Avengers

At Elijah’s request, we’re currently watching our way through several films in the Marvel Cinematic Universe (Captain America is the first Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle, right?).

Last night, we watched Avengers: Age of Ultron.

Tony Stark builds a system to protect the earth, but when the system becomes new-born sentient, it concludes that it is the Avengers from whom the earth needs protecting, and so they must be destroyed. Further destruction follows.

It got me thinking about mass shootings, suicide bombings, and white supremacy; none of which I think we understand correctly.

When a brown-skinned young man commits an atrocity, we say they have been radicalised. When a white-skinned young man commits an atrocity, we say that they were very mentally ill; and then we might point to how rare it is for mentally ill people to kill others to emphasise how they were so very ill, there was nothing anyone could have done to prevent it: we are not at fault. But these political moves are an exercise in missing the point.

Like those who embrace white supremacy, or indeed misogyny (think The Handmaid’s Tale), those who seek to destroy others are not immoral. Indeed, quite the opposite.

We, humans, are moral beings, with moral desire, along with a longing for order and a place to call home. You have, in fact, to work very hard to kill that desire, to be a true psychopath.

This (almost) universal moral desire is, I think, what people have in mind when they tell me that most people are, fundamentally, good. But we are not fundamentally good; we fundamentally possess moral desire: a desire that can be turned towards good or evil.

Our moral desire is undifferentiated in its form, and in need of a framework. In the absence not only of a robust framework but also of patterns of initiation—in a highly individualistic society where we are largely left to fashion our own morality—the vacuum is unsurprisingly filled by those who will offer a moral certainty and the promise of a world in which we might experience order and a place to call home. Certain groups—women, non-whites, those of a particular religion, those who reject religion—are presented as a threat to moral behaviour, that needs controlling, or removing. This is reinforced by honour-shame structures, in which the accommodation of such ‘shameful’ people shames our own honour.

What is lacking is not a moralistic pattern. Indeed, moralism, which works on the basis that others are immoral, is the oxygen of evil. Instead, we need to recognise that people are naturally possessing of moral desire, that needs to be robustly ordered. (Politically, the Right fails to recognise that all people possess moral desire; while the Left fails to recognise the difference between moral desire and essential goodness.)

The so-called Golden Rule—do to others as you would want them to do to you; or, treat others in the same way that you treat yourself—is, arguably, foundational. But even this is inadequate, in a context where we are left to work out for ourselves how we ought to be treated. If, for example, we believe ourselves to be in need of ‘tough love’ we will treat others harshly. Often the Golden Rule is adapted to, ‘Do what you like, with consent, so long as no-one else gets hurt.’ But this raises complex questions as to the nature of consent, and of hurt, and of who gets to decide.

What is missing is not a global monitoring system, but communities of intentional discipleship, where we might wrestle with our moral desire and longing for order and a place to call home, together, honouring and refusing to shame one another, so that we might learn from our mistakes and failures. Where we might come to discover difference not as threat but as a source of wonder, and, indeed, strength. Where we might come to know self-giving, for others, as glory.

The Avengers are as dysfunctional a family as you could hope for. But, we are all heroes, in search of home.