“The only way we are ever going to stop abuse in all its forms is by ceasing to believe that punishing people makes them “good”. - Amber Desmond
A deep thread of our confusion in my corner of the world in these times is that we have confused justice and punishment.
The two have become synonymous; fused together.
This is so much the case that, when harm occurs, unless someone is punished, then justice is not seen to have happened at all and, if the punishment ever ceases, then justice has vanished.
The punishment must be immediate and eternal.
It sounds not so different from the fire and brimstone exhortations of Hell and damnation for the sinners of this world in which the more intensely you demand punishment the more legit, real and radical you are.
We are asked to wonder deeply: will justice be wrung from the binary of innocent and guilty in the form of punishment or rewoven from the torn tapestry of community in the form of restoration?
Do we believe that safety will come from purity or wholeness?
Must people be punished to stop them from harming others?
Does punishment result in any genuine learning on the part of the one who caused the harm?
Accountability, healing and village-making are hard.
Punishment is easy. Punishment is where we go to avoid work.
The craving to punish others is utterly understandable and deeply human it seems but it is not an achievement. It is more in the manner of reaction and reflex.
“If only it were all so simple! If only there were evil people somewhere insidiously committing evil deeds, and it were necessary only to separate them from the rest of us and destroy them. But the line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being. And who is willing to destroy a piece of his own heart?” - Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
True this. Revenge justifying violence. One of so many broken bits. There's a part of me that wants to shout these kind of things out in a forceful way to make people listen. As if. Slump.
It also reminds me of when I realized nearly 20 years ago, after a few months in AA, that these people weren't any different than the people I'd known for 10 years in Al-Anon and ACA, many of whom held themselves above their AA counterparts. The stench of separation, shaming and judgment seeps everywhere, usually unrecognized - it's rampant, insidious and deeply unhelpful.
I lean on my practice of remembering to bring my focus back to my medicine ... how can I be, what can I bring? And keep studying village making ...
Yaaaaassss.
I’m done with the doublespeak.
Done with vengeance masquerading as justice.
My tolerance for “positionality” is automatically revoked by the refusal to walk a mile in another man’s shoes.
In a meta-world where algorithms make tidy work of trampling boundaries (no jack boots required!), may the lie of separation be finally revealed.
In the fantasy of perpetual punishment, the fetishizafion of trauma spews its guts:
No one has a monopoly on pain.