Restorative Community
  • Blog
  • Who We Are
  • Get In Touch
  • Blog
  • Who We Are
  • Get In Touch

Restorative Community

of Aotearoa New Zealand

'An insane level of optimism'

11/6/2018

0 Comments

 

Chris Marshall

Prof Chris Marshall, the Diana Unwin Chair in Restorative Justice at Victoria University of Wellington

I recently read an article in which the author tries to identify the traits of people he regarded as “moral heroes”, those who dedicate their lives to fighting for just causes. In reading his analysis, I couldn’t help but think of the people we all know and work with in the restorative justice movement.
 
Moral heroes, the author suggests, embark on a life of service because, at some point in their lives, somebody planted an ideal of what a good life looks like, often by setting a high personal example. Captured by this picture, the person’s own moral identity becomes fused with the moral ideal. They put this ideal into action in their daily lives, not for utilitarian reasons, but simply because “this is who I am, this is what I do”. Such people are also marked by a life-long commitment to learning, by a capacity to carry on in face of opposition, and by a strong network of support. But perhaps most relevant to our work as restorative justice practitioners is the trait of hope.
 
“People who lead these lives tend to possess an insane level of optimism, a certainty that history does change for the better and that achieving justice is only a matter of time. They remain undaunted even in the face of severe hardship and assume every wrong is temporary…Their efforts are generally built around healing some rupture in society, reconciling differences, bringing the unlike together, a move from fragmentation to wholeness. However contentious the world may look, they have a mind-set that at our deepest level we are all connected in a single fabric. Some of these moral heroes even seem to sense that no matter how diverse their fields of work are, they’re all somehow part of the same big struggle.”
 
That, to me, is the essence of what it means to embrace the restorative vision. What do you think?
0 Comments



Leave a Reply.

    Contributing Authors

    Chris Marshall
    Kim Workman
    Haley Farrar
    Lindsey Pointer
    Tom Noakes-Duncan
    Andrea Parosanu​
    ​
    Ryan Meachen
    Rodney Holm
    PACT
    Resolution Institute
    Mike Hinton
    ​
    Anna Costley
    Restorative Practices Whanganui
    ​Margaret Thorsborne

    Archives

    July 2019
    June 2019
    April 2019
    November 2018
    July 2018
    June 2018
    August 2017
    July 2017
    May 2017
    April 2017
    March 2017
    February 2017
    November 2016
    October 2016
    September 2016
    August 2016
    July 2016
    June 2016
    May 2016
    April 2016
    May 2015
    October 2014

    Categories

    All
    Case Study
    Community
    Conference Presentations
    Corrections
    Cyberharm
    Education/schools
    Facilitation
    Family/domestic Violence
    Higher Education
    Indigenous
    Justice
    Law And Policy
    Opinion
    Pedagogy
    Reintegration
    Religion/Theology
    Research/evaluations
    Resources
    Restorative Justice
    Restorative Practices
    Training And Accreditation
    Victims/survivors
    Workplace

    RSS Feed

© COPYRIGHT VICTORIA UNIVERSITY OF WELLINGTON, 2015-2018. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.