Wouldn’t it be nice if what was right and wrong was obvious and unchanging? Then we could have one set of rules for all time and be certain than anyone who breaks them deserves to be punished.
Society is in flux and the ideas of what constitute right and wrong are unstable. I may consider capital punishment to be a form of murder and to be entirely unacceptable, but many would disagree. However, the slow drift of opinion seems to be in my direction and I predict[1] that in 500 years time it will be viewed with the same horror as we now view the torture instruments used, quite legally, against enemies of the government in the time of Guy Fawkes.
As morality evolves, the laws that govern society must change; imagine if Texas executed it’s prisoners by hanging, drawing and quartering or if American forces had used the iron maiden at Guantanamo rather than water-boarding. The difficulty arises when it comes to the question of who decides when a rule needs changing. Allocating a person or committee doesn’t really work, we just end up with the laws that suit them, so who should do it?
I suspect my reputation for rebellion has developed, in part, because I make a conscious decision to break a rule every now and again. It’s a sort of mental gym exercise; this sort of gentle lawlessness doesn’t come easily to me and I have to keep practicing. That may seem a strange thing for an otherwise honest citizen to engage in but I believe it is necessary. It may seem arrogant and irresponsible to promote rebellion, but I am not recommending wholesale law breaking; rather, I am suggesting that we should constantly question the sense of the rules that surround us and, where necessary, peacefully fight them.
Of course sometimes someone will rebel against a rule that society deems it is important we keep, on those occasions society will push back. It may be frustrating, but the need for a certain critical mass of opinion before change happens acts as a safety valve. Rosa Parks wasn’t the first African American to refuse to give up her bus seat for a white passenger but she is the best known. Not because she did anything more rebellious than those that had gone before her but because they had given the movement momentum and it was able to sweep her up and use her as a figure head.
To get an idea of what happens when the system goes wrong, we can look at China during the cultural revolution. What happened there was not a failure of law making, rather, it was a failure of rebellion. When the risks of questioning government became too severe the entire system broke down with the loss of countless lives and a beautiful and vibrant culture. We will never know what China would have been like today if it’s citizens had been able to protest.
You may have noticed that I have become involved in the fight to release a murderer from prison. If you read my first epic post on the subject you will know that Ben Gunn has served three times the tariff originally handed down. The reasons for his overlong imprisonment are complex but his rebellion plays a large part. I have had many discussions with friends over my decision to support Ben and one of the toughest questions I have been asked was whether it is right for a prisoner to rebel or whether, having forfeited his right to take part in society by committing his crime, he should toe the line and let society decide whether the rules he must abide by are correct.
I have no doubt whatsoever that the same constant questioning of rules and (peaceful) rebellion I believe in outside prison should be encouraged inside as well. The biggest danger to a society is not those that rebel (they just lead to a little bit of anarchy[2]), far worse damage occurs when rule makers are allowed to continue unchecked. It is all around us in the form of the many dictatorships that scar our past and present and it is, to a lesser extent, the situation we have in our justice system. It doesn’t only harm the inmates when they are disenfranchised in this way it bounces back onto the rest of us in the form of higher crime rates, taxes and larger numbers of victims.
Let’s all rebel a little and, in so doing, move our society on that little bit faster.
1. I dare you to prove me wrong.
2. The World Wide Web is the perfect example of what happens when humans are left alone in a place without rules – they make some up.
