Never shall I forget those flames which consumed my faith forever.
Never shall I forget that nocturnal silence which deprived me, for all eternity, of the desire to live. Never shall I forget those moments which murdered my God and my soul and turned my dreams to dust. Never shall I
forget these things, even if I am condemned to live as long as God Himself. Never.
- Elie Wiesel, Night
Most of the things that we experience, over the course of our lives, can be summarized with well-chosen words and the verbosity of our tongues is oft quite capable of articulating our experiences and feelings.
However, there are times when such events take place, such things are seen, such situations arise and horrors unfold, that render the most loquacious of lips, useless. No words can do justice to what we hardly believe our eyes to see, to read and we are left dumbfounded. In possession of facts that we cannot make sense of. Malevolence we cannot fathom. And a reality that is, in essence, a nightmare.
It’s heartbreaking to then realise that the drivers of this malevolence in some unfortunate circumstances can be as deplorable in their justifications for their crimes as the crimes themselves. What we need to understand therefore is that approaching the criminal mindset from a point of view of rehabilitation might be a very plausible alternate to prosecution. For often it is the ones on the moral fence, teetering between succumbing to cruelty or staying rooted in morality, are the ones that are pushed over to the former end by harsh persecution. Prisons and the incarceration systems are not the places for rehabilitation of confused small-time crooks. More often than not with the right psycho-sociological approach a lot of these wayward cases can be “salvaged” and put on the right path to build a better life for themselves. After all, it is not implausible to assume that maybe the orphaned child who stole from a vendor only stole so as to be able to feed his hungry little sister. In this case, it is detrimental to lock up an impressionable young child or teen, who has been confused by the injustice around him, with hardened pathologically motivated repeat offenders who are purely driven in their indiscretions by malice. You will only expose him to more cruelty, furthermore cementing his view of the world as one plagued by suffering, injustice and hate. And at the end of the day instead of correcting a misbehaving boy, you forge a sadistic criminal because rest assured, if you expose a child to cruelty and only cruelty, cruelty alone is what the child will learn.
Obviously, it is clear that many of those in prison systems deserve to be there and that their contribution to society is best harnessed caged behind bars. Rapists, pathological murderers, sadists, child predators and the list goes on, deserve the harshest punishments and no mercy. But I aim to shed light on the gray areas of the criminal demographic where it is possible, after a symbiotic and intentional cooperative effort between the person and the authorities, to truly rehabilitate and give the offender a chance to start afresh. And I believe the solution lies, not exclusively but definitely greatly influenced by, in instilling a sense of responsibility.
Responsibility is the basis of morality. Without a sense of responsibility, morality would be undefined. What we define as morally acceptable actions are simply endeavours that facilitate us in fulfilling our responsibilities towards others.
When a person becomes lost between two conflicting systems of belief, they are rendered incapable of finding meaning in either. The lack of meaning in their lives drives them to two ends, either nihilism or Ideological totalitarianism. This means they either come to believe that nothing truly matters in the end or that “this one thing” is the absolute truth and become dangerously motivated to live on the ideals laid down by the ideology of their choice. The nihilists cease to believe in anything and we shall focus on that as crooks tend to be nihilists rather than ideologues. They choose to wander aimless, with a cynical pessimism inside them, and resolve themselves to a thought process that makes them feel worthless every day. They refuse to take responsibility for anything and live for little more than the mundane shallow pleasures.
Our righteousness is confined within the realm of our responsibilities. We cannot claim honour for outcomes that we did not sacrifice for. We are only as good as the responsibilities we fulfill. Towards others. Towards ourselves. Responsibility provides meaning for our lives. It is not our rights that fulfill us. Our rights sustain us. But our responsibilities fulfill us. We are always searching for meaning and in our search for meaning, we are susceptible to predatory ideologies that can coax us into believing that rights can substitute for responsibilities. One person’s rights are another’s responsibility and that is the finely balanced scale of morality. To fulfill our responsibilities so as to deliver someone’s rights.
Morality is rooted in an awareness of the self and the inadequacy of morals can be rooted in ignorance. It is novel to assume that the thing that could be harming us maybe the very thing that we cannot see. A blindspot in our point of view. Some truth that we fail to realise and hence it always ends up taking us by surprise. And instead of wallowing in a pit of self-pity, we could be optimistic about this as awareness of your shortcoming is the first step in solving it.
