Cross Talk
A seminary for the jailbirds
As the list of people getting prison terms keeps lengthening, an idea comes to mind whether they can form a sizeable class for a jailhouse seminary. I know exactly what should be the curriculum for that class. They should study history, philosophy, and lots of religion. No math since they have already done enough calculation. Throw in a little bit of literature. I would highly recommend "The Rocking Horse Winner" by D.H. Lawrence. These people have to learn that what they have done is very very wrong.
No, I am not trying to be funny. The seminary should be started to prevent a future avalanche of counterculture. I have talked to some of the admirers, relatives, friends and children of the politicians and businessmen who have been arrested since the crackdown on corruption. In their minds they are convinced that their loved ones are victims of circumstances, innocent people, who are paying price for love their country.
That line of thinking needs to be addressed so that another thirty-six years down the road we aren't drawn into another conflict. It is possible that once again the political wheel is going to turn when the victor's hand will write history that will undermine the vanquished. If left to the current state of doubts, this nation in future will be drowned by renewed shouting match over who was innocent and who was guilty.
It means, once again the nation will stand divided over right and wrong. This is where the seminary can help, because unless the guilty are convinced of their guilt, the people who love them will not be convinced. It is, therefore, necessary that we work to change their minds while they serve their sentence. It is not enough to physically accept the punishment unless it is also accepted in the minds.
In other societies, people do it all the time. A US senator from Idaho pleaded guilty to lewd behaviour. He was arrested for making sexual advances to an undercover officer in an airport men's room. He sat in the stall next to the officer who was monitoring the washroom, tapped his right foot to the left foot of his prey and then made hand motions under the partition between them to show that he was interested.
In another instance, an American football player, who stood to gain $100 million or more, pleaded guilty to animal cruelty. He ran a dog fighting business which was perfectly alright, until the world came to know how brutally he treated his dogs. He shot, hanged and electrocuted those dogs which lost a fight.
As a matter of fact, every crime is a moral crisis and seeks a closure in justice. That is when the power is taken away from the criminal and the balance is tweaked in favor of the victim. But that equation is often skewed in political propaganda as Goebbels embodied in his famous quote: "A lie repeated a thousand times becomes a truth." The camaraderie amongst the well-wishers of all those who will be jailed could turn into an enormous propaganda machine cranking out true lies, strengthened and accelerated by political network and unaccounted money.
Needless to say a crime isn't fully recompensed until there is an acceptance of guilt. But only the guilty knows best where the guilt pinches, his confession being more powerful than a thousand judgments. The opposite could create the smokescreen, swaying the hearts and minds of those who tend to believe in their leaders, parents, brothers, sisters and friends. A thousand judgments will not change their opinion until it comes from the horse's mouth.
So the seminary can play a role to prepare the jailbirds to fess up their own misdeeds. And then they would face those who are close to them, people who are deceived by their looks and take them by the face value. They would need to unlearn the familiar world of greed and need, and unburden their souls of accumulated desires to find the truth that it was not the end doesn't justify the means.
"There must be more money," says the mother in "The Rocking Horse Winner" when the son asked why she was unhappy. The son wanted to know why they were poor, and the mother replied that his father didn't have any luck. The son asked again if money was luck to which the mother said that luck was what caused one to have money. Then she said that luck was better than money because "if you're rich, you may lose your money. But if you're lucky, you will always get more money."
Here lies the crux of knowledge, which should resonate in the seminary. The Class of 2007, if that is what all the people given jail terms for corruption this year are called, should learn that one of the many surprises of life is that luck can run out before money. It will bring them an opportunity, many of them in the company of their children and spouses, to discuss amongst themselves that no matter how clever and calculating one is, luck always has the last laugh when it comes to life's eventualities.
And the eventualities are indeed stunning. Former ministers given rigourous imprisonment are being assigned new roles in prison. One former minister is working as a gardener, another as a librarian, and others might become cooks, clerks or assume even lesser roles. In so much as they will fit into these roles and live reconditioned lives, it will do wonders if they also learn to reorganise their minds.
It will also change the minds of those who are blind about them. Unassimilated truth is the mother of all contentions and it grows cantankerous in the seedbed of long-seething vengeance. An eye for an eye makes the whole world blind. But when one man blindly follows another, it is even worse. The whole world can erupt in the blink of an eye.
A seminary for the jailbirds may be one chance to avoid it.
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