|
In Reply to: Re: Collective guilt, collective punishment posted by survivor on July 07, 2007 at 17:33:53:
I hear you. You seem to understand very well youshould never condemn yourself for what you knew and did then, based of what you know now, and on who you are as an empowered human being now.
It's like Slinky said, you can't paint everyone with the same brush. I don't think collective anything is right. It is all individual, but I don't believe hardly anyone of us can say they are proud of everything they have done while in the cult. We did a lot of things in common, that were no good, maybe even illegal to some degree even if it was a minor thing, whether under duress or Stockholm Syndrome or not.
My point was not just about the no-brainers like child abuse. It's easy for all of us who come to the boards to say we don't approve child abusers and don't like them in our midst. What I mean is where do the witch hunts start and stop. Why stop at child abuse? Who gets to decide this? What if we never abused children but saw the Davidito book, and in our cult frame of mind didn't understand it was wrong? It's like ToJo said, SOMEONE had to be doing the abusing. What if someone who DID abuse children came in our midst but now admits it was wrong?
One of the reasons I'm asking these questions is because there is a default sensibility in the online ex-member community, of what is kosher and what is not. It is being shaped by opinions which are being posted on boards just like this one. Sometimes I think we act like a court of public opinion, and some people have been subjected to the equivalent bulletin board trials, been asked to defend themselves on these boards, etc.
On another note, by the way, although the TRC afects a significant number of whites, is not just about exposing whites who perpetrated crimes. Bad things happened on all sides, and even ANC members and other black Africans get exposed in the process. The thing many people in the world are discussing now, is whether the Nuremberg-styled justice being used in countries like Iraq is suitable, or if there shouldn't be as a rule in countries like former Yugoslavia or Rwanda, etc, a TRC-styled handling of the situation. Looking at the climate, I'd say most of us opt for Nuremberg-styled justice for sexual abusers in TF.
