Justice

I watched a film by Robert Bressard tonight: Mouchette.  It is about a sad girl, whose very sadness makes her easier to victimize. This is the way the world works, in all too many cases.

The ending is unclear, but I took it that she drowned herself.  Given the events in the movie, that feeling clearly would have been present.

I was watching, though, and if she had lived, she would have been bitter and angry; mean.  I thought of the prep school matron of “The Little Princess”–which I have watched many times with my kids, not least because I think it is a great “Bildungsroman” sort of story–whose viciousness comes out in the end, whose own hells come back into the present in the course of moments in the movie.

I watched her in my mind, looked deeply into her soul, and a cascade of colored discs came flowing out, a rainbow.  The darkness collapsed into nothing.  And it made my cry.  To be clear, I always view this as a good thing.  I fear stasis, not mourning.

I watched someone in hell being led away in a police car, to spend more time in hell.

I believe in justice, but more than anything I believe that at roots all human beings have the capacity for Goodness, even if in some it is so deeply buried we may never find it in this life.  This is not to say crimes should not be punished, but how does punishment really serve the cause of moral elevation?  True contrition?

Here is an idea: what if we gave people convicted of serious crimes high doses of LSD in comfortable environments?  What if they were provided social support, even love?  What if our goal was helping them learn, at a gut level, why their crime was wrong, how it hurt THEM?  What if we told them they could get out when they stopped hurting?  What if we gave them gardens to wander in?  What if we–the people acting through vote and volition–gave everyone gardens?

Please understand, if anyone who reads this blog regularly needs to be told this, I am no bleeding heart.  But I look around me, and I see pain, and little else.  Why punish pain with pain?  Is this truly justice?

Oh, we do so many things wrong.  We are deeply unwise and stupid in so many ways.  I will ponder this, too, and may have something else to add after a while.  Again, I am an ueber-Pisces.  Our destinies are confusion, emotional hurt, wisdom and vision.