Questioning

Monday 17th August, 2020

I have just finished Alexander McCall Smith's 'The Sunday Philosophy Club'. I woke at 2am this morning. Usually I turn over and fall asleep again easily but I had been troubled by a friend's email. His daughter died just over a year ago. She was holidaying in South America and fell off a cliff. She was 21. It was a week before her body was found. No one can imagine the horrors associated with that accident. The email had excited in me sincere sympathies and my mind turned them over. The mind is a 'weird place' and seems particularly meddlesome and fearful in the early hours of the morning.

I had been reading of sympathy and empathy and to an extent I was, at 2am, trying to engage both: to rationalise and analyse my thoughts and imaginings. I could not just switch off. After half an hour I turned on the light. I tried to order my thoughts. I let go of other intrusions which came into my mind. Having semi settled my fears I decided to pick up McCall Smith's book. Without realising I read for over an hour and finished it. Then I turned off the light and was asleep rapidly and did not wake for another five hours.

Since breakfast I have pondered the fascinating conclusion of the book. All through I have enjoyed the ruminations on paper of moral and philosophical positions. The conclusion seemed to suggest that often the ' law is an ass'. It is right for an individual to keep secret a position that in society might normally be handled and decided by the police or the judicial system.

It was not a vigilante position in which people take it into their own hands the meteing out of punishment ( they call it justice) themselves. They feel failed by the legal forces so feel justified in being judge, jury and executioners. Thus lynch mobs are born. Thus vigilantes are explained. This case was the matter of discovering an accident, a genuine accident which had resulted in the loss of a life. The accident had unintended consequences, which might result in a custodial sentence of one of the participants. This person was genuinely remorseful. To cut a long story short the discoverer of this participant decided to take no further action. She judged and executed her justice.

I recall years ago my Mother and I witnessing a couple of beggar children steal food from a market stall. The stall owner did not notice. I remember my Mother asking me 'what shall we do?' Looking back I cannot bring to mind my thoughts which may have included the beggars being poor and hungry, the stall holder being out of pocket, the reactions of the notoriously violent police. What my Mother did was buy something from the stall holder and tell him to keep the change which more than covered the value of that which had been stolen.

Were we wrong?