Why do people torture others? Why do they march others into gas chambers? Because some are psychopaths or sadists or power hungry. Depravity is in their DNA. Some are not inherently depraved but believe the situation demands torture. If others are evil and we are good, then we should kill and torture them with impunity. Such ideas result from the demonization of others, from a simplistic worldview in which good battles evil. If others torture, they are war criminals; if we torture are motives are pure. But the world is more nuanced than this. There is good and evil within us all.

he apologists for torture say they are protecting you. They may believe this but that doesn’t make it true. It may be in their interest to wage war, construct secret torture facilities or incarcerate millions in their home country, but it is probably not in yours. You or your children might be doing the fighting or the torturing, you might suffer the reprisals from the policies of the rich and powerful. Dick Cheney will get another deferment.

Moreover the torture advocates can easily turn you into instruments of their perversion, unlocking the perversion within you, as the Stanford Prison Experiment shows. If the best government jobs program hires mercenaries, then some sign up. But be warned. Those who were caught and photographed at Abu Ghraib were sentenced to prison—scapegoats for those who authorized the policies. Donald Rumsfeld received a book contract.

So do you really feel safer knowing that your corporate-owned government wages continual warfare and tortures around the world? That they incarcerate millions of their own citizens in high-tech dungeons? That thousands languish in solitary confinement for years, some since they were children?

That police often kill without repercussions? You may suffer no blowback. Perhaps your nationality, race or socio-economic class will shield you. But the depravity sown may also be reaped. If you are not among the rich and the powerful, the judge will not be lenient. If you are captured in a foreign land, being an American is not a plus.

Now I can construct thought experiments to justify torture or almost anything else. Should I imprison, torture or kill one to save a hundred? A utilitarian calculation says yes, one is less than a hundred. Torture’s defenders invoke such stories. They especially like the ticking time bomb scenario. It goes like this.

December, 2007: Hooded demonstrator stands outside of Capitol to protest the conditions of the Guantanamo Bay Detention Camp. (Photo: Takomabibelot)

There is a ticking time bomb ready to blow up an American city. (If you’ve been to many inner cities in America, you’ll find little left for a bomb to destroy.) The bomb will soon detonate and the man who planted it is in custody. Surely we shouldn’t be squeamish about torturing him to save thousands of lives. Supreme Court justice Antonin Scalia, a horrific human being, recently defended this argument. Scalia is a Catholic in good standing. So was the Grand Inquisitor.

The ticking time bomb story reminds me of Wittgenstein’s insight that we can be bewitched by a picture, seduced by simplistic examples that misrepresent the world. Think about the problems with this hypothetical story. You may kill this man before getting any relevant information, he may know nothing of the plan, there may be no such plan or he may lie to stop the torture.

In such cases your torturing was for naught, it did nothing but corrupt you. The image cheats because it assumes there is a ticking bomb and you have the man who planted or knows of it. In real life it never works that way.

In real life it works like this. There might be a bomb or an attack planned, and you may or may not have people in custody who knows something relevant. Now how long and how severely should you torture these people? If they don’t talk is that a sign that they don’t know anything or that you should up the torture? If you have twenty prisoners and are sure that one of them knows something important but you don’t know which one, do you torture all twenty? Should you torture suspects’ children to see if that induces them to give you the information you want?

Remember you don’t know if that will work until you torture their children. (The CIA of the United States used this tactic.) How many children do you torture before you stop? In such cases was your torture justified? Was it moral? Or did it engender hatred? Was it counter-productive?

If you are worried about enemies foreign and domestic why not just torture everyone who is a potential threat—college professors, torture opponents, ACLU members, Buddhist monks, grandmothers and bloggers who don’t like torture. Perhaps the enemies are among us like we thought they were during the McCarthy era. Maybe your colleague in torture is a spy. Should you torture him? Should he torture you?

​The picture of the ticking time bomb bewitches because it’s a fabrication. In the real world the choice isn’t one person’s pain versus the suffering of thousands, it is the moral affront of torture and its repercussions versus the possibility of finding something useful. Remember too that the story portrays the decision as a one-time emergency choice, while in the real world decisions are made in the context of procedures and policies. That’s why the following questions need to be asked to. Should we have professional torturers who, like medieval executioners, are schooled in their practices? Maybe a torture major in college?

Trade conventions showing the latest high-tech torture devices? These are not idle questions; they need to be addressed if we are to proceed.

So I ask. Do you really want to set a precedent of using barbaric practices that appeal to our worst instincts? Do we want to bring forth from human nature that which lies just below the surface of civility? Do you really want to create a torture culture and the people who inhabit it? Do you really want torturers walking among us? I think not.