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Where does the Australian fear of asylum seekers arriving

by boat come from?AAP/Scott Fisher

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26 July 2013, 6.12am AEST

Drowning mercy: why we fear the boats

Patrick Stokes

Lecturer in Philosophy at Deakin University

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Patrick Stokes does not work for, consult to, own shares in or receive funding from any

company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has no relevant affiliations .

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Theres a Latin word:

misericordia .

Its usual ly translated mercy

or pity. Thomas Aquinas

took misericordia to be a kind

of grief at the suffering of

others as if that suffering

were our own. Alasdair

MacIntyre, the leading

modern exponent of Thomist

virtue ethics, sees

misericordia as a

responsiveness to the
http://www.newadvent.org/summa/3030.htmhttp://jobs.theconversation.edu.au/jobs/5298-lecturer-economics?utm_source=theconversation.com&utm_medium=website&utm_campaign=articlehttp://jobs.theconversation.edu.au/jobs/5300-lecturer-organisational-behaviour?utm_source=theconversation.com&utm_medium=website&utm_campaign=articlehttps://theconversation.com/profiles/patrick-stokes-10346https://theconversation.com/profiles/patrick-stokes-10346https://theconversation.com/auhttp://books.google.com.au/books?id=EYSotaFYZYIC&q=misericordia#v=snippet&q=misericordia&f=falsehttp://www.newadvent.org/summa/3030.htmhttp://jobs.theconversation.edu.au/search/organisations/deakin-university?utm_campaign=article&utm_medium=website&utm_source=theconversation.comhttp://jobs.theconversation.edu.au/jobs/5298-lecturer-economics?utm_source=theconversation.com&utm_medium=website&utm_campaign=articlehttp://jobs.theconversation.edu.au/jobs/5299-lecturer-marketing?utm_source=theconversation.com&utm_medium=website&utm_campaign=articlehttp://jobs.theconversation.edu.au/jobs/5300-lecturer-organisational-behaviour?utm_source=theconversation.com&utm_medium=website&utm_campaign=articlehttps://theconversation.com/profiles/patrick-stokes-10346https://theconversation.com/region/switch?region=auhttps://theconversation.com/region/switch?region=ukhttps://theconversation.com/au


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distress of others that offers the sam e concern we would normally show to those in our own

family, community or country to total strangers.

Misericordia in this sense is the virtue of the Good Samaritan; its the virtue the ancient

Chinese sage Mencius describes in the way we would rush to help a child who has fallen

down a well, not through hope of reward, but simply through concern for the child any

child.

You might say this particular virtue went miss ing at sea the day the Special Air Service was

ordered to board the MV Tampa. We have been doing our best to keep it from s urfacing ever

since.

And so it has com e to this. Not only are we denying asylum seekers arriving by boat any

prospect of resettlement in Australia, we are publishing pictures of their anguish at being

told so. Whether this is genuinely meant to deter people from risking death on the high

seas , or whether, as Melbourne philos opher Damon Young put it, its immigration torture

porn for xenophobes, it seems we now see the suffering of others as an opportunity to

exploit rather than a call to action.

The consensus among the commentariat has been that all this will go over beautifully in an

electorate that has long seen boat arrivals as a standing existential threat. As journalis t

David Marrpoints out, Rudd is merely the latest prime minis ter to play on our

disproportionate fear of boat people. The moves are new but the game itself is decades

old.

Its a bizarre national obses sion and it begs for answers : why are we so scared of the

boats?

No doubt s traightforward racism is a very big part of it. But that cant be the whole story: if it

were, why has the government not been pilloried for talking about raising the overall

humanitarian intake? Why is there no comparable outrage over the considerably larger

number of asylum s eekers who arrive in Australia by air? If its about respect for Australian

law, wheres the outrage overvisa overstayers, a much larger cohort than asylum seekers?

If its driven by opposition to population growth, where were all those F Off, Were Full

stickers when the Baby Bonus was introduced?

So what is it that boat arrivals symbolis e that other forms of arrival dont? Well, heres a stab

at an answer: they remind Australians that we havent earned what weve got.

