George Orwell, metaphysics and the idea of a civil society crammed
my thoughts as matters of the past week swept into focus.
Orwell, writing in the early 30s about a hanging Burma,
erased any personal doubts about a state executions.
His words; words first read more than 20 years ago, live
with me today - he wrote:
“It is curious, but till that moment I had never realized
what it means to destroy a healthy, conscious man. When I saw the prisoner step
aside to avoid the puddle, I saw the mystery, the unspeakable wrongness, of
cutting a life short when it is in full tide. This man was not dying, he was
alive just as we were alive. All the organs of his body were working — bowels
digesting food, skin renewing itself, nails growing, tissues forming — all toiling
away in solemn foolery. His nails would still be growing when he stood on the
drop, when he was falling through the air with a tenth of a second to live. His
eyes saw the yellow gravel and the grey walls, and his brain still remembered,
foresaw, reasoned — reasoned even about puddles. He and we were a party of men
walking together, seeing, hearing, feeling, understanding the same world; and
in two minutes, with a sudden snap, one of us would be gone — one mind less,
one world less.”
The execution by firing squad of Andrew Chan and Myuran
Sukumaran may seem remote from those of us here in the Goulburn Valley, but it
is not as the killing of these two men damns us all and is simply a further
example of how our civil society has become somewhat threadbare; worsening as
we wander into the embrace of a strange vulgarity.
Yet, many of us can casually discount what is ahead for Chan
and Sukumaran arguing that they knew the risks, they were aware of the
consequences and so should pay the price. This, many say, has nothing to do
with us and so is not our responsibility – wrong!
At this juncture metaphysics enters the equation and bound
by philosophical realities, we must look to the ultimate causes of anything, in
this case the execution of Chan and Sukumaran.
Was their attempt to smuggle drugs simply spontaneous and
poorly thought through rash behaviour or was it the sinister manifestation of
an ailing society that has not only failed these men, but now intends to camouflage
and hide the trouble by executing them?
A good and decent society brings with it demands of civility
that exceed what exists and although Chan and Sukumaran maybe guilty as
charged, each of us needs to remember that they are a product of this society;
a society we helped create.
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