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Jack London’s “The Sea-Wolf”

 

            Let me begin with a question: Is there any bridge which can cross the immense sea that separates the hearts, the souls, of Hump and Wolf?  Or, more generally, between the amoral sociopath and the conscience-bound?  I fear the answer is likely no.  For I cannot imagine what could ever convince the one of the other’s position.

            With the same impossibility that Humphrey found in pulling the trigger and snuffing out the life and consciousness of even a creature he found as revolting as Wolf, the chilling coldness and inner darkness of the conscienceless finds similar trouble translating itself from the heart of stone to the heart of flesh.  And, as far as I can tell, this is not due to an error in reasoning by either party.  And in fact, from a purely rational standpoint, Wolf seems to win every argument.  I, along with Humphrey, cannot but acknowledge Wolf’s analyses of morality.  Yet, something – I scarcely know what to call it; conscience, altruism, compassion all seem somehow inappropriate terms – something in me tells me I could never adhere to Wolf’s “primitive” ethic, if I can call it such.

            Likewise, it seems similarly difficult that anything be done to “moralize” a brutish character such as Wolf – to compel him to view a life other than his own to have worth.  To have him drop what may be termed his Moral Theory of Relativity, that life only has worth to the particular individual living that life, seems a task more daunting than physically overpowering the domineering Captain Larsen.  And today, even, psychologists refer to sociopathy as a “noncorrectable disfigurement of character,” a bleak outlook for any potential “healer” of those who have been overcome by the extreme materialism and moral nihilism espoused by Wolf.

            And here again, we have the meshing of literature, philosophy, and science.  Where the novelist went first, modern science has followed.  In The Sea-Wolf we see the particular characteristics of a devilish fiend, while in contemporary studies of those without conscience we see these same traits echoed.  Psychologist Martha Stout, in her book The Sociopath Next Door, says “the only emotions that sociopaths seem to feel genuinely are the so-called ‘primitive’ affective reactions that result from immediate physical pain and pleasure, or from short-term frustrations and successes.”  London, we saw, termed such affective reactions Wolf’s “whims,” and even repeatedly refers to Wolf as somehow more “primitive” and primal.  And elsewhere, London and Stout are on the same page when Stout declares “sociopathy stands alone as a ‘disease’ that causes no dis-ease for the person who has it, no subjective discomfort.”  Wolf is no more discomforted by his violence than I am at squashing a mosquito, yet men like Humphrey wonder how a man like Larsen is untroubled by such things.

            And perhaps the two things that trouble me most are the fact that (if I may steal a phrase) perhaps reason is ill-fitted to combat the immense presence of evil at work in the world and the fact that those persons who most trouble me are rarely troubled themselves.  Because I know I am troubled.  Troubled by the fact that maybe crossing the chasm between those who love, those who attain to relational vulnerability and those who hate everything but their own life is as ill-fated as the schooner Ghost.  Can such a slippery thing as a tugging of the heart be an effective guide to objective action in the real world, in the physical realm?  I hope so, for as surely as Wolf defines his sense of living through momentary whims of action and brutality, dictated by the yeasty teeming flourish of material around him, I find my sense of life to be both created and affirmed as much by what I feel as by what I know.

If we cannot, theological or scientifically, determine when life begins (at conception, at birth, somewhere in between), how can we possibly err or the side of pro-choice? This isn't rhetorical. I'm actually asking.

Free will can't mean anything significant can it?  Either the universe is deterministic and everything is pre-determined, albeit unknown and perhaps unknowable beforehand, or the universe is indeterministic and things are brought about by chance, not algorithmically or by some sort of volition.  Either way, there is no room for "free will" as traditionally understood.  Discuss.