- To be edited further

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.

It is important to note that Robinson describes “criminal law” as civilization’s pathology, and not the criminals. 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 system of criminal law represent pathology of civilization. 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? Robinson describes civilization as “our idealized sense of what makes us human.” Criminal law itsef is an abnormalie of civilization so it means that criminal law system is inconsistent with what makes us human. Civilization here, represents a civilization in the American culture: so the people who we deem do not represent the idealized sense of what makes human are explosive rather than implosive. As we discussed, Japanese people confine themselves. But in American society where inhumanity of one human towards another human is expressed publically, we need to confine them. Criminal law serves a function of confining the people who hurt the notion of what makes us human. As a consequence, it creates a division of those that we feel are fit under our definition of civilization and those who are not: thus, creating a distance and disassociation between us and “them.” Therefore, this ciriminal law almost facilitates the conventional wisdom that there is something distant and different about the criminals and us.

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. When the narrator asks about Robinson’s experience in combat, he responded that it was “the reconcilliaton of freedom and state.”

In combat, solidiers are not only allowed to kill but also ordered to kill. However, there is always an option of non-participation in combat. In spite of this choice, soldiers participate, claiming that it is under their duty to do so. So it’s almost as if the state is removing the inhabitions that the people always had. Relating back to civilization, our idealized vision of what makes us human would not ordering the people to kill or even when ordered, required to show sanctity for human life by nto abodiging by the order. But by under the guise of the state order, people are removing the inhabitions and being contrary to our idealized self. This blurs the line once again, between those who represent civilization and inhumanity of man against another man.

Having witnessed this tension, Robinson himself is trying to dissociate himself with the act of killing by describing his experience and “reconciliation between the freedom and the state,” almost hinting the notion that he had to compromise his free will for the order of the state.

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. I want to follow this idea to what Robinson meant by quoting him.

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.” Kafka’s act is not abiding by the his idealized vision of who he is. In his conception, he does not want to be published but in reality he is. And just like we dissociate ourselves from murders, Robinson dissociates himself with the act of killing, Kafka dissociates himself with the act of publishing that he despises.

By the phrase, “I am, after all , a lawyer. I am never far from evil” thus signals more than a literal notion that lawyers are around criminals or crimes (evils in society). I think Robinson, by quoting this phrase from Kafka, wants to speak to a braoder sense that the lawyers are neve far from evil because they themselves witness the blurry lines between civilization and pathology through the mystery of man’s inhumanity to man, thus meaning in an ironical sense.

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. And the dissociation that one has to make between the act of inhumanity and oneself to sustain the idealized sense of what makes us human.