In a previous blog entry, I had committed to discussing my understanding of the Tlingit Indian concept of justice. Since it has been a long time since I lived in the Tlingit village of Hoonah, Alaska, I am not at all sure that my memory is completely accurate. I tried to research the Tlingit concept of justice, but found relatively little written on the subject. The following is my memory of what my teacher David taught me.
The Tlingits believe in the inter-connectedness of all parts of the earth. This belief , as we know, is similar to that of a lot of spiritual people. People, plants, animals, and minerals are all connected and interdependent. As is true for any system, each part plays a vital role. No part is more important than another. If one part breaks it affects the entire system. If one part is functioning well it, likewise, affects the entire system.
If a person in that system hurts something or someone in the system, they hurt the entire system and, in effect, have disconnected themselves from the system. The question of whether the action was on purpose or by accident is never asked. The question of intent is not important because the goal is to restore the system and not punishment. All the person is required to do is to tell anyone in that system that they want to be reconnected to the system – to come home. If the person does not ask to be reconnected then their unspoken request to stay disconnected is honored. This is not ostracism since the person whose action was hurtful is making the decision. Anytime in the future that the person wants to be reconnected all they have to do is to tell anyone in the community that they want to come home.
I witnessed a wonderful example of this. Sometime prior to my arrival a woman had, in a alcoholic blackout, killed one of her children. She was tried and sent to the “white person’s” prison. Shortly after I arrived, she was released from prison. She said she wanted to reconnect to the community. Without an exception that I could identify, she was welcomed home by her Tlingit brothers and sisters. Many of the Caucasian people living in the village had a very difficult time with this. They seemed to believe that this woman was bad and deserved to continue to be punished.
My understanding of both the Buddhist philosophy and Christian religion is similar to the Tlingit approach to justice. Both the Buddha and Jesus accepted that we are human and that when we hurt ourselves, each other or other parts of the community all are hurt. Both taught that it is important to focus on restoring harmony/balance. Punishing a person will not restore harmony. We cannot change the past or another person, but we can change how we behave today. We can quit judging ourselves and others and focus on loving and helping each other create a more loving and harmonious community. If one of us is unable to allow ourselves to act in a way which honors the sacredness of the entire community then we are disconnected until we say we went to be reconnected.
One might ask, “What about the person who is not remorseful and does not want to reconnect; the serial killer or the sociopath who, for whatever reason, is not able to change their behavior because of psychological or neurological reasons? Do some people need to be in protective custody? Certainly, there are many conditions which prevent a person’s brain from functioning in a way which considers the needs of the entire community. There are some of us who may, at times, need to be in a protected environment, not because we are worse than others or undeserving of love, but because our brain is not, for whatever reason, functioning well. This is not punishment, but is done in love for the individual and for the entire community. The problem which arises with this approach is that we have to be very careful about what behavior, we, as a community, define as dangerous to the rest of the community. In the not too distant past, it was very easy, for example, to lock a woman in a mental institution just because she wanted a divorce from an abusive husband. In some societies today women are stoned to death for behaving in a way which is tolerated in a man. In some of those same societies a person can be imprisoned or otherwise severely punished or even killed for having a loving sexual relationships with someone of the same gender.
We know that punishing does not lead to a more consistently loving person or community. A person or a community may temporarily change their behavior out of fear of the punishment but they will not internalize an understanding of the equal sacredness of all parts of the system. Our current penal system in the United States is one whose primary purpose is to punish. To be sure there are some exceptions. Some of the alternatives now being offered to some people arrested for an offense related to addiction to alcohol or some other drugs are working really well. That, however, is the exception.
I am not naïve enough to believe that adopting a more loving, forgiving system of justice which still holds all of us accountable would result in everyone behaving in a loving manner all the time. Still, it is clear that the current system of retributive justice is not working. To be sure, there are those who do get better in spite of the system. One of the young men with whom I correspond and who has spent much of his life in prison is making some significant, positive changes in his life. The goal of the prison system is, however, to punish him. Somehow many of we humans have convinced ourselves that if we treat others bad enough they will be better persons. This makes no sense to me and is not supported by any research results I have read. It also is not part of the Buddhist or Christian belief system. It was part of the Old Testament understanding of Justice before Jesus introduced another approach.
I believe we must continue to explore an approach to justice which works better than the current one in the United States.
This morning I saw this quote:
When we treat man as he is, we make him worse than he is; when we treat
him as if he already were what he potentially could be, we make him what
he should be.
— Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Jim Pickett
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