Nature and anti-nature
Yesterday I sat in a small house, within virgin Atlantic coastal forest - the last 100,000 hectares left on the Pernambuco coast - discussing the implementation of a Restorative system within the Federal Pernambuco University, considered by many one of the country's best places of advanced learning. Surrounded by cacau, dendê palms, boggy ponds punctured by prehistoric water trees, and the extraordinary chaotic order of sounds - frogs, birds, monkeys...., and endlessly shifting smells of sweet, bitter, pungent..... - the proximity of wild nature changed the conversation.
By osmosis I experienced my thinking changing and the conceptual framework necessary to sustain the logic of exclusion and imposed pain become increasingly fragile. From permaculture we (re)learn that nature wastes not. The uniqueness of each sound, each leaf, each life form does not presume disconnection from the whole. Rather separateness is unknown and everything co-exists. Responsibility - the ability to respond and the action of doing so - is a given, and is the manifestation of that interconnectedness. Nature is in a constant process of decay-growth, of falling-restoring. On the macro level we call this evolution. On the micro level we call this learning.
This afternoon I sat in a large prison on the outskirts of Rio de Janeiro. Around 40 of the 1000 or so inmates - convicted of armed robbery, murder, drug smuggling or selling, non payment of alimony - sat with me in the prison church to discuss establishing a Restorative system within the prison. Most came from the communities in which police killed 22 39 (updated) more people this weekend, and drug-gang gunfire downed a police helicopter. They sleep in cells in groups of 75 or more. "I opened my eyes last night and watched the rats crawling over those asleep on the floor", I was told.
Each inmate is held not simply within the walls, gates, bars and locks of the physical compound but within a web of permissions. For every action they desire, the willingness of a guard is necessary. To go to the toilet, to wash their hands, to read. "They are trying to break our spirit. You have to be very strong. Our bodies break, but our values keep us going". Fights break out. "We have our own justice - between us", I heard, to smiles and nods, "but today I saw that it is the same as the one they use against us".
There is a labyrinthine process of permissions ahead. But come the New Year I intend to offer Restorative Circle Facilitator Practice modules to those inmates who wish.
