What is the "thang?"

-- By MinKyungLee - 13 Feb 2012

One of the first lessons we learned in this class is that critical thinking involves “listening” and following that idea to inspiration. This essay is my attempt to follow Robinson’s idea of the “thang.”

Robinson's Metamorphosis and the “thang”

When the author says “I’ve never been able to figure you criminal-law types out,” Robinson responds, “it’s just some deep need to get as close as I can to the whole thing. To the essence of the thang.”

Criminal Law and Civilization's Pathology

Following this idea of “thang” is a linkage between criminal law and civilization. He characterizes criminal law as a representation of civilization’s pathology. I believe this statement about civilization is the first clue that could lead to deciphering of what the “thang” is.

The conventional wisdom is that criminals are pathologies of our society. Most people believe that criminals commit crimes (especially mala in se crimes) because they are evil or pathological. In the simplest sense, the conventional belief is that there is something different between us (normal) and the criminals (pathological).

However, I do not believe Ronbinson shares this conventional wisdom. In fact, he distinguishes between “civilization’s pathology” and “pathology of our criminals,” hinting that crimes are not necessarily related to pathological states of individual’s minds. Instead, he seems to suggest that crimes represent pathology of our system of civilization (and society) as a whole. Another statement that highlights this idea is, “some of the kindest people I’ve ever known are rapists, and some of the most despicable animals on the face of the earth are rapists.”

Then, what is civilization? I think civilization is institutionalization of human nature. For instance, Freud theorizes that thanathos- the conception of death (and more widely interpreted as violence) - is part of human nature. Civilization is not negating this nature of destruction but rather learning how to institutionalize violence. To give a more concrete example, if non-civilized people were guided by their desire for food, civilized people learn how to suppress, control, and express this desire in a systematized way (only eating a certain amount, table manners, develop love for food that requires ‘learning how to love it.’)

Extending this idea of civilization to criminal law, I think what Ronbinson means by “the criminal law represents civilization’s pathology” is that criminals are institutionalized to express their part of destructive nature in a different way than how non-criminals are institutionalized to express it.

Maybe he means something about the criminal law itself and not about criminals at all?

Vietnam and "the reconciliation of freedom and the state."

Another clue that could lead us to understanding to the “thang” is Robinson’s experience in Vietnam. Robinson explains that his experience of being drafted is “the reconciliation of freedom and the state.”

No. The narrator says that when, during law school, he asked about Robinson's experience in combat he responded with a lecture on (his phrase at the time) "the reconciliation of freedom and the state."

As one of my classmates intelligently pointed out, initial understanding of this statement is that war restricts a person’s liberty for the purpose of advancing the state’s interest, thus requiring a person to reconcile between freedom and the state.

However, I form a different understanding to this statement. If one kills a person in our society, one gets penalized because killing of another (except self defense and other excusable defenses ) is a “crime.” However, the same act of killing another person is not always criminalized for soldiers in a war. One can explain this difference in an easy way by saying soldiers are different because they are acting in self-defense.

Then it would be the same. It is different because soldiers are explicitly not killing in self-defense.

Although this answer might be true for a solider engaging in direct combat with the enemy, what about people who press buttons to launch a missile? Are they acting in self defense? Other than expanded notion of preservation of his side, the answer is no.

Then, how does this difference relate to the idea of reconciliation between the state and freedom? I think this concept of reconciliation is much more complicated than balancing competing ideas of state control and individual freedom. I think it relates to the state adopting a different way of institutionalizing the same part of destructive human nature to fulfill its purpose. Consequently, soldiers who engage in a combat receive more freedom in terms of being allowed to channel their nature in a previously prohibited way, but at the same time, this freedom is not really “freedom” because it is another form of institutionalization allowed by the state.

But soldiers in combat are not allowed to kill: they are ordered to kill. And more than being ordered to kill, they are also ordered to die. I don't think you've understood Robinson yet here.

Other pathways to the “thang”

Kafka

In addition to the text itself, there are other clues that can lead us to discovering what the “thang” is. Robinson mentions “Conversations with Kafka” and a quote well-discussed in class, “I am, after all, a lawyer. I am never far from evil.” I read the segment of the book that contains this quote to explore what Kafka might have meant and what Robinson might have understood from this statement.

This quote appears when Kafka criticizes the idea of publication when he, himself, is a published author. After blaming his friends for being responsible for publishing his work, he admits that, “I make circumstances stronger than they actually are.” Just before the lawyer-evil statement, he explains that he engages in deceit of over-emphasizing the circumstances so that his own contribution to the act that he finds so shameful is minimized.

Examining this position of lawyer-evil statement, I think Kafka wants to hint that this notion of “evil” is related to engaging in a deceitful act of rationalizing one’s action by blaming the system.

Are we trying to understand what Kafka meant, or what Robinson meant by quoting him? Perhaps, as both Robinson and Kafka are both being ironic, the primary meaning of the phrase could be the same for each, and it is the ironic second idea behind that differs? Or maybe one means literally what the other meant only ironically?

Conclusion

Following this clue, my aim is not to find an answer for Robinson but to decipher what Robinson meant by the “thang.” The clues lead me to the idea that the “thang” is the mystery of man’s inhumanity to man.

What I want to get closer with this idea of “thang” is to contemplate how different social institutions contribute to man’s inhumanity to man.