Black Spots and Human Rights
No punishment has ever possessed enough power of deterrence to prevent the commission of crimes. On the contrary, whatever the punishment, once a specific crime has appeared for the First Time, its reappearance is more likely than its initial emergence could ever have been – Hannah Arendt
When punishment becomes too common or an overused resort, it is evidence of an ill-governed organisation, institution, or brethren dependent on wielding the stick to hide the visible inefficiencies and corruption of its leadership and its day-to-day affairs. The rottener the brethren, the more punishment meted out to its members. Innocence or guilt do not count in the decisions of punishment. The errors arising from such vague decisions are not to hold the brethren back. We are talking about oppression here.
Punishment thus becomes the wilful way the brethren squanders possibilities for attaining flourishing outcomes. Call it diligence avoidance by choice. Some brethren use Black spots as its primary method of discipline, punishment, and income generation within, while claiming to be “defenders of human rights” without. Such is a claim so easy the unintelligent can thrive on it.
Black spots, when pronounced, take away the full human rights of a male free citizen, even when his rights are unalienable. He is an excluded man forced to contend with indecision, uncertainty, confusion, overwhelming anger, and clinical depression, well, most times. That is his response to the punishment. Yet, the expectation that plagues him is the return to the brethren. Well, after much reflection, he hears, and a fawning promise to be a better person.
Do I return to the brethren or not, discounting the exorbitant fee of readmission?
Should I commit to the brethren when I return, considering the experienced humiliation?
Can I trust my brethren, factoring in the many unexpected knives in my back?
These are the painful and mind-numbing dilemmas of countless “dead men”, recipients of the injustice of Black spots must ask themselves if they want to be a “living man” again.
Despair is never too far away, either. The cry “I am at a crossroads” is familiar among the punished and unpunished. This misery brought on by wanton and vindictive meanness one must experience to know it. Good diction and prose will not suffice. Lesser punishments include compulsory silence, curfews, fines, rejections, gang-ups, demotions of rank, denials of entitlements, etc. You do not need a black spot to feel misery.
On returning to the fold, if it happens, the conformity of the Black spotted is a guarantee. If you cannot fight or resist the brethren, you must embrace your injuries and lick your wounds peacefully. O yes, peacefully. Alcohol and song will do the rest, they hope. The healing from a black spot when innocent is never complete, but that is the point. How else will the brethren be subject to tight control? Break the man! The Black spot was even equal to a death sentence in times past.
On the contrary, Ultraviolet Spots are an inverse matter altogether—unique with unintended consequences and miscalculations. Not only do UVs confer full human rights on the possessor of the spot, but his rights are also unalienable. Tamper with the rights and freedoms of the UV’d, and you will not like his sometimes-unrelenting exercise of them. Bianimikaley! UVs are a testament to the indecision, uncertainty, confusion, overwhelming anger, and inhumanity afflicting the minds of the leadership of the brethren. If they had a choice, they would not issue UVs with hindsight, but the love of power prohibits them from justice.
Nevertheless,The UV’d is not troubled by the certainty of “no return,” guaranteed by the Man Who Claimed He Does Not Die and further eliminates the tortures of rehabilitation. No more endless demands of self-humiliation. Rest of Mind! Rest of Mind!
Furthermore, The goal of rehabilitation is restoration or reformation, not inhumanity, as is consistent and unwavering within the brethren. If I must choose between conforming to authoritarian whims and freedom, I will choose freedom without reflection. What would you choose? Don’t sweat and tarry to tell yourself the truth when it is so apparent. Those who are habitual fodder for the excesses of autocrats or have never tasted real freedom will not understand, perhaps, ever. Time will tell.
Think you’re in heaven, but you living in hell,
Think you’re in heaven, but you living in hell,
Time alone, oh!
Time will tell.
I now know why these lyrics are the most misunderstood or underappreciated by Bob Marley (Time Will Tell). It is a tribute to human rights and when you hear it; you feel no pain.
Be good, not lucky
Grimot Nane
Please take a look at my musing, A Death in a Dream Cheers.