Monday, May 26, 2025

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.

5 comments:

  1. It angers me to be labelled antisemitic by virtue of being, at worst, somewhat anti-zionist.

    I once was an ardent supporter of Israel, believing it could do no wrong. That changed in the late 60s while I was in officers school.

    We had a guest lecturer, a young Canadian infantry lieutenant or captain just returned from a peacekeeping mission to the Gaza strip. He had a magnificent leather briefcase that contained the news magazines of the day - Life, Look, Saturday Evening Post. All three had coverage of the Arab-Israeli skirmishes along the border.

    He laid out all three and said they were not to be believed. He said they were full of pro-Israel propaganda. His job there was to investigate ceasefire breaches. He said the Israeli violations far outnumbered the Palestinians' Then he claimed what we were reading was hogwash.

    What impressed me most was his advice that we ought not to take one side or the other, especially based on what was dished out in these news magazines.

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    1. Hi Mound. Really good to hear from you. I did not know that the violations went all that way back. I'm guessing that the 1967 Arab-Israeli War had a lot to do with that. In those days, it was easy enough to see Israel as a small nation under siege. Indeed, its refusal to go back to pre-1967 borders was likely due to a realization of its vulnerability.

      The same , of course, cannot be said today. Despite the increasingly shrill cries of antisemitism by which the country justifies its depredations in Gaza, it is no longer a vulnerable tiny nation. It is now a world class bully that has increasingly relied on war crimes, the goal of which seems to be the total eradication of the Palestinians. How anyone outside of Israel thinks this is okay is beyond me. But in that puzzlement, I doubt I am alone.

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    2. Canadian soldiers served with UN peacekeepers in Gaza and Sinai from 56 to 67 and from 73 to 79. Part of their mission was to investigate ceasefire violations.

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  2. originated as a loose translation of a passage from Voltaire’s ‘Questions sur les miracles’ (1765).
    "Formerly there were those who said: You believe things that are incomprehensible, inconsistent, impossible because we have commanded you to believe them; go then and do what is injust because we command it. Such people show admirable reasoning. Truly, whoever can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities. If the God-given understanding of your mind does not resist a demand to believe what is impossible, then you will not resist a demand to do wrong to that God-given sense of justice in your heart. As soon as one faculty of your soul has been dominated, other faculties will follow as well. And from this derives all those crimes of religion which have overrun the world."
    Yes suicide is back on many menus.
    And this from the Talmud 500 C.E.
    "Whoever saves a single life is considered by scripture to have saved the whole world".
    ... like a wounded fawn my heart seeks refuge in the forest...
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oxHnRfhDmrk

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    1. Thanks, lungta. The Voltaire excerpt is spot on. Religions have been used historically to justify all kinds of atrocities. In the current mideast situation, I hope few are fooled by the notion that Israel represents God's Chosen People, and hence granted licence to do what it is doing.

      Thanks for the Don McLean link. Vincent has always been one of my favourites.

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