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The Row Boat"Had we but world enough, and time..." * Abolition3/21/2005 00:00:33I spoke tonight with a new friend on a long drive home from a nice party. He works with a nonprofit for folks getting out of prision, whatever the term for that is. Helping them get back into society, into jobs, helping themselves, I suppose. As part of my search to understand people's certainty and reasons for it, I asked him questions about why. At bottom he says that his convictions are based in a notion of Humanism -- that all people are, in the calculus of averages, of equal worth and worthiness. Justice is based on that, as well as the sense of injustice and the work to mend it. And presumably it leads him to the work he does. He considers himself an "abolitionist" -- in reference to the prison system, which is an extension of the institution of slavery (I think he mentioned Foucault). I agreed, I think the prisons are terribly diseased. Love and mercy demand that they are completely rethought and our whole notion of civil justice altered. He also said they came from a combination of the ethics from his parents and a nerdyness, which demands that critiques must be taken to their full conclusions. I told him about my suspicion of my own certainties that arrived first when I got to college and realized how many people who had grown up like me think so much like me. It felt impossible that those beliefs emenate but from circumstance, at least at their center. What I am talking about is a vague liberalism, which I converse in, do not trust, yet always learn from. Lots of the people he works with at the nonprofit work out of Christian conviction, he said. Of course that is unreasonable, but you cannot knock their convictions. If that is what motivates them, well, is there any difference? By default he seems to conclude that there's no point to bothering with that. What a grand defense above only madness and a miracle that anybody even gets up in the morning. The people who are certain have interesting relationships with truth. - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - |
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