If only there were evil people somewhere insidiously commiting 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? During the life of any heart this
line keeps changing place; sometimes it is squeezed one way by
exhuberant evil and sometimes it shifts to allow enough space for good
to flourish...
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What a good quote for this blog! People who dismiss prisoners as being undeserving of anything but vengeful contempt miss entirely the opportunity to make prison work. Everyone has some good potential. Destroying the good inside them by relentlessly criminalising their every attitude and action is a crime in itself.
ReplyDeleteIt''s a pity Solzhenitsyn went off the rails a bit at the end of his life because the clarity of his moral vision in The Gulag Archipelago was very good. I read it in the last year of school and it has influenced me ever since that pigeonholing people as good/bad/evil is far too simplistic.
ReplyDeleteStrangely it is those should believe most strongly in the power of redemption who are strongest on the idea of absolutes like this.
I'm gonna 'tumble' this :)
ReplyDelete