You believe in personal freedom. But you also believe that others probably need some imposition of limitations on their freedom. You also believe in “rights.” But you know that not everyone deserves the same rights. Oh! Come on. You do so. Right to life? What about enemies, really serious enemies who harm you or your loved ones? You don’t hold any exceptions? Everyone’s equal at all times and in all places regardless of personal behavior, you argue. Okay. How did you come by that belief? Is there an innate goodness that underlies your thinking? What if someone thought the foundation of morality was evil?
In the second half of the eighteenth century first Danish and then British members of a Christian missionary group went to the Nicobar Islands to convert the native population. One missionary, the Rev. John Gottfried Haensel, wrote letters about the islands and Nicobar’s residents to the Rev. C. I. Latrobe.
Haensel made observations about the beliefs of the people he encountered there, noting in “Letter V” that “The natives of these islands are a free people, perfectly independent but have a captain in every village…Yet no one is bound to obey him, for all of them, male and female, consider themselves under no control whatever….”* Then Haensel addresses their “religion.”
“They have not even a word in their language to express their idea of God. They use the word Knallen when they speak of Him, but it only signifies ‘above, on high’: for instance, they say, Knallen maade, ‘on the hill’; Knallen uniga, ‘on top of the tree’; Knallen gamalee, ‘on the surface of the sea’…this ‘unknown God’ is good…but wherein His goodness consists, they neither have, nor seem to wish to have, any understanding, nor ever trouble themselves about Him” (p. 51).
Haensel says that when his missionary group tried to convert them to Christian beliefs by telling them about a crucified savior who had sacrificed his life for their “sins,” “They observed that they could not believe that the sufferings of one man could atone for the sins of another…but they insisted that they were good by nature, and never did anything wrong…”(p. 53).
Of course, the mission of missionaries is to convince. Hearing that the islanders believed they never did anything wrong, Haensel related to them that the missionaries had witnessed murders and the abuse of corpses. He asked, “…was this a proof of their natural goodness?” Their response: “…you do not understand, those were people not fit to live, they were Gomoy, cannibals!” (p.51)
Let’s recap. Missionaries with western and Christian values visited an archipelago between the Bay of Bengal and the Andaman Sea, where they attempted to persuade people to think and act in ways alien to their culture. On the Nicobar Islands the missionaries found a different concept of God, a justification for murder, and a society where individuals believed in their own “goodness” and exercised freedom from authority.
Wait! For Westerners, it gets stranger. In Letter VI Haensel relates that the islanders believed that disease is the work of “the devil,” Eewee, a “wicked agent,” whom sorcerers, or Paters, control (p. 52). The sorcerers performed rituals akin to exorcisms on sick people. If an exorcism failed to cast out the Eewee, the sorcerer said the devil had possessed a local person, typically a person the sorcerer hated. You guessed it: Salem Witch Trial Time in the islands and death to the suspected possessed “witch.” Strangely, in a people that prided themselves on their personal independence and freedom from authority, the locals had no problem handing the power of life and death over the accused to sorcerers.
Eewee was the Creator, by the way, and that freed the islanders from personal moral responsibility. Their common expression was, “The Eewee did not make me perfect, or better” when they were accused of some atrocious crime (p. 53). Can’t blame someone who was created by a devil for doing devilish things, right? Personal responsibility for “sins” passes to Eewee in a belief system that was the antithesis of Christianity.
Does any of this make you pause to think about the meaning of “good,” “sin,” and “personal freedom”? Does a society that sees no value in the life of a Gomoy, that has no seeming sense of personal accountability for “sin,” and that looks nowhere for some supreme Goodness have a moral foundation?
Should a Gomoy have a right to life? Should an accusation of witchcraft that carries an unchallenged death sentence have moral weight? Where do you stand on personal responsibility?
Bring it forward to our time. Have you noted in the news the rioters dressed in black with black face masks attacking other people, supposedly because the other people are as unworthy of rights as Gomoys? Are the masked rioters incarnations of yesteryear’s Nicobar Paters? Do they attempt to purge society of evil by violence they justify without having to take personal responsibility? Do we assume complete and unfettered freedom yet give to “sorcerers” control over certain lives?
Are we different from those nineteenth-century islanders? Of course, you are going to say “Yes, because we are ‘civilized’ and rational. And,” you continue, “we think everyone has inalienable rights, especially the right to life.” But don’t we find at least pockets of Nicobar Islanders giving over to anonymous people the power to hurt and kill in our own society? And don’t we also argue that personal freedom doesn’t count as a ground for personal responsibility in a world where society is as influential as Eewee? We’ve all heard the expression “victim of society” applied to evildoers. How do we respond?
Do we assume an underlying evil or an underlying good? The former eliminates personal responsibility; the latter demands it. Or should we assume that the world is fundamentally amoral and that all morality is simply a matter of culture with no absolutes and no inalienable rights? Now what are you going to do with those Gomoys?
