The King Kong syndrome

The story of King Kong, while a cheesy and campy snapshot from pop culture, serves as a nearly perfect moral allegory. The story itself has exquisite dramatic possibilities. The village has a strange and terrible problem with a VERY unfortunate solution: to save themselves and others they must strap a poor helpless sacrifice to a pole where she will meet her terrifying and agonizing death via Kong. And it almost steems like a practical choice to avoid further problems with the ape.

But in a less Machiavellian and calculating view of the world, what the villagers are doing is at the very least acting out the famous quote by Edmund Burke:

"All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing."

Evil in this allegorical story triumphs actually because of the people who assist Kong certainly, but more generally because of the whole system that is organized around maintaining the monster's minimum victim requirements. There are those that accept the situation and others that actively participate. This is extremely illustrative of what happens in just about every case of accepting and being an accessory to evil that I can think of: within societies, businesses, social groups and families.

Moral instruction only works (and I am sure that is one of the limitations of it) when we are humble enough to consider weaknesses. That is why say the story of the ten virgins is said to be directed at church members and not the culture as a whole because the church members are the ones reading the scriptures in the first place to hopefully see themselves there. And if we are Kong it is probably too much to expect that we would drop our malicious ways. That is why I feel like the most interesting characters in the KK story are the villagers. They have to decide whether to aid and abet it or try and sacrifice doing something about it. There are ten things in my opinion that keep the villagers happily helping the giant monkey boy instead of trying to save the victim:

1. In the face of scary mean victimizers (or evil or whatever the analogy is), most of the time we help Kong get someone else because we are simply so glad that it isn't coming for us.

2. Perhaps in some cases we think that there is something about us that earns us the privilege of not being chosen for lunch.

or

3. Perhaps those who become victims bring it on themselves.

So perhaps that person that is mean to someone else (King Kong) likes us because of how much better we are than the one that is the target of their meanness. But of course there could be no reason why Kong should want to be mean to others so there should be no reason that makes us deserving of escape. So villagers justify themselves being lucky and escaping meanness from mean people based on what they know is faulty logic. Mean people don't have reasons to be mean any more than they have to be nice to the people they aren't mean to.

But that doesn't prevent the beginning of creating a wishful-thinking version of the cosmos as we usually do. As we usually do we assume that things should happen the way we want to us, including having mean people be somehow magically nice to us instead of others without really knowing why we got so lucky because we understand that the fates would just happen to be on our side, and that God or the stars or whatever tolerate misfortunes when they happen others but intervene with Kong to keep him from getting us and ours.

Perhaps we even feel fine benefiting from Kong's increased capacity to be nice to us because they don't have to share their niceness with others, after all...

4. It isn't our fault. Anyway, what could we really DO about it if people are going be that way anyway? Kong will keep coming. We are powerless to stop him from coming at least by ourselves. We might as well at least enjoy the fact that Kong likes us, right?

But even if someone wouldn't be disturbed by the idea of cooperating with Kong even if they can be nice to us even though they are mean to others. Even if Kong is only turning their wrath elsewhere, the cost is certainly prohibitive. The cost is that we have behaved cooperatively with some pretty horrible stuff that we would feel bad if we ourselves or loved ones got the short end of.

That is rare in literature if you think about it. It is rare for antagonists in a story to have their side portrayed so sympathetically in such a way that we think we might under the right circumstances do the same thing. We don't for example view ourselves as the Wicked Queen in Snow Shite or as Thomas Cromwell in A Man for All Seasons.

5. But in this case strangely many of us say, well I would probably do the same thing after all what would be the point of NOT doing it?

And it is not really surprising when you think about it because it is exactly what we actually DO do practically the same non dramatic equivalent on a regular basis. What one of us doesn't for instance feel fine practically about people victimized in other countries without us intervening on the national scale or in our social situations we see no use in weighing in when someone in our work office or families are hurt by someone who is malicious, feeling superior, or even just indifferent? We actually many times help the situation for the perpetrator of these crimes in very real ways.

6. We tell ourselves that our obligation is to not take sides or make object because that would make things even more 'contentious.' As if we have a responsibility to Kong to get along with him by LETTING him be mean without interferng. After all what good would it really do to stand up for the innocent because how much could we ever change anyone's hearts or actions? People don't change, right?

The answer is, in many ways that's really not true, they do change, and particularly they change when they test the social wind and it ever blows against them. If people sense that there is a reduced tolerance of what they are doing they will often stop. Many people gauge their responses and stop their malicious or inappropriate behavior just short of what will get them in trouble with the particular people they care about. Since people have a reduced sensitivity to what happens to others versus what happens to them personally Kong can interact widely in the world with much of his meanness only being perceived by the victims.