Consider John Howards We will decide who comes to this country and the circumstances

in which they come line. That same message has been built into all our rhetoric on boat

arrivals ever s ince: we dont have to take you, and unless you come here entirely on our

terms, we wont. Form an orderly line, jump through this s et of hoops, and maybe well let

you in. Youre welcome.

This emphasis on sovereignty over mercy serves to bols ter the idea that our way of life is

somehow ours by right, and so within our gift to bestow or withhold however we see fit. A

gift, by its nature, must be freely given and gratuitous; it cannot be demanded of us . And it

mus t be ours to give; we can only share what we ourselves are entitled to.

Except, of course, we havent earned s uch an entitlement at all.

Consider what Howards former chief of staff Arthur Sinodinos told a Q&A audience this

week:
http://www.abc.net.au/tv/qanda/txt/s3795782.htmhttp://museumvictoria.com.au/immigrationmuseum/discoverycentre/identity/videos/politics-videos/john-howards-2001-election-campaign-policy-launch-speech/http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-lM6hi8flQoI/Tbo02OvZ5zI/AAAAAAAAAA8/Ba9_9j3LzT0/s1600/image.jpghttp://www.news.com.au/national-affairs/immigration/more-visa-over-stayers-than-asylum-seekers/story-fn9hm1gu-1226493178289http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/jul/22/captain-rudd-australia-depths-shamehttps://twitter.com/damonayoung/status/359165907047690240https://theconversation.com/worth-a-thousand-words-the-imagery-of-asylum-seeker-politics-16310http://www.iep.utm.edu/mencius/#H6


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our obligationis to give people protection. It is not to guarantee them a first world

lifestyle in every case when they come to Australia.

But then, by what right are we guaranteed such a lifestyle? What law of nature or reason

determines that we get to live in luxury simply by virtue of the accident of birth?

Consider the slogan bandied about during the Cronulla riots: I grew here, you flew here

as i f it was a personal achievement to be born on this part of the earths surface at this point

in his tory. Its not. Its sheer dumb luck. Its nice to be lucky, but its no merit.

I suspect on some level thats what boat arrivals remind us of: the radical contingency of

everything we have. Its not just that were repulsed by undeserved mis fortune there but

for the grace of God go I"; really makes you think, doesnt it? were deeply unsettled by

undeserved good fortune too.

As a species we always have been. Thats why we invented doctrines like karma, so we

could insist that those born into abased misery or obscene privilege must, somehow, begetting their just deserts. In the modern West we have a s imilar myth: that anyone can

make i t if they just work hard enough, and so the poor must s imply be lazy, undeserving

as if talent and even the capacity for hard work itsel f arent themselves dealt out by random

chance.

Australias lack of true compassion for asylum seekers has

come at a human cost.AAP/Karis Salna

Acknowledging such radical contingency knocks the ground from under out feet. It suggestsour claim to our prosperity ultimately rests on happy accident rather than cosmic justice. No

amount ofCronulla capes and bumper s tickers and half-remembered tales of Bradman

riding Phar Lap to victory at Gallipoli can change that.

K.E. Lgstrup, a 20th century Danish moral philosopher who deserves to be much better

known outside Scandinavia than he is, argued that once we see the gratuitousness of what

we have, we can no longer stand on our own rights in order to begrudge others our help.

Our individual sovereignty is shattered by the realisation that everything we have is ,

ultimately, a gift weve received, not an entitlement weve earned.

Perhaps thats why the boats scare us: they remind us of a far more demanding ethics

lurking behind our comfortable norms of reciprocity and exchange. Perhaps thats at least

part of why we go to such lengths to dehumanise, to demonise, to refuse to see asylum

seekers in their full humanity.
http://loegstrup.au.dk/en/loegstruparchive/http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=Cronulla%20capehttp://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2011/jan/26/australia-day-patriotism


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None of what Ive just written fixes the problem or even offers any policy suggestions

whatsoever. Understanding our motives wont stop people dying at sea as I write this, yet

more l ives have just been los t.

But the moral demand to respond with misericordia hasnt gone away. And we cannot act

moral ly, or even see others properly, if were more concerned about justifying our own

privilege.

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Drowning Mercy_ Why We Fear the Boats