On Moral Injury

A moral injury is a severe stress reaction following the experience of an event or a recurrence of situations that contradict an individual’s moral beliefs. Moral injury is characterized by enduring feelings of guilt, shame, disgust, anger, contempt, and hopelessness. In severe cases, this may lead to suicidal thoughts and suicide attempts. Moral injury appears to impact one’s capacity for trust and elevate despair.

I have been thinking a great deal lately about the genocide going on in Gaza. Almost daily, we are presented with images of starvation, mutilation and death. Especially difficult to watch are the images of innocent children being made to pay a price no one should have to pay for the madness of others. It is often too much even for a stalwart soul like me.

Rhiannon Lucy Cosslett writes feelingly on this topic, wondering about its effect on the human soul.

I have seen images on my phone screen these past months that will haunt me as long as I live. Dead, injured, starving children and babies. Children crying in pain and in fear for their mothers, fathers, sisters, brothers. A small boy shaking in terror from the trauma of an airstrike. Scenes of unspeakable horror and violence that have left me feeling sick.

As we watch, horrified, we feel a pervasive helplessness and hopelessness; any action we might take, whether it be letter-writing, protests, donations to relief groups, seems to have at best a miniscule effect on the carnage, and little balm for the soul.

This overarching sense of impotence when confronted with unimaginable horror is creating a mass sense of moral injury – a form of profound psychological distress that can happen to people when they are forced to act, or indeed not act, in ways that are in direct opposition to their values or moral code.  

But that feeling of powerlessness and, as an extension, complicity: what does it do to those around the world who feel what is happening is wrong? What is the impact of witnessing so much profound suffering – even through a screen – and feeling unable to act or to force others to act?

We in the West live cosseted lives; no matter how bad one's personal situation may be, it is nothing compared to what the people of Gaza experience daily. Our own sense of guilt and shame here is especially acute if we have children or grandchildren. As a grandparent, I know all to well the ardent hope I harbour for a good and fulfilling life for my grandchildren, but the knowledge that I would do anything to protect them hardly assuages what the writer calls moral injury.

There is something about being in the daily company of a little person – their innocence, their vulnerability, their silliness, their loving nature – that makes the pain of any other child feel like a profound affront. But I know you don’t have to be a parent to feel horror at what is being inflicted on Gaza’s children in the most visceral way. I believe – or at least I used to – that it is ingrained in us, as humans, to feel a collective responsibility towards children, and that this collective responsibility can extend beyond borders.

 Feeling powerless in the face of such egregious injustice can result in a loss of trust or faith, not just in governments and institutions but also in the moral order of the world, and its ability to protect children. I wonder what the impact of this will be: will it, as certain politicians no doubt hope, result in a numbness that presents as indifference? Traumatic events can result in a lack of affect – millions more people should be marching and raising their voice – but they can also be channelled into righteous anger.

I certainly feel a profound loss of faith. Something I felt to be true about humanity – that people are fundamentally good, that we owe it to children to protect them – has shifted because of this conflict. I walk around with a feeling of heaviness that I cannot seem to shake. Thousands of miles from Gaza, I am changed by the past 18 months. I have learned that, for some people, compassion for children has political limits. What does one do with that terrible knowledge once it sits inside you like a leaden stone? I don’t seem be able to find an answer. 

We have all borne witness to the darkness our species is capable of.  And none of us emerges unscathed after tasting of that bitter fruit.