Masks and Humanity

“It was grotesque, this mask! But a humane social order is not always achieved without the grotesque, and sometimes not without the cruel… But let us not concern ourselves with masks.” Machado de Assis, Father versus Mother, 89

(this does not fit Machado's description exactly,
but it gives you an idea of the cruelty)

After taking a large paragraph to describe these masks chained onto runaway slaves, Machado de Assis casually says, "let us not concern ourselves with masks."

I think that is exactly what he would like us to concern ourselves with.

The French philosopher Emmanuel Levinas had the idea that if we truly saw the infinite aspects of that person—then we would not have the capacity to willingly do them harm. But when we put a finite label on them, take away the face-to-face, put on masks, their humanity disappears, and we can justify hurting them.

This reminded me of the way propaganda historically has shown the enemy in war as monsters. Look at the way World War II had a continuous propaganda stream objectifying the Japanese people, turning them into daemons.  

 

In Machado de Assis’ story, Candinho catches runaway slaves for a profession, if you can call it that. How do we catch, bind, or beat another human?

How do you allow young men to attack a generation of Japanese?

We must make them inhuman with a mask.

Even though these slaves in the story are not always wearing the physical metal mask Machado de Assis describes, they have a label, the mask of “runaway slave.”  For Candinho, when the slave plead for the safety of her unborn child, he saw her only as “money.” When we went to kill thousands of Japanese, they were simply, “Japs”

The Japanese were fighting parallel to us. They had allies, land, and a way of life to defend. We didn’t sympathize, we labeled them, in order to have our young boys kill them.

With such a parallel to Candinho’s own situation—the potential loss of a child looming ahead— there should be a large case for sympathy on his part. But because the woman is no longer human in his eyes, “He did not give a hang about the miscarriage.”

Is it an unavoidable aspect of human nature to label? Is there a way we can look at our enemy with true humanity? Could they still be our enemies if we do?