WILD JUSTICE

A great school teacher and great friend recently sent me a copy of Harold Kushner’s “Living a Life That Matters” (Resolving the conflict between conscience and success). It’s full of interesting/provocative ideas and applications. In light of the holocaust workshop  this past weekend,  I wanted to share a couple of passages I was reading the following  morning from the chapter entitled “Wild Justice: The Seductive Pleasure of Getting Even.” Would love to hear thoughts on this from anyone when you have a few moments.

Excerpts from “Living a Life That Matters”  Harold Kushner

…when someone hurts us, part of us wants to pay the person back, to get even, to give him what he deserves, while another part of us is uncomfortable at the prospect of having to lower ourselves to his level in order to get even. We feel justified, even righteous, in getting back at someone who has done us wrong, but at the same time we feel more than a little bit morally compromised.

The fact that so many great plays and novels ( Hamlet, the Greek tragedies of Aeschylus, The Count of Monte Cristo) have the theme of revenge at their core, and that popular novels and movies about revenge have the ability to grab us emotionally, should tell us how deeply we feel on the subject. I have heard movie audiences cheer when the fictional hero finally catches u with the fictional villain … Revenge, and fantasies of revenge are among the strongest emotions we feel.. They are nearly universal, nearly irresistible, and often deeply troubling.

The title of this chapter is taken from a remark by the sixteenth century English writer Fancis Bacon: “Revenge is a kind of wild justice, which the more men’s nature runs to, the more ought the law to weed it out” In that one sentence, Bacon tells us four important things about revenge:
- It is something that a lot of people are drawn to.
- It is natural, instinctive, not something we have to learn.
- It resembles justice but is unlike justice in important ways
- It is undesirable. It is natural the way weeds are natural, and if not checked, it will crowd out healthier emotions even as weeds choke off the more desirable cultivated plants.

I define revenge as punishment in the name of justice, tarnished by taking pleasure in hurting the person being punished… can we at least count on society to protect good people by imposing fines and prison terms on those who would harm us? Or do we have to take justice into our own hands?

… revenge is sweet in the contemplation, but bitter in the carrying out. The target of our revenge deserves to be hurt, and part of us is eager to hurt him because of what he did to us, but another part of us feels diminished by doing the hurting.
…
The ambivalence in getting even is that our consciences condemn it even as our souls crave it…

I can appreciate that ambivalence. I have sat in movie theatres, my heart rejoicing at the retributive violence of Clint Eastwood’s Dirty Harry Callahan even as my head was condemning the mindless destruction…

That moment when the community as a whole claimed for itself the right and responsibility to punish criminals, taking the role away form the injured parties, represents one of the great advances in the history of civilization. Punishment could now be administered coolly, objectively, by an outsider who would feel no vindictiveness and take no personal pleasure in its administration. It would be justice without vengeance. Susan Jacoby, in her history of revenge, Wild Justice, writes, “One measure of a civilizations complexity is the distance between the aggrieved individual and the administration of justice.” Problems arise however, when people fear that they cannot depend on society to administer justice, the courts are slow, unreliable, or inclined to play favorites or that the law is full of loopholes that let the guilty escape. We then face the uncomfortable choice between letting a guilty person go free and taking the responsibility for punishing into our own hands, with the bitter aftertaste and sense of moral compromise that often entails.
 

Harold Kushner

Carl here again, I could go on copying out of the book all night, but just wanted to share a taste with you and get your thoughts in connection to the holocaust, the society we live in now, and even the “petty” wrongs that are committed against us (or we commit against others) often unknowingly every day, that you would not go to court for.

Looking forward to your thoughts

Carl - World Outside My Shoes

East HS Denver

Teresa and students

Video Conference with Students in Florida

Delays are not all bad.

In about 4 hours I should be touching down in Kigali.  My flight out of Nairobi has been delayed and its given me time to reflect on what the next 12 days might be like in Rwanda.

