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14

Riding the Devil’s Tank and Complicit in His Mayhem

JAMES ROCHA

Before, we were just innocent kids out for a good time, they’re saying, “They’re evil, they’re evil.” Oh, I’m evil, really? So that makes you start thinking about evil … What is evil? Half of it, I don’t know how much people think of Mick as the devil or as just a good rock performer or what? There are black magicians who think we are acting as unknown agents of Lucifer and others who think we are Lucifer. Everybody’s Lucifer.

—Keith Richards, 1971

Let me begin by confessing to my personal role in the international drug trade. You see, I spend a lot of money downloading music, and, I have to admit, I do it all legally. For example, I have almost all The Stones’ records on iTunes. Now, just imagine my surprise when I read Keith Richards’s autobiography, Life, and learned that The Stones did drugs back when they made all of this wonderful music! I was shocked, I tell you!

Okay. I have a new confession: I suspected all along that they did drugs. Whenever I forked over my $9.99 to purchase a record online, I knew that there was a good chance that my money would support rock stars’ drug habits. Drug habits almost always support murderous drug cartels. The collection of Stones songs on my computer may right now be financing some assassin’s per diem as he hunts down a poor, unsuspecting prosecutor who’s trying to indict a Colombian cartel drug lord.

Obviously, I can’t be held responsible for rock stars’ drug habits. I’m also not responsible for drug cartels assassinating prosecutors. But saying that “I’m not responsible” doesn’t mean that there are no other ethical questions to ask. The concept in moral theory called ‘complicity’ falls in that mysterious gap between guilt and innocence. I cannot be guilty for what other people do, but maybe I can be complicit if, in some way, I support, aid, or fail to stop the guilty actions of people I’m connected to. Complicity is a strange concept, but fortunately there’s a song that tells us all about it. And, of course, that song is from The Rolling Stones.

Philosophy by Satanic Example

Perhaps no song in The Stones’ catalog elicits as much controversy as “Sympathy for the Devil,” released on Beggars Banquet in December of 1968. Though Mick Jagger, the song’s writer, has denied any connection to devil worship,42 both the title and lyrics easily suggest that interpretation. The Stones did not mean for this song to literally provide sympathy for the Devil. The song, instead, implies an argument for a particular ethical point of view that surrounds the concept of complicity. Whether Jagger or the other Stones knew the theoretical background of this concept or the moral theory involved, they are complicit in it.

I have to admit, complicity is both a controversial and mysterious concept. We all know what responsibility is, of course. When something bad happens, the initial response is to search around and seek the person responsible—hoping, all the while, that it isn’t you. And, if it isn’t you, it seems you’re off the hook. But there could be more to accountability than responsibility. Maybe we can hold people accountable when they aren’t responsible if they’re related to the wrongdoing tangentially.

However, we don’t usually look that far: if you find the responsible party, then you should hold him or her accountable. But accountability is not (as the philosophers would say) a zero-sum game: we can find one person fully responsible, and still have room to think others are involved enough to also be accountable to some degree. We can go over one hundred per-cent when it comes to demanding people pay for a wrongful deed.

Let’s make up an imaginary example. Anita cheats on her lover, Keith, with his best friend, Michael. Anita is fully responsible for the adultery; Michael (who likes to be called ‘Mick’ in this fictitious case) is fully responsible for the betrayal; perhaps Keith can also be partially accountable if he somehow led to the adultery by not being the most attentive lover. One unethical