The Microphysics of Depp versus Heard
In an effort to mimic econophysicists (or bloody Foucault), I might have said once or twice that Capital is centripetal; wealth attracts wealth and rarely follows logic or justice. Having a large sum accumulating interest the clearest example we can all understand. Public Opinion, I suspect, is subject to similar forces.
Like many among you, I followed the trial of defamation of John Christopher Depp II vs Amber Laura Heard rather closely. My motives are personal, enough to go against a natural tendency of not giving a fuck about celebrities, much less of their intimate lives. Yet, it provided me with an analogy and a benchmark for my personal experience of living for six to seven years with a woman that was psychologically, and sometimes physically abusive, to me. Yes, I do take a molecule of pride in knowing that I never retaliated, and no, I don’t fancy myself as a hero, nor less of a man for enduring the ordeal. This will be important down below.
Debating high-profile cases is how society learns, often badly. The harvest of popular wisdom, as with the accumulation of Capital, seldom follows fairness or equanimity. And sooner than fortunes, it goes bankrupt. While yesterday every victim said #MeToo and every man was a villain-perpetrator, today, Depp is a victim of a lying, scheming female abuser. Tomorrow or in five minutes, the testimony of another of Depp’s exes might swing public opinion the other way, again. Here, the mechanics resemble the physics of the other Foucault, Jean-Bernard Léon, that pendulum guy. And like with the pendulum, the centre of mass or truth, lies somewhere in the middle.
Both Mr Depp and Mrs Heard seem to have a family history of either psychological abuse, substance abuse or both. According to Mr Depp’s account, his mother was continuously denigratory to her husband and her children. Mrs Heard claims to have had family traumas of her own. She openly admitted her own father, sister and herself took part in copious alcohol libations, and/or the consumption of MDMA, mushrooms, opiates and/or cocaine with Mr Depp.
I am not a Punitivist. I lean towards the de-penalisation of drugs from the argument that throwing addicts in jail does nothing to deter or curve consumption and rather worsens it. Similar propositions can be reached either from a Libertarian or Regulationist standpoint, a topic I’d save for another post. For now, suffices to say the liberty to attain extreme pleasure comes with a price, as the Buddha and Epicurus of Samos have warned us long time ago. Medical literature calls these substances Stupefacients for a reason. From the Latin “stupere”, amazed or stunned; yes, you guessed, drugs make you stupid.
With this combo of family history of violence and addiction, it would be remarkable that the inherited pattern of behaviour didn’t repeat within the confines of their marriage. If there was no abuse, no quarrels and no damaged property, psychiatrists would have to make of them a case study to see what went right. With either their psychological fabric and/or their brains’ chemistry out of whack, both their accounts of mutual physical abuse are statistically plausible.
Whether his or her career is in ruins while the other is up for the grand slam; or this was a Pyrrhic Victory for either PR team; whether his or her evidence is more compelling; he is the real abuser or she is… I don’t really care. Not because both have enough wealth and assets to fare rather well for the rest of their lives, but not because the hashtags crying for justice for either strike me as disproportionate, frivolous and elitist.
Mainly because it is but one sample, amidst billions of instances of abuse around the world, and we don’t really know whether men disproportionally get away with hurting women, or the reverse is underreported. This case is where the mechanism whereby the vox populi falls into a Fallacy of Composition, e.g. assuming all Labrador dogs are chocolate-coloured because that’s the last that passed before their eyes, the blacks and golden be damned. If the part doesn’t represent the whole, it is but an outlier. If it does, then it is redundant.
Society suffers from a form of collective ADHD, by which it condemns itself to never grasp a pearl of substantiated wisdom and never solve certain dichotomies. In those occasions where a level of consensus is finally reached, a new thesis emerges from the collective subconscious and forms into a new ethical standard. This is how Slavery was abolished or same-sex marriage got somewhat instituted in a non-negligible part of the world.
There is pervasive moral intuition, a Feminist thesis if you will, that might now subside for a while (but will recover momentum), that of the #MeToo movement: If men are more often the perpetrators and females, the victims; therefore society should apply a Precautionary Principle before a Legal Principle: Men are guilty until proven innocent.
Aside from some asinine MRM activists proposing the reverse to the above, the best version of the antithesis emerging from this case is an imperative that female abusers should not be left off the hook any more than male abusers (regardless of the gender of their victims).
That wouldn’t be too bad. And yet, I will attempt to propose, this still doesn’t cut it. Ironically, it is a (seemingly) conservative and biology-essentialist argument which should buttress the Feminist position, or a version of it, for Conservative sensibilities. It resonates with the story of John Christopher Depp I (the father), stoically enduring† his wife’s insulting and despotic behaviour, until one day, he silently walked away.
Everything in nature is complicated and ambivalent. But one can at least safely say that biology has bestowed men with greater upper body physical strength.‡ This has been the often unspoken, politically thorny principle that gives reason and substance to a precautionary principle in favour of women. If men have a greater capacity for damage, that is to say, a power to hurt women physically more than the reverse, men do have a responsibility to show greater restraint. Insert quote from Spider-Man’s uncle here: “With greater power…”.
This is why Chivalry and the concept of the Gentlemen exist, and why it is not a burden that falls over the shoulders of women. It’s a traditionalist response to Nature bestowing males with more punch.
This is perhaps where we can return to the particular instance of these two celebrities and apply the rule-of-thumb, and see if it stands, or is in need of a caveat.
Whether John Depp was a “gentle soul” that endured his partner’s sociopathic behaviour, Amber Heard was a victim of a “drug addict with dangerous and drastic changes of behaviour”, or a combination of both where the entourage was enabling or concealing. All other things being equal, all other medical and psychiatric conditions affected both parties, he was older and should be the wiser, indeed more powerful, financially and physically. This would be the conclusion of every proverbial knight in shining armour, every bushido master, every gentleman of years gone by. The most staunch feminist would likely frown upon these first principles and argue that this line of reasoning looks down on women and disempowers them, while she’ll be pointing at systemic inequalities as the root of all evil. But she would still agree on the practical consequences: At least in a fleeting moment of sobriety, more is, and was, to be expected of Johnny Depp that it was expected of Amber Heard, and more condemnation should fall upon his shoulders. That is what his own father did.
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*: A physical impairment I can relate to, although the bullying, in my case, came from my schoolmates, not my mother, who shared my pain.
†: And arguably enabling, to the point of lashing his son at her request.
‡: Even if women might enjoy greater endurance in certain sports.