
my emotional trigger and I had to run out to avoid throwing up.
When I arrived home, I found a pork chop on my plate. I turned
to my mum and said: ‘I'm not eating this – actually,
I am not eating meat anymore.'
I could give
you ten valid reasons why we should not eat meat, but deep down
my aversion to meat is a complex emotional reaction activated
by my emotional trigger. After all, five years after I stopped
eating meat I relapsed, which says something about forgetfulness
as the initial surge of emotional fallout recedes into oblivion
– that is, until another incident pulls that trigger again.
Reason has the value of reinforcing our views and beliefs, but
it's very hard to convince oneself with wisdom only if there is
no emotional predisposition. With reason alone, I can't become
a pure vegetarian again. On the other hand, locate the imagery
of a person's emotional trigger and he is yours.
We all have a unique set of emotional triggers that can neither
be changed nor erased. For one of my friends, for example, the
sight of a handicapped person does it: each time he sees someone
in a wheelchair he would give Lm100 to a charity that looks after
the disabled. For Paul Theraux, it's that image of his friend's
mum wearing bra and shorts and playing the guitar that set the
imagery that forever afterwards, in his words, ‘gummed my
mouth shut with panic and desire.'
Benetton
understood the nature of emotional keys when several years ago
they launched an ad campaign that bombarded us repeatedly with
shocking billboards. Media and civic leaders criticised their
crude sensibility, but Benetton knew that by putting up shocking
images, changing their nature every few weeks, chances were they
were hitting the widest spectrum of emotional triggers. The UK
government has recently got wind of this. In recent years their
drink-and-driving TV ads have been gory – they show twisted
mass of cars, flashing sirens, and lifeless blood-smeared bodies.
Sickening? That's the point.
When I was
in Birdlife Malta, I argued against the director's decision not
to distribute a poster of a bloodied heron in schools. He said
it would improperly shock youngsters‚ sensibilities –
I argued that that was exactly my point, to shock youngsters against
hunting by etching in their heart that bloodied image that would
seize their stomach each time they hear a gunshot. Set a child's
emotional trigger and he is yours forever.
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