Many things continue therefore only because they know that at least a bare minimum of the people around them will accept it. Specifics of this include the level of sexual morality in society that will deteriorate rapidly when the behavior in question is accepted by the larger culture. How many marriages and children then become victims, not just directly to immorality but indirectly because the rest of us stand by and watch? That means that in a very real way we create the evil by accepting it.

7. Well if I take sides it won't be fair even if I side with the victim. I should remain neutral even when it is obvious there is a victim

The thought that the victim might actually defend themselves or that someone ELSE unspecified should defend an innocent victim is often not a good solution. Very likely just as in Kong it probably is not ever a fair fight. She could never defend herself.

It is also very likely the case that those who already find themselves as victims also have no defenders. Bullies in the school yard as we all remember very rarely pick on those in the best position to defend themselves. Kong and human bullies tend to gang up on people who are weak and friendless already. People are rarely eager unfortunately to be friends to the friendless, they more often climb over each other to be friends to the people that already have the most and leave the weak alone to fend for themselves against Kong. In fact many that are the most sensitive to

8. We assist Kong by criticizing victims for defending themselves.

No one punishes bad behavior like they punish the people that point out bad behavior in others. Even if people are saying hey Kong is being mean to me, that person will be blamed for the situation. It is just a sad reality.

9. People don't help because of stander by effect - nothing I do could help and I am sure someone will get involved if someone really needs help (the reason why people are attacked and killed in plain daylight with people watching).

We all know those movies in the classroom where no one will raise their hand until everyone else does and then it does little good. People need the greatest amount of defending when there is no one doing any not when there are many already doing it, and of course that is when no one will.

10. Kong is going to whomp on me himself if I do anything.

True. And this is the most immobilizing one of all for the standby er. Often the consequences to those who would fight evil are dire and there isn't anything that can be done about it. In fact it is probably only a Hollywood ending when ultimately something as powerful as King Kong gets fought and conquered. But considering the examples of some of the actual dramas where this has played out for real, God may be ok with a culture even being nearly destroyed if need be (and there are many precedents of it actually BEING destroyed) rather than wanting that same culture to institutionally justify the most despicable possible behaviors.

How excited is God most likely if when a King Kong syndrome exists (a terrible evil that is in an organized fashion aided and abetted by the rest of the village), and that village in turn thinks they are doing the right thing by playing it easy and not doing something to fight Kong? Not good. In fact it is a true horror story. And it isn't pleasant to think about what this means for us practically, but God might be fine with the fact that many of us will actually suffer trying to fight evil.

You mean God doesn't just want us to do the things that we 'feel really good about?' and the things that make us really happy and content like only being nice to the people that we like and don't need our help much anyway? Probably not, really, I mean what would be the precedent to think so? Not the New Testament anyway, where we clearly don't get credit for giving service to those to whom service comes naturally. Most of the Book of Mormon prophets lost everything doing God's will and I am not sure what is so different about our day that would mean that God's will for us is to order pizza and watch videos with buddies or whatever else we think is our idea of an easy fun time. He clearly expects us to and has used many a sacrifice of innocent people to assist Him in fighting Kong's various manifestations.

And how could it possibly be the case that God would be fine with evil surviving and thriving undisturbed because it would mean that that the rest of us wouldn't just be able to stay as much as possible in our comfort zones? It would certainly be ludicrous to think that. But it is very common for people to calculate that God wants them personally to do what is most comfortable to them: God wants this because it is the best for me. God wants it because I want it and it makes me happy. Therefore we declare what we want God's will and end up with what we want and feeling righteous for doing it. But I think it is very likely that the number of times when it is actually true that God sees things sympathetically to our own way of thinking at least if that way of thinking allows a great level of evil or victimization is not a big number.

So, I have some work to do but this is the germination here for a moral allegory along the lines of Pilgrim's progress wit a modern day pop culture icon, which is helpful for youth and things like that when they are developed usefully, if I get busy and work it through. Of course I have no idea whether the creators of this story or this cultural icon meant any deep significance by it. But this simple image is somehow a fantastic allegory of Edmund Burke's famous assessment. It is in many ways, however, a disturbingly pessimistic one: Evil will probably triumph much of the time because of how powerful it is and how many people it has helping.

But the implication and moral of this story is clear to. Evil can be fought. Certainly not easily, and not without great cost to us personally. We will probably much more of the time make the calculations of the villagers that even when we see evil and its innocent victims that perhaps the cost to the rest of us of fighting evil would be worse than the status quo. But the cost of not fighting it, to all of us, is clearly much worse, not only in real terms but in poetic ones. It is the cost of knowing that evil exists with us all of us as accomplices even when it gets that clear and extreme. What one of us really wants to make sure that the waters are smoothed over in a world like that?