Thus conscience does make cowards of us all

Helena is walking well these days.  She can stand up on her own for minutes at a time, and walks from one side of the room to the other with very good balance.  Until, that is, she realizes what she is doing.  Then, like Wily E. Coyote running off the edge of a cliff in his vain pursuit or the Roadrunner, she looks at her feet, looks at Rita or me, and falls to the ground.  She can do it only as long as she isn't aware of what she is doing.

Hamlet's famous like that "conscience makes cowards of us all" has become a kind of moral cliché, coming to mean that we would do many more things if our conscience didn't stop us.  In fact, though, conscience has not always referred to that little white angel on the shoulder of a character in a cartoon.  Conscience is awareness, knowledge.  And Helena has found that the moment of self-awareness can be much more fearsome than the thing itself.

Though I don't have much opportunity these days, for many years I loved to rock climb, and as any rock climber can tell you, conscience does make cowards of us all.  I remember one climb in the El Dorado Canyon, west of Boulder, which tested my skills.  Even as I sweated each move, I made my way up the rock, using a wide crack.  Yet the moment I levered myself onto the top of the pitch, clipped into the belay station, and looked down... I knew I'd never be able to climb any higher.  Unthinking, I had been able to make the climb.  Conscious of what I was doing, I had no chance, and somehow I knew I would fall.  I told my brother to lower me down to the ground, and we went home.  A week later, my heart was still beating at an accelerated pace.

I wonder to what degree Hegel's ideas about negation and consciousness have to do with this same phenomenon.  Hegel saw the world before conscience, as somehow present to itself, but the moment that someone becomes aware of the world -- and aware of herself being aware of the world -- it is no longer a seamless whole.  A crack has opened up.  And according to Hegel, this is the beginning of history and, if we think deeply enough, of humanity itself.  Animals don't reflect on the world, don't open up that gap, but people do.  (Perhaps, by the way, this is why we empathize with Wily E. Coyote, and not with the Roadrunner).

So even though I feel sorry for Helena whenever she realizes what she is doing and then falls to the floor, it is also wonderful.  Conscience make make cowards of us all, but it also makes us human.