* Haensel, John Gottfried, Rev. Letters on the Nicobar Islands, Their Natural Productions, and the Manners, Customs, and Superstitions of the Natives: With an Account of an Attempt Made by the Church of the United Brethren To Convert Them to Christianity, Addressed by the Rev. John Gottfried Haensel (The Only surviving Missionary) to the Rev. C. I. Latrobe, London. Printed for the Editor, No. 10, Nevil’s Court, Fetter Lane, by W. McDowall, Pemberton Row. 1812. Online at http://www.gutenberg.org/files/26781/26781-h/26781-h.htm
In the second half of the eighteenth century first Danish and then British members of a Christian missionary group went to the Nicobar Islands to convert the native population. One missionary, the Rev. John Gottfried Haensel, wrote letters about the islands and Nicobar’s residents to the Rev. C. I. Latrobe.
Haensel made observations about the beliefs of the people he encountered there, noting in “Letter V” that “The natives of these islands are a free people, perfectly independent but have a captain in every village…Yet no one is bound to obey him, for all of them, male and female, consider themselves under no control whatever….”* Then Haensel addresses their “religion.”
“They have not even a word in their language to express their idea of God. They use the word Knallen when they speak of Him, but it only signifies ‘above, on high’: for instance, they say, Knallen maade, ‘on the hill’; Knallen uniga, ‘on top of the tree’; Knallen gamalee, ‘on the surface of the sea’…this ‘unknown God’ is good…but wherein His goodness consists, they neither have, nor seem to wish to have, any understanding, nor ever trouble themselves about Him” (p. 51).
Haensel says that when his missionary group tried to convert them to Christian beliefs by telling them about a crucified savior who had sacrificed his life for their “sins,” “They observed that they could not believe that the sufferings of one man could atone for the sins of another…but they insisted that they were good by nature, and never did anything wrong…”(p. 53).
Of course, the mission of missionaries is to convince. Hearing that the islanders believed they never did anything wrong, Haensel related to them that the missionaries had witnessed murders and the abuse of corpses. He asked, “…was this a proof of their natural goodness?” Their response: “…you do not understand, those were people not fit to live, they were Gomoy, cannibals!” (p.51)
Let’s recap. Missionaries with western and Christian values visited an archipelago between the Bay of Bengal and the Andaman Sea, where they attempted to persuade people to think and act in ways alien to their culture. On the Nicobar Islands the missionaries found a different concept of God, a justification for murder, and a society where individuals believed in their own “goodness” and exercised freedom from authority.
Wait! For Westerners, it gets stranger. In Letter VI Haensel relates that the islanders believed that disease is the work of “the devil,” Eewee, a “wicked agent,” whom sorcerers, or Paters, control (p. 52). The sorcerers performed rituals akin to exorcisms on sick people. If an exorcism failed to cast out the Eewee, the sorcerer said the devil had possessed a local person, typically a person the sorcerer hated. You guessed it: Salem Witch Trial Time in the islands and death to the suspected possessed “witch.” Strangely, in a people that prided themselves on their personal independence and freedom from authority, the locals had no problem handing the power of life and death over the accused to sorcerers.
Eewee was the Creator, by the way, and that freed the islanders from personal moral responsibility. Their common expression was, “The Eewee did not make me perfect, or better” when they were accused of some atrocious crime (p. 53). Can’t blame someone who was created by a devil for doing devilish things, right? Personal responsibility for “sins” passes to Eewee in a belief system that was the antithesis of Christianity.
Does any of this make you pause to think about the meaning of “good,” “sin,” and “personal freedom”? Does a society that sees no value in the life of a Gomoy, that has no seeming sense of personal accountability for “sin,” and that looks nowhere for some supreme Goodness have a moral foundation?
Should a Gomoy have a right to life? Should an accusation of witchcraft that carries an unchallenged death sentence have moral weight? Where do you stand on personal responsibility?
Bring it forward to our time. Have you noted in the news the rioters dressed in black with black face masks attacking other people, supposedly because the other people are as unworthy of rights as Gomoys? Are the masked rioters incarnations of yesteryear’s Nicobar Paters? Do they attempt to purge society of evil by violence they justify without having to take personal responsibility? Do we assume complete and unfettered freedom yet give to “sorcerers” control over certain lives?
Are we different from those nineteenth-century islanders? Of course, you are going to say “Yes, because we are ‘civilized’ and rational. And,” you continue, “we think everyone has inalienable rights, especially the right to life.” But don’t we find at least pockets of Nicobar Islanders giving over to anonymous people the power to hurt and kill in our own society? And don’t we also argue that personal freedom doesn’t count as a ground for personal responsibility in a world where society is as influential as Eewee? We’ve all heard the expression “victim of society” applied to evildoers. How do we respond?
Do we assume an underlying evil or an underlying good? The former eliminates personal responsibility; the latter demands it. Or should we assume that the world is fundamentally amoral and that all morality is simply a matter of culture with no absolutes and no inalienable rights? Now what are you going to do with those Gomoys?
* Haensel, John Gottfried, Rev. Letters on the Nicobar Islands, Their Natural Productions, and the Manners, Customs, and Superstitions of the Natives: With an Account of an Attempt Made by the Church of the United Brethren To Convert Them to Christianity, Addressed by the Rev. John Gottfried Haensel (The Only surviving Missionary) to the Rev. C. I. Latrobe, London. Printed for the Editor, No. 10, Nevil’s Court, Fetter Lane, by W. McDowall, Pemberton Row. 1812. Online at http://www.gutenberg.org/files/26781/26781-h/26781-h.htm
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