When you feel you are right, you have no doubts about it. You can initiate wars and atrocities without conscience. Doubts about a course of action only ‘get in the way’ of your ambition; your ‘rightness’.
A man with doubts necessarily looks at the results or consequences of this or that action. Someone who feels that they are ‘right’ does not even entertain the possibility of doubt.
Going further down the road of the consequences of the actions, which lead to bad results, only reinforces the ’rightness’ of the conviction. The ‘conviction’ comes under attack from inconvenient facts.
The personality under attack defends itself vigorously, going on the attack against perceived threats. The personality paints itself into a corner from which there is no escape, therefore it reinforces this conviction of ‘rightness’, refuses to acknowledge all and everything, which does not conform to the picture and the feeling of ‘faultlessness’.
This is a dangerous position to be in, for the person’s understanding of himself, and also for the rest of us, should he or she be in a position to make decisions that effect many peoples, countries and even the environment.
How can a person look at the results of his or her conviction of being ‘right’ such as the deaths of a million Iraqis, without conscience speaking up? The answer is simple – they bury their conscience or refuse to acknowledge that ‘still, tiny voice’.
This leads to a decisive ‘split’ in the psyche of such a person, a divide. The conscience is buried, but it is still there, perhaps manifesting itself in other hidden ways. An analogy could be that when you try to give up smoking, for example, on the surface you succeed, but do not notice that you are more irritable, or that you have taken an inordinate liking for eating chocolate.
What does this have to do with political personalities? You may well ask.
Many people who ‘go into politics’ profess that they do it for altruistic reasons; like wanting to make a difference; to bring ‘what the people want’ (and themselves) to come about. How can people who aspire to positions of power, reconcile their motivations to work for the good of the people, with the obvious climate of privilege and cronyism that prevails in every political system?
They must compromise or bury their conscience.
No man with a fully functioning conscience could possibly want to put himself into such a position as to make decisions for or on behalf of others. No woman either. Just ask any mother, who succumbed to the desire to have children, watching their offspring growing up and making mistakes. They are torn between guiding them and letting them learn for themselves. The mothers have doubts and if their consciences’ are near the surface, then their children grow up with that influence.
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