Virtue To Rule, Evil To be Suppressed
IN autumn the leaves fade and fall; in spring the shoots come; in winter the flowers bloom and in summer the germs die preparing the cycle to repeat. It is obvious that nature cannot adhere to spring alone. All the seasons have to operate to achieve a certain balance. As the Philosopher said, “If there is only sunshine and there is no day and night the earth would become a desert. Similarly, to know the value of virtue, evil should be present for comparison, understanding and practice. If all the humans in the world are only virtuous, the world will be a boring place to live.
Consider what happened in South Africa after the end of apartheid. Faced with thousands of acts of murder and brutality committed by hundreds of soldiers, police and other government agencies over the course of decades, the new government under Nelson Mandela realized that trying to bring every guilty party to trial would tie up the courts for years, rekindle bitter feelings and racially divide the country that desperately needed to heal the wounds. So, instead of setting up something like the ‘Nuremberg trial’, they set up the ‘Truth and Reconciliation Commission’ whose purpose was to get the perpetrators to confess their crimes,
show remorse and give them amnesty. Thus a divided nation become a United Nation.
A man who was blinded by the police during a brutal interrogation during the apartheid testified: “I feel that what had been making me sick all these years was the fact that I could not tell my story. But now, I feel, that I have regained my sight.” The mother of a son who was killed by the police testified: “If this means that this perpetrator, the man who killed my son, becomes human again so that all of us get our humanity back, then I support it.”
We have many laws to regulate the conduct of people so that everyone can lead a decent life: What victims commonly seek is not revenge but vindication, a public acknowledgement that what happened to them was wrong. They want the burden of shame lifted from their shoulders and placed where it belongs. There are cases where the mothers of daughters raped have forgiven the rapists once they confess their guilt and atone for it.
The world wants virtue to rule and evil to be suppressed, so that all can live in peace. Anne Frank wrote in her famous diary “The final forming of a person’s character lies in his own hands.”