Dead Voices, page 19
“Yeah,” Sam said, “but we can use studies like this to make us more responsible for our actions. In combat, for example, a soldier has to take responsibility for his actions. If he screws up it could mean the death of his buddies.”
Megan shrugged. Brian said he had heard that expertise in video games was an added bonus when it came to training soldiers to react in combat.
“That’s right,” Sam said. “But we have to learn that everything has a consequence, as Robin said. That you’re not just in a game. You’re in real life.”
Emma felt it was time to step in and regain control of the class. She got up and stood beside Sam.
“What I wanna know, however, is whether anything we took in this course factored into your choice?”
Most of the kids said no, religion didn’t play a factor at all. Religion wasn’t real in their lives, they said. It was going to Mass, sure, but Mass was boring. Listening to the priest’s homilies was boring. All the talk about eternal life and putting one’s faith into practice and his Holiness the Pope was not real. All the talk about God was ridiculous, totally having nothing to do with their lives.
“Yeah, Miss,” Brian Moniz said. “You talk about what would Jesus do, but Jesus is not real in our lives. He’s just a few words in a book. I mean, is Jesus real in your life, Miss?”
Though it sounded trite, a cliché kids bantered about without thought, it caught her by surprise. She had to think about it. No one had ever asked her before in class. She felt on the spot and flustered.
“What do you mean by real?” Sam asked Brian, coming to Emma’s aid.
Brian looked at him. Sam was giving him his cryptic grin.
“I don’t know,” Brian said. “Do we follow his life? Is he in our thoughts?”
“Is he?”
“No,” Brian said, shaking his head. “Is he real to you?”
“I don’t believe in any religion.”
The class looked at Sam. He had gotten their undivided attention again.
“OK,” Emma said. “I think we should stop right here and get into other matters.”
“No, Miss,” Brian said. “We wanna know what he feels about religion.”
“But he’s just our guest,” she said. “We’re not going to put him on the spot.”
“I’m cool with it,” Sam said, shrugging. He looked at the class. “I’m not into religion. I’m into cognitive psychology and neuroscience, to be exact. I’m interested in the human mind and how it works. How we perceive reality, what motivates us to act and live as we do. Are we as free as we think we are — or are we hot-wired with impulses beyond our conscious control? Does something have to exist to be real in our minds? It’s an exciting field, I’ll tell you. I think it’s the most basic science of all. Everything is filtered through the brain. Just think about it. You guys who went through the Switch Study. Some day we might be using VR to help us with all sorts of things. Treat mental patients. Train soldiers for combat and then rehab them from PTSD afterwards. Create Bible stories and plays. Teachers will be using it in the classroom. You guys who’re interested in video games can fit right in.”
“I hear you can even have virtual sex,” Brian Moniz said.
The class went into titters.
“No, I mean, like, you actually go out on a date,” Brian said. “Like, you get to know each other. It’s not just the physical, if you know what I mean. That’s what I heard anyway.”
A few of the guys laughed, pointing at him.
“He’s right,” Sam said. “There are all sorts of VE scenarios. We use them in the lab all the time. I can foresee one day people being digitized into living avatars. After we die we can be resurrected at the click of a mouse.”
“How far do you have to go in school to be a psychologist?” Robin asked him.
“You gotta be serious and committed. It takes grad and post-doc work. In my post-doc work, for example, we did some functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging of the brain. We studied people who had FTD, frontal temporal dementia, damage to a certain part of the brain and had lost all their feelings. Afterwards I got interested in how our instincts, including empathy and cruelty, that are automatically hot-wired into one part of the brain, compete against the more rational and flexible part, and how they’re all intertwined, so to speak. When I play rugby, for example, I crush my opponent one minute and shake his hand the next.”
The class was hushed.
“Cognitive psychology is an exciting field,” Sam went on. “You have to be driven, motivated, and know what you want. In the VR study, for example, we have to take responsibility for our choices and consider the consequences all the time.”
“I disagree,” Emma spoke up.
Everyone turned to look at her. Sam gave her his grin.
“I’m not a psychologist,” she said, standing up and stepping to the front of the class, “but I know a few things about human beings and religion. Whatever happened in the VR experiment looked very real, but it wasn’t real. It let you physically see what would happen as a result of your choice. Megan was right. Life doesn’t work that way. We can’t really see the end result of our actions. We have to do what’s right, regardless of the outcome.”
“But how do we know what’s right, Miss?” Megan said.
“That’s what we’re trying to learn in this course,” she said. “But let’s ask Sam what he thinks.” She turned to him, wanting to wipe out his grin. “Are you cool with that, Sam?”
His smile got bigger. “Sure, I’m cool.”
“Well?”
He paused. “Well, I don’t think anyone can say what’s absolutely right or wrong. And I don’t think there’s a supernatural being out there who can tell us either. We have to figure things out by trial and error as we go along. And these days it seems to be what works best for the common good. And science helps us out by making knowledge clearer for the common good. In the Switch Study, for example, most of you thought that killing one to save four is clearly the right thing to do. It’s simple math for both the head and the heart. Wouldn’t you agree?”
