Psychology · Chapter 12 · Simon: trauma & survival
Not Pain — Only Stillness
Moral licensing: the sacred 'I will do no harm'
“The thought mattered to him; it was almost sacred.” Every act of violence has a clean story the perpetrator tells himself. Simon repeats his “almost sacredly” — each time he checks the chains: not pain, only stillness, only honesty. The promise not to harm has become the pass that permits harm: since I do not want pain, what I am doing is not violence.
This is moral licensing — the mechanism that lets a person who is good in his own eyes do monstrous things without ever meeting them. Note the vocabulary: “absolute honesty”, “a conversation”, “to listen”. Kidnapping and chains have been renamed into the language of intimacy. The more sacred the inner formula sounds, the further the person stands from what he is actually doing.