I just spent 3 weeks in Zimbabwe and was blown away by the courage and resilience of a people who surely have been stretched way beyond the limit again and again and again.  How can they be smiling and even laughing when a little banana cost a weeks wages?  Wages obviously are not what people live off of.  It’s their gardens for those fortunate enough to have one and then a lot of ingenuity along with their wits.  Here outside Mutare in the eastern part of the country recently discovered  diamonds have apparently recreated the “wild west gold rush” all over again.  When I first arrived at Paula’s orphanage I had met an innocent faced clean cut  16 year old  orphan boy  who was living with his aunt near the orphanage, decided that he and a friend would head towards the diamond fields about 10 days ago to try and get money for the family and school fees.  They found such chaos, saw a guy get shot in the leg and ended up fleeing for their lives.  All the while his aunt was at home  on her knees praying after failing to dissuade him from going.  Think about a 16 year old you know being driven to something like that…

On another day there after dropping off a bag of potatoes to a single mom who looks after here 5 children plus 5 more orphans plus her aging mom, I was kicking up dust  in a  field  with a local dad  when he told me that the people are praying for better rains this year (recent years yields have been less than minimal). “People here eat one meal a day,” he went on, “which as adults we can do, but the children don’t understand.” 

Writing about her childhood, a Rwandan survivor who lost so many family members and friends said “Pastor says we’re all of us, all humanity, just children walking along paths whose past and portent we hardly know.  But we actual children know so little - and sense so much…” 

And that brings me back to thought s on Rwanda. Yes I’m so anxious to see friends,  and once again experience the generous heartfelt Rwandan hospitality, but… there is this “but” that I’m not sure I want to put words to… walking the roads and paths that are so stuffed with memories… memories that can inspire and memories that can foul.  Yet “put words to” is exactly what I’ve got to do.  It’s one of the main reasons I’m going. 

Starting a book has seemed like an impossible task.   “Eat the Elephant” a good friend has said more than once in recent years.  One bite at a time…14 years later… yes I still have the tapes I made to Teresa during the genocide and yes I’ve been living the genocide a hundred times over in schools around the country, but the book…the book has got to be something more than just a collection of stories about  the most horrible 100 days of the 20th century… as incredibly selfless and courageous as the Rwandans are in these stories ( if you’ve heard any of our stories you know I’ve chosen to focus on these Rwandans,)…. Well  a book with just these stories would be of serous value…. Yet… well there is more… we can know so much and sense so little, or like children, we can "know so little and sense so much"…

That’s why I woke up one morning last month,  a couple of days after 3 generous families offered to pay my ticket to Zimbabwe, and  said to Teresa, “What do you think about me adding a couple more weeks on to the Africa trip and going  to Rwanda to start the book there.”  There in Kigali, there among those hills, among those memorials, visiting the orphanages again, finding friends I have not seen since the end of the genocide… and as you might well guess Teresa said  Yes, do it, do it with my full support.  The smile, the tone, the conviction, I knew she meant it from deep down.  Once again I’m thinking “She’s incredible… how could I be so blessed?!” (we celebrate 27 years tomorrow since we both said “I do”, I think it is the first anniversary we have sent apart.)

Ok..,  for some reason I feel a little more prepared. (funny it takes about 10 times longer to write this than it does to read it) Got to get to my departure gate… Thanks for being with me during this flight delay in Nairobi airport.  You know right outside the window on that very tarmac is where I touched down 14 years ago. it was a week after the genocide ended I’d hitched a ride out of Kigali on a Canadian Military C130 transport plane.  When I climbed down those steps and saw my Teresa, Mindy, Lisa, and Shaun coming towards me…. Let me tell you… that was  a dream I had dreamt again and again and again, every one of those 88 nights I slept in the hallway of our home in Kigali… A dream I had sometimes feared would only be a dream… and there they were… arms, cheeks, voices, laughter, tears… yea…yup… this boy better get writing.

Carl - World Outside My Shoes.
 

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