“No, I wouldn’t,” Emma said.
“Why?” he said, still with his grin.
“Well, for one, we’re not doing the killing. The trolley or boxcars are.”
“Exactly. We’re not doing the killing. We’re only allowing it to happen. Big difference. We have another moral study where one of the options is to push a man off a bridge and actually kill him to stop the train from killing more people. Most people wouldn’t choose to do that.”
“You’re saying allowing it to happen and making it happen are two different things?”
“That’s what we’ve found, yeah. For example, in the Switch Case almost everyone chooses to save four, even if there’s an unavoidable side effect. It’s like collateral damage, right? And sometimes collateral damage is condoned if it’s for the greater good.”
“But who says what the greater good is? There’s more to morality than numbers. What if it was your son or daughter you had to pull the switch on? What if it was your wife?”
She saw the grin slowly evaporate.
“I mean,” she went on, “the experiment makes it seem so cut and dried, but that’s never the case in real life. The greater good is not always right. The majority don’t have a monopoly on what’s right and wrong. The greater good can be used as an end to justify an evil method.”
“What do you mean, Miss?” Megan asked.
“Way back, certain primitive tribes would practice human sacrifice for the greater good of the tribe. Certain political leaders in the last century justified mass slaughter for the greater good of the whole. Of their own side, they meant.”
Everyone was looking at her. She didn’t know where she was going with that, except it fell like a lead balloon.
“We have to be careful, that’s all,” she said. “Only God can be God.”
“But religion itself has been used to justify the slaughter of millions,” Sam said.
“That’s right. By people who wanted to play God.”
“Nobody’s playing God,” Sam said. “We just have to step up and choose. In the medical profession, for example, the line is clearly drawn. A doctor can’t actually perform euthanasia, but he can allow a terminally ill patient to die, can’t he? Isn’t that the humane thing to do? In warfare, sometimes we have to bomb a strategic site, with the unavoidable side effect that some innocent people are killed as collateral damage.”
“Yeah, Miss,” Robin said. “Didn’t you tell us that we had to choose the lesser of two evils? You’re going against your own words.”
“Maybe,” she said, having to stop and give it some thought. “But sometimes we can’t choose. We have to let life take its course. We’re not more powerful than life. Even the mind is not more powerful than life. Only God gives life and takes it away.”
She turned to Sam, who was observing her with renewed interest.
By the wall clock, they were about ten minutes before the end of class. She had the students return the desks to their former positions. Sam started to put his gear back in the suitcases. After the commotion the class sat back down and waited for the bell.
While they were waiting Sam looked at Robin.
“Sorry for pulling the switcheroo on you, my friend.”
Robin smiled and pointed a finger at him. “You got me.”
“You know, if psychology isn’t your bag, you should consider the military. It needs some good people. But you have to finish high school first to see what your options are.”
After the kids had left the classroom, Sam picked up his suitcases.
“You’re good,” she said, chuckling.
“Pardon me?” He looked at her, puzzled.
“I’ll walk you to the door.”
She walked with him down the stairs to the back door of the school which led to the parking lot. She held the door open for him.
“Thanks so much for coming,” she said. “You had them on the edge of their seats.”
“Thanks for having me. Sorry for the added scenario. But these kids are savvy and sometimes need a little surprise to wake them up.”
“Yeah, I could see that. I think we all need to wake up every so often. Maybe you can come again for another class. I teach some English as well. Can you guys create a Shakespeare play in VR?”
He gave her his grin. “I don’t know if anyone has tried that. It would be a daunting undertaking. Maybe we can discuss it over coffee some time.”
“Sure, I’m game if you are. Maybe we can determine your MPI rating.”
He laughed. “How would we do that?”
She gave him a little smile. “I have my methods.”
The Hearing
Mark was taken by surprise one day in early October when a young man came to his door and handed him an envelope on which he saw the provincial seal on the top left-hand corner and the word SUMMONS over his name and address.
Even though the guy had a photo ID on his lapel confirming he was an Officer of the Court, he didn’t look officious at all. He was just a kid in casual and scruffy attire, with thick glasses and a nerdy thin face. Parked at the curb was a beat-up old car.
It was the early afternoon. Mark was in his casual houseattire. Loose grey track pants and an old sweatshirt that he wore for days.
“You sure you got the right guy?” Mark said, glancing at the envelope.
“That’s you, isn’t it?” the kid said, giving him a quick look-see.
“Yeah, but . . .”
“But what?” the kid said in an insolent tone.
“You don’t look like an Officer of the Court.”
“And what am I supposed to look like?”
“I don’t know. Not as if you’re delivering pizza, anyway.”
“I’m not delivering pizza.”
“I didn’t say you were.”
