Thursday, September 29, 2005

Stability or Justice . . . You Choose

Heard today on the BBC that Algerians are getting a chance to vote on a referendum that their leader says is a choice between stability or justice and he's hoping they'll vote for stability. Seems that in a little more than a decade they've watched terrorist acts take something like 200,000 lives and he's arranged a little "forgive and forget" strategy. I obviously didn't get all the details but he really did ask his people to forgive those who had wronged them and he really did use the words "stability" and "justice."

What a choice!?!

My first thoughts were toward systems again (which is kind of scary because I may go there just a little too often for a normal person) and the fact that in nature when organisms move toward equilibrium (stability) rather than growth they tend to die.

Then I mentally challenged myself (and yes, I'm aware there's a sarcastic remark to that statement as written but I'm letting it stand) and remembered my response to just a few weeks of chaos and limited amounts of destruction. And I could totally understand why people might simply want peace.

And then I took yet another turn in this thought process and wondered, "But how long will peace last if there's ultimately no justice?"

And I ended this trek with being very glad that I'm not in charge of the world.

2 comments:

beholdhowfree said...

Wow. An intriguing choice indeed.

Anonymous said...

As long there is forgivness, peace and justice have both prevailed.