Mikhail Khodorkovsky writing for the Sunday NYTimes, "Notes From a Russion Penal Colony," relates a story about how one prisoner "refused to cut a deal with his conscience" and thereby helped Khodorkovsky, himself a prisoner in Penal Colony No. 7, Segezha, Russia.
Why is this story important to me? Because of something a mother told me yesterday. Apparently, her son is caught between dating two women - but only one does he really care for. The mother told the son that it was not fair to the other girl and he should break it off if there was no future. The father told the son, "Everyone dates around with multiple partners - no reason you should be different."
To whom does the son listen? That's not for me to say. I can tell that there might be an answer in Khodorkovsky's essay:
"To cut a deal with one’s conscience — to lie, keep quiet, “not notice,” hiding behind the claim that it’s “for my family.” To convince oneself that “such are the times,” or that “everyone does it.” Who are we really dealing with? How do we find out that the other party — the conscience — refuses to deal? When we find ourselves face to face with disaster? Or later, when we are tallying up our life and become painfully aware that there’s no more dodging the raindrops, that there remain only memories? But by then you can’t change anything."
Along a similar theme - one's conscience - is a movie I watched the other night, Pierrepoint, The Last Hang Man.
The movie is disturbing in subject matter but made all the more so by the plodding, methodical unfolding of the story. It mimicks the methodical technique of the executioner. After watching a few executions the viewer could become almost inured to death by hanging. I still blinked when the rope snapped. What saves the story is the hangman's role: he believes what he does is sacred work. To him, the criminals have "paid the price" with death - the slate is wiped clean. And he has a hand in that. This is the power of the story whether or not you agree with his posture, or believe he is hiding behind an artfully crafted excuse to murder.
Who was Albert Pierrpoint? He was a grocery delivery man whose father was an executioner for England. Pierrepoint feels a calling to not only follow in his father's footsteps but to become the most efficient executioner England has witnessed. He realizes that aim only to be reversed in his convictions about the benefits of capital punishment by one of his last hangings. After 608 executions in 20 years, Pierrepoint writes, "Capital punishment is little more than revenge."
"'If death were a deterrent,' he wrote, 'I might be expected to know. It is I who have faced them at the last, young lads and girls, working men, grandmothers. I have been amazed to see the courage with which they take that walk into the unknown.
'It did not deter them then, and it had not deterred them when they committed what they were convicted for. All the men and women whom I have faced at that final moment convince me that in what I have done I have not prevented a single murder.'"
Recent Comments