“You insinuated I was delivering pizza,” the kid said, putting more bite in his words. “Is this a joke of some sort?”
Mark inspected the envelope, turning it around to make sure it was authentic, and was just about to ask the kid for more official identification when it was too late. The guy had slipped into his car and was gone.
If it wasn’t a joke, it was a mistake of some sort.
His heart racing, he opened the envelope and saw a document that was summoning him to a hearing.
It had the same seal on the top left-hand corner, the type of hearing panel, the address and date of the hearing, all his personal information, and the signature of the hearing Clerk. After some legal mumbo-jumbo about interjurisdictions, it said the proceedings would be conducted in camera panaudicon and stipulated that if he, the accused, should seek legal counsel, if he could afford it, or legal aid, if he couldn’t, he would be at a disadvantage since this was a special personal hearing, actori incumbit probatio, whatever that meant. He was to answer to certain charges laid against him by a motion made through complainants who were under a publication ban. It didn’t indicate what those charges were, except they were very serious — and that he was to appear in person at the appointed date or face the consequences.
He was the accused. And he had never been in trouble with the law in his life. He had never even set foot in a courtroom. All he knew about trials and hearings and courtrooms was what he had seen on TV and in the movies.
The more the reality of the document asserted itself, however, the more it caused him concern. If it was a joke, someone had gone through an elaborate charade to simply scare him. Who could play such a stupid game on him? He didn’t know any practical jokers since his teaching days. The document looked authentic, issued by the full power of the law. And yet anyone could’ve forged it and paid some kid to bring it to his door.
He tried to laugh, but his throat was too tight. It had to be a joke.
What could he be accused of? And who were these people charging him?
Mark brought the document to the kitchen around the corner and read through it again. First of all, he had to understand what the Latin terms meant. He got his iPad, sat down at the kitchen table, and investigated all the terms. Their translation helped, but not enough to fully understand what they meant in practice. He had seen enough official documents to know the disparity between the words and the reality. Certain professions, he well knew, purposely created barricades of abstruse jargon to make their practices impregnable to the outsider. He wouldn’t be surprised if half the work in law school involved memorizing terms. At one time he had thought of going into law. It was either law or medicine that immigrant parents recognized as honourable professions for their offspring. But his stomach was too queasy for medicine, and by the end of high school he knew the law wasn’t for him as well.
No, he was no longer so easily intimidated by words. He had come to recognize the difference between words and reality. Too often in the past, authority figures and institutions had fudged the difference. Words were powerful, but not powerful enough to create something out of nothing — at least for those initiated in their use. One had to know how to navigate between the literal and the metaphorical, recognize storm clouds, and hope for strong winds to take the ship out of the waters of unlikeness.
As an immigrant kid, he had the usual authority figures around him. His father. The police. The priests and his teachers. Not to mention the Church and the words of Scripture. They were all formidable and not to be questioned. Punishment was severe. It could be a belt or a strap. It could be public ostracism. Or going to jail. Or spending an eternity in hell. Once he realized all meaning was self-referential and manufactured from the inside out, however, it was as if all the chains of authority had been cut.
The only problem was that this had all been done in secret over a long period of time, in his personal drive to know the ultimate answers to the ultimate questions.
In the real light of day, however, it was a different story. At the beginning he never had identification papers, for one. Neither a birth certificate from the old country nor citizenship papers from his adopted country. His father spoke broken English. His mother didn’t speak English at all. The only official document he had seen was his mother’s passport, showing his photograph as a four-year-old along with his younger sister beside his mother, when they had crossed the Atlantic to land on Pier 21 in Halifax.
About ten years later, when he was in high school, his father had managed to get him citizenship papers. By that time, however, his ambivalence had developed into a nagging tentativeness, like a permanent crack in his psyche. He couldn’t shake off the feeling of being at once an alien in his own home, with parents who were uneducated and didn’t speak his language, and on the margins in the outside world, with no one who shared his interests.
No matter his personal accomplishments, his education, his achievements, his age, he still had trouble with public authority. As strong as he felt on the inside — having toppled the three kingpins of miracle, mystery, and authority — he was still unsure of himself on the outside. As a seeker, he had to continually separate the literal from the metaphorical and investigate and question everything to its roots, including the questioner himself.
If he questioned his own authority, however, how could he possibly have a firm foundation to stand on? This was the enigma, as far as he could tell.
The mere sight of a policeman could still cause anxiety, for example. He could feel strong in his own skin one minute and then crumble in the face of public authority the next. Even after his graduate years, when he was crossing the border into the United States in his home town, he’d feel anxious with the border guards, with their no-nonsense stares and official uniforms. Where were you born? they barked at him, as if questioning his very existence. His vocal cords would tighten. He’d stammer and stutter, barely able to get the words out.
His only way to deal with public authority was to laugh at it. But who could joke with border guards? Who could joke with a priest in a pulpit, for that matter? Who could laugh at the literal possibility of eternal punishment? It was a contradiction in terms.
