Friends Journal, Seeking 'Retrospective Justice' in Community

15 views

Skip to first unread message

Doug Hamilton

unread,

Jun 12, 2022, 8:23:23 PM6/12/22

to Communal Studies Forum

Seeking 'Retrospective justice'

..in the TMO,

Seeing current numbers in attendance in the group meditations in the Fairfield, Iowa meditation Domes or with the Zoom virtual Dome group meditation and seeing who they are on the Zoom format, it is a noteworthy reflection that this evidently is what is left of a meditating community, that would turn out for the meditation.

It seems there had been some lot of trauma by expulsion, by the previous administration. A disengaging by exclusivity of practitioners that was in the community.

It seems apparent that if the TM movement and the Fairfield meditating community is to thrive then management is going to need some help with mediation, with unraveling the trauma of its past in the present.

Seeking Retrospective justice in the TMO - Abstracted from Friends Journal, linked to below is a way of thinking about a problem the TM community seems to have, that appears even worldwide.

James Baldwin quote, “Not everything that is faced can be changed, but nothing can be changed until it is faced,”

Abstracting here from a January 2021 Friends Journal article, , ‘A Proposed Plan for Retrospective Justice’ by Harold D. Weaver Jr.

A Path to Retrospective Justice:

“..Is there a process whereby we can more fully discern the deeds of our (group, organization or movement)?

Harold D. Weaver Jr.’s three-step plan for retrospective justice suggests a process to answer these questions. Weaver’s plan is adapted from the 2006 seminal publication by Brown University researchers on Slavery and Justice in which they identify three steps essential in retrospective justice. Weaver adapts these steps to offer a plan whereby (people) can acknowledge and document their participation in (for instance in the case of chattel slavery), and through this process build a more just society (organization).

RETROSPECTIVE JUSTICE refers to:

attempts to administer justice years, decades or centuries after the commission of a severe injustice or series of injustices against persons, communities, nations or ethnic groups—in this case, a series of continuous historical events.

Retrospective justice involves: (1) formal acknowledgement of an offense, (2) a commitment to truth telling, and (3) making amends.

..recognizing and responding to the transgressions is nearly always met with rejoinders emphasizing entirely unrelated matters. Shifting the focus away from the actual offense(s) that many proliferated and profited from interferes with a clear, unequivocal acknowledgement of it.

Brown University researchers observed this same reluctance to focus on and acknowledge the real offense across the very wide range of organizations and groups they studied.

“Every confrontation with historical injustice begins with establishing and upholding the truth, against the inevitable tendencies to deny, extenuate, and forget.”

The second step towards retrospective justice, a commitment to truth telling, requires examining information about the offense honestly and documenting this information in the historical record and cultural memory of the respective group. How accurate are some of the common narratives and do these narratives provide an honest account? (Does narrative comport with the facts?)

When an offense is clearly acknowledged and accounted for, we have an opportunity to do something about it: to make amends. This may involve monetary reparations but equally entails spiritual, interpersonal, cultural, psychological, and political dimensions. It is an attempt at atonement and reconciliation. As such, it touches both the oppressor and oppressed.

Heroes cast a very long shadow on their descendants. Their stories become core components of the collective identity and shared culture of any group. Heroes symbolize our highest ideals. The question is whether we are willing to know these heroes, and thus ourselves, honestly, or whether we prefer the illusion?

Facts. Rather, they provide an opportunity to know oppressors and ourselves more honestly, and in that process begins a clearing of a path towards retrospective justice. “