Sanity
Goodness it's been forever since I've posted on here. I realized I'm starting to get my nervous twitch of my nose back with all the stress of work and school, so I figured I'd better start posting again to work out some stuff going through my crazy brain and to release some tension. I guess this post is more philosophical than legal. Being Ash Wednesday and all, I think I have that right.
So, I went to the mental health hearings at the mental hospital. My court has jurisdiction over the mental health commitments of crazy people. As I sat there, seeing one crazy (literally) person after another be "sentenced" to 90 more days in the loony bin to see if they can get straightened out, I started to look around, finding myself looking at their faces during the hearings. At one point, my heart about stopped from the conflict warring in my soul. These people had true, real, full emotions. While their minds were minds of children or, even worse, dangerous minds, their souls still held deep emotions that caused them deep grief and sadness over being committed as a ward of the state.
It has always been my philosophy that government should not be too restrictive on a society--one of its main purposes is to protect and to intervene in the lives of those who either are a threat to others or who cannot properly care for themselves in our society. With that in mind, I was stricken by the notion that intervention in these peoples' lives, while good for us "normal" people, may be life's most awful event for those deemed "mentally incompetent." They still feel, they still hate being held in a facility where noone comes to visit them, they still hate never being able to go anywhere or do anything they want to do. Although in my mind, I know it is right because they need care, something in my heart cringes at the idea that society's norm deems it just to lock these people up for doing absolutely nothing wrong. A guilty murderer has several appeals pending execution, each appeal laced with terms like "prisoner rights;" all the while, that prisoner can show no remorse while legal procedure protects their rights. However, a mentally incompetent person has very few people who will advocate for him. Few people really questions whether that mentally incompetent person has a lesser restrictive alternative. Noone takes the mental anguish of that mentally incompetent person into consideration when sentencing that person to time in a mental institution. A murderer's mental anguish, however, can lessen his sentence for committing an absolutely heinous crime.
I guess my real question is much more personal. Why would a God--this God in whom I believe and love--who created these people allow them to lose their mental capacity to function while still allowing them the emotions to deeply grieve the fact that they lost that mental capacity. How is that fair? Then, the only way for our society to actually do anything "morally right" toward these people, is for our society to basically lock them up in order to care for them. How is that just? In my mind, I know how it all works. But, for a couple brief moments, my heart about stopped because I saw a person, a crazy person who needed help, about ready to cry, eyes saddened and lips quivering, because, even though they had emotions to express their grief, they didn't have a competent enough mind to explain themselves. It saddened me deeply. It saddened me that law has to exist to deal with this.
So, I went to the mental health hearings at the mental hospital. My court has jurisdiction over the mental health commitments of crazy people. As I sat there, seeing one crazy (literally) person after another be "sentenced" to 90 more days in the loony bin to see if they can get straightened out, I started to look around, finding myself looking at their faces during the hearings. At one point, my heart about stopped from the conflict warring in my soul. These people had true, real, full emotions. While their minds were minds of children or, even worse, dangerous minds, their souls still held deep emotions that caused them deep grief and sadness over being committed as a ward of the state.
It has always been my philosophy that government should not be too restrictive on a society--one of its main purposes is to protect and to intervene in the lives of those who either are a threat to others or who cannot properly care for themselves in our society. With that in mind, I was stricken by the notion that intervention in these peoples' lives, while good for us "normal" people, may be life's most awful event for those deemed "mentally incompetent." They still feel, they still hate being held in a facility where noone comes to visit them, they still hate never being able to go anywhere or do anything they want to do. Although in my mind, I know it is right because they need care, something in my heart cringes at the idea that society's norm deems it just to lock these people up for doing absolutely nothing wrong. A guilty murderer has several appeals pending execution, each appeal laced with terms like "prisoner rights;" all the while, that prisoner can show no remorse while legal procedure protects their rights. However, a mentally incompetent person has very few people who will advocate for him. Few people really questions whether that mentally incompetent person has a lesser restrictive alternative. Noone takes the mental anguish of that mentally incompetent person into consideration when sentencing that person to time in a mental institution. A murderer's mental anguish, however, can lessen his sentence for committing an absolutely heinous crime.
I guess my real question is much more personal. Why would a God--this God in whom I believe and love--who created these people allow them to lose their mental capacity to function while still allowing them the emotions to deeply grieve the fact that they lost that mental capacity. How is that fair? Then, the only way for our society to actually do anything "morally right" toward these people, is for our society to basically lock them up in order to care for them. How is that just? In my mind, I know how it all works. But, for a couple brief moments, my heart about stopped because I saw a person, a crazy person who needed help, about ready to cry, eyes saddened and lips quivering, because, even though they had emotions to express their grief, they didn't have a competent enough mind to explain themselves. It saddened me deeply. It saddened me that law has to exist to deal with this.
posted by Nik | 6:56 PM
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