'An insane level of optimism'

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?