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today i realized how inadequately i express all these thoughts and theories and, as i see them, truths that sound so (sometimes dramatically) great and revolutionary and are constantly in my mind…then when they’re out and exposed they get all jumbled and meaningless, mostly shot down before i can get the truth of it out in a way that can be universally understood. is that even possible?

if i could only explain better. if i could only say it the way i feel it. if i could only allow you into the context of my mind and my understanding of and experience with humanity. then we’d be golden, but that’s practically impossible. everything that comes out of me is mere translation; it’s like a different language, and is hardly as good as the original. i should work on developing my thoughts into words more often…

and the more that i think about this, the more self-centered it seems.

whatever. even if it is selfish, there is something significant and necessary about self expression…or at least there’s something necessary about an emotional outlet, and i might as well get things out well…

anyway.

we learned about the Gacaca court system today. Gacaca, meaning “grass,” was developed to maintain the hundreds of thousands of cases Rwanda had on its hands following the 1994 genocide. these courts are held in open air with an audience full of Rwandan community members, and a suspect is tried in front of a panel of judges (elected based on integrity) with witnesses, etc…they’re meant to bring justice, healing and reconciliation to the community, mostly by holding the murderers and all those involved in the genocide accountable for their actions…just like any justice system, but smaller and maybe a tad more primitive, and easier to instigate.

there are some things i don’t understand…mainly that there doesn’t seem to be any kind of clarity as far as what exactly these prisoners and suspects are being held accountable to. it’s not like in the states where the suspected are tried based on specific laws broken. it seems like the standard of accountability is based on what perhaps should be some universal moral code – you just shouldn’t kill people.

man, but people killed out of obedience. i mean, some wanted it. some really hated the people they were elicited to murder. but, as i’m reading in the book We wish to inform you that tomorrow we will be killed with our families by Philip Gourevitch, people killed in shifts, like a 9 to 5 job. they did it because that’s what they were supposed to do, regardless of whether they really wanted to kill or not.

i’m learning more and more that genocide happened so easily and efficiently here because Rwandans are painfully obedient, reverent toward power, and have been since early Rwandan history. There’s a ridiculous submission to a higher power that people will sacrifice even inherent moral attitudes, like the idea of murder as abhorrent and horrific, for the sake of adherence.

so i guess the scenario that confuses me the most is that the murderer goes from growing into a social environment of hatred and animosity towards a certain group of people, learning that that behavior is acceptable and the attitude true, that the government is right, and that if the government says kill, you kill. then, after the genocide, they’re held in front of the remainders of families they helped destroy as the most loathed and malicious criminals, judged for the rest of their lives as the bane of society.

there doesn’t seem to be a lot of justice in this.

i do believe that there are crimes against humanity. that people should know right and wrong and that murder is wrong. but if people, like some of those in Rwanda, are coerced or even just influenced significantly by higher powers to forget these things, it’s perhaps, as Dwight Jackson would say, a crime by the society rather than a crime committed by the individual.

so what should be done?

it seems as if a lot of people are able to heal more quickly after seeing their families’ killers put in jail, or are in some ways made to atone for their actions, but it doesn’t really make sense. it’s a false sense of justice, because the real injustice lies in the lack of strength in character and a general mindlessness that causes the people to, in a sense, live robotically with little autonomy…at least autonomy in thought. this isn’t true for every individual…but it’s true enough of the population as a whole, hence the genocide.

i have no idea what to do or think about it.

people should still be punished, but not in the normal sense of the word. i guess i hold to an ideology of punishment solely as a means of rehabilitation, not condemnation…and i wish i could remove the good person, bad person worldview from that. that the bad people can just go rot in prison with all the other bad people.

i think i just wish there was a general understanding of people. That people would find healing and justice in the knowledge that what happened did not happen because people are bad, or that the killers were evil. I wish they’d find justice, not in sending an essentially innocent person into a tainted reputation, disrespected and hated for as long as his or her memories are around, but that they'd find justice in healing in the hope that their society can and is changing.

I wish we could just stop hating people.