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Showing posts from November, 2021

Value of time

How does one understand the value of time for someone whose liberty has been curtailed for many years? In thinking about years of life and liberty lost, there are a number of crucial factors to consider for which we have no reliable measure except perhaps what know from our own experience - lost opportunity to grow into the world with your loved ones, develop an identity, nurture friendships, find love, explore the horizons of your world and beyond, learn complex things, experience ageing and physically, emotionally and intellectually changing over time, and so much more. How does one even estimate the value of lost time? It is almost impossible to do this. No belief or knowledge system can help one appreciate the value of lost time. So, given the impossibility of this task, do we have adequate ways of considering the value of lost time in building safeguards against gross errors in processes designed to impose confinement and confiscation of liberty? If so, how do we acknowledge and r

The morality of innocence

What does the documentary series The Innocence Files teach us? There is a lot to learn about the challenges and flaws of justice systems and about the humanity and compassion of those who go against the grain to fight for the rights of people whose lives have been wrongly and unfairly destroyed by wrongful prosecution and conviction. There is a lot to learn about the seemingly superhuman capacity for patience and perseverance that some people demonstrate even in the face of the most trying of circumstances, where hope has been completely snatched away from them and even the absolute truth cannot save them. There is a lot to learn about the failings and ill will of people entrusted to protect people's rights and serve justice, and how flawed decision-making or malicious persecution can irreparably destroy innocent people's lives. But there is something that the documentary series cannot teach us at all, because it is impossible to fathom and almost impossible to articulate - tha