PlaceboNation

There is a great scene in the movie “The Interpreter” where the character played by Nicole Kidman describes how some tribe of people deals with a murderer.

“Everyone who loses somebody wants revenge on someone, on God if they can’t find anyone else. But in Africa, in Matobo, the Ku believe that the only way to end grief is to save a life. If someone is murdered, a year of mourning ends with a ritual that we call the Drowning Man Trial. There’s an all-night party beside a river. At dawn, the killer is put in a boat. He’s taken out on the water and he’s dropped. He’s bound so that he can’t swim. The family of the dead then has to make a choice. They can let him drown or they can swim out and save him. The Ku believe that if the family lets the killer drown, they’ll have justice but spend the rest of their lives in mourning. But if they save him, if they admit that life isn’t always just… that very act can take away their sorrow.”

TI don’t know if I could be strong enough to forgive and would want justice.

The problem is our society does not value life. Not in the case of capital punishment, not in the case of the poor and hungry, not in the case of the environment. We are still savages that happened to have stumbled upon some technology. We care only about ourselves and greed.