Aaron Bushnell and the Madness of Being Human in a Sick Society

Part IV in a series exploring the humanistic implications of Aaron Bushnell's self-immolation in protest of the war on Gaza

The following is the fourth part of a series examining the humanistic implications of Aaron Bushnell’s self-immolation. The reader will not encounter photographs of Bushnell’s self-immolation.

There is the greatest irony in social media commentators like Ben Shapiro describing Aaron Bushnell’s self-immolation as evidence of “mental disturbance.” Bushnell’s motive of trying to end the U.S. sponsored siege of Gaza, a high-tech campaign that has killed more than 19,000 women and children and is now causing people—including children—to wither away and die from starvation, is deemed irrelevant if not further evidence of his mental illness.

From the vantage point of figures like Shapiro, the mentally well-adjusted behavior is to accept the mass killing and famine unfolding before our eyes as rationally determined and ethically sound. We are expected to condemn the killing (by Hamas militants) of several hundreds of innocent (Israeli) people (on October 7) while simultaneously accept the killing (by the Israeli military with U.S. support) of tens of thousands of innocent (Palestinian) people (over five months) as ethically justified.

The fact that such thinking—which implies the rejection of logical consistency and the principle of ethical universality—is embraced by so many, including those in positions of power and authority, evidences a central thesis of The Sane Society (1955), a book by social theorist and psychologist Erich Fromm. In it he argued that just as individuals could be unwell, so, too, could entire societies. In chapter two, “Can a Society Be Sick? The Pathology of Normalcy,” Fromm wrote:

“The fact that millions of people share the same vices does not make these vices virtues, the fact that they share so many errors does not make the errors to be truths, and the fact that millions of people share the same forms of mental pathology does not make these people sane.”

In a sick society, defined as the antithesis of honoring and developing the virtues of humanity, a pathological characteristic—such as conforming to culturally dominant opinions at the expense of personal integrity, reason, and truth—may be “socially patterned,” woven into the taken-for-granted fabric of life. Unthinking conformists can be given the “feeling of achievement,” while those inclined to think critically can be made to feel like fools or outsiders.

According to Abraham Maslow, the truly healthy human being—the one who seeks to actualize their deepest and fullest human potentialities—is not one who “adjusts” to unjust social norms such as slavery, dictatorial oppression, and domineering familial relations. “What is sick then is not to protest while this crime is being committed,” wrote Maslow. “And I am sorry to report my impression that most people do not protest under such treatment.”

One of the challenges presented to individuals living within a “sick society,” Fromm explained, is that pathology is so normalized that humane nonconformists are deemed “unwell.” In his posthumously published book, The Art of Being, Fromm pointed out that the sane person, from an objective standard of activating our fullest humanity, might well be deemed “sick” in a pathological society.

“A person who has not been completely alienated, who has remained sensitive and able to feel, who has not lost the sense of dignity, who is not yet ‘for sale,’ who can still suffer over the suffering of others, who has not acquired fully the having mode of existence—briefly, a person who has remained a person and not become a thing—cannot help feeling lonely, powerless, isolated in present-day society. He cannot help doubting himself and his own convictions, if not his sanity.”

In Toward a Psychology of Being, Maslow wrote that it would be a mistake to conceive of self-actualization, the benchmark of human wellbeing, as “the transcendence of all human problems.” Though they tend to be less troubled with problems rooted in egoism and ignorance, “healthy human beings” remain in deep contact with fundamental problems of the human condition. Consequently, they experience a range of difficult feelings and experiences such as “Conflict, anxiety, frustration, sadness, hurt, and guilt….” With this in mind, Maslow rejected the notion that all who are untroubled are well. “To be untroubled when one should be troubled can be a sign of sickness.”

If by mental wellbeing we mean sensitivity to suffering, the capacity for love, relatedness to the real world, and objective reason, to include logical consistency, then it's clear those failing to recognize and respond to the moral catastrophe being exacted upon the people of Gaza are quite unwell, at least in this dimension of their lives.

Those who would convince us that we ought to go about our normal business while a population of mostly civilians is subjected to what Oxfam has concluded is the 21st century’s highest daily death rate resulting from war cannot be looked to as paragons of sanity. Those who would spend more time castigating the impropriety of a filmmaker condemning dehumanization or activists protesting the killing of innocents by disrupting a political speech cannot be said to be acting with clarity of mind. Indeed, many supporters of the U.S. supported Israeli war deny the most basic facts such as the death toll resulting from the U.S. supported Israeli bombardment,¹ the fact the overwhelming majority of those deaths are civilians, the voluminous examples of Israeli government officials making flagrantly dehumanizing if not outright genocidal statements, and the International Court of Justice’s determination that South Africa’s accusation that Israel is perpetrating a genocide against Palestinians is “plausible.”

While some would have us believe Aaron Bushnell’s capacity and willingness to sacrifice himself in an utterly agonizing manner is evidence of his insanity, we should consider the possibility that his action evidences a degree of human development many fail to achieve despite living much longer lives. To develop our humanity—to be mentally well in the sense of being fully human—entails being able to “love life,” explained Fromm, while also accepting “death without terror; to tolerate uncertainty about the most important questions with which life confronts us—and yet to have faith in our thought and feeling….” Given the accounts of his friends, Bushnell was a person who loved being alive and connecting with others. Yet his love for living was accompanied by a persistent awareness of intolerable injustice and suffering.

Aaron Bushnell by South African Dylan McGarry (Dylan Whale). Source

As previously argued, whatever we think of his cause, we can no more declare Bushnell’s self-immolation an instance of suicide than we can declare a stranger’s decision to jump in front of a hail of bullets to save a child as an instance of suicide. Bushnell’s actions were motivated by a fundamental regard for human life that has and remains at the heart of humanity and therefore human flourishing. That he would be declared mentally “sick” for prioritizing the lives of thousands over his own tells us little about Bushnell and quite a lot about the pathological state of our social conscience.

Existential Anguish, Moral Retching, and the Pornography of Atrocities Befalling Palestinians

The Healthy Humanity of Aaron Bushnell

Maladapted: Aaron Bushnell, Mental Health, and the Role of Heretics in Fostering Social Change

Self-Sacrifice is Not Suicide: Understanding Aaron Bushnell's Self-Immolation with Help from the Humanities

A Bound Prisoner's Unbowed Humanity

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1. A report published in The Lancet, published December 6, 2023, found “No evidence of inflated mortality reporting from the Gaza Ministry of Health.” The Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor reports that the reported death toll is actually conservative since it does not include those who have been missing for lengthy periods of time and are likely dead beneath bombed out buildings or elsewhere. Reports indicate U.S. intelligence has confidence in the Gaza health authorities’ death toll tally. Consumer rights advocate and public intellectual, Ralph Nader argues that the likely death toll is significantly higher than all current reporting suggests. “From accounts of people on the ground, videos and photographs of deadly episode after episode, plus the resultant mortalities from blocking or smashing the crucial necessities of life, a more likely estimate, in my appraisal, is that at least 200,000 Palestinians must have perished by now and the toll is accelerating by the hour.”