While it may be musing to wonder what if there were no hypothetical questions, Nazi Germany has thrown up countless real-life scenarios to curdle your soul. The scenario referenced in this poem is taken from the movie, Nine Days, where an impossible situation involving a sadistic prison guard is posited to test the mettle of a soul. This scenario is a classic moral conundrum. Humans apparently have a powerful connection to know win scenarios. How would you respond?
Con Tending With Not Sees
He axed the question
With a ledged subtlety
Like murder-suicide
A hypothetical interrogation
What due
In that concentration camp
Your progeny caught escaping
And a sadistic guard
Poses his most broodish hang up
That chide teetering on this stool
A sentry crying out in agonizing seconds
K-K-Kick that stool
Lessed
I
S-S-S-S-mother
S-S-S-S-laughter
The lot of you
The hole camp
He cried out agin
Barely Abel
To yack knowledge
Such an inquest
Fore only feeled
The question
I sad
The ball is in
You’re court
And what ever you
Might doo
Is on you
Here is the Nine Days movies script; search for “prisoner of war” for the sadistic guard scene to read how it plays out in the movie characters’ responses.
The response in this poem recognizes that the sadistic guard has all of the power in this situation and can do whatever they want, with or without your consent. In a sense, there is no moral question at all. If there is no power to carry out one’s moral agency, then there is essentially no moral agency. The conundrum is a cruel invitation to a cruel fiction surrounded by a cruel reality, where the added cruelty directed at the tortured subject to accede to participate in the furtherance of an exceedingly cruel reality may be the hole game. My take is that the most response-able action is to clarify this reality; that is, to put the ball back in their court. Of course, the most poignant way to do this begs a truly great launching pad for creative nonviolence. To me, the winning factor in this option is that it may be the truest form of recognizing the perpetrator’s moral responsibility, soul power, and immoral high ground. Exposing evil in its’s barest form may be the best we can due in such situations. Of course, the evil posited is pretty much off-the-scale evil from the get-go, so the wrest may just be aesthetics. Not surprisingly, many folks will round down the perpetrator’s humanity to “insignificant,” which might reflect another level of acceding to the perpetrator’s cruel and inhumane setup. Nonetheless, again, the moral agency of the tortured is powerless to force or enact a “winning” result, so, in such situations, doing whatever allows us to best feel free may just be the best we can do, or knot due.
