'Good and evil exist in our lives, and that evil, like good, is always a possibility'
(Pumla Gobodo-Madikizela, A Human Being Died That Night: Forgiving Apartheid's Chief Killer)
I remember once having a conversation with my father about child soldiers, I think it was in response to a news report on the Lord's Resistance Army, but I don't remember clearly. In it we discussed whether, put in the same situation, we would stand up even in the face of torture or death, or whether we would instead become like so many children put into impossible situations and forced to carry out abhorrent crimes.
Clearly in situations like that the argument as to where responsibility for the crimes lies is ambiguous, however, it strikes me that there are many situations which we view as far more clear-cut but aren't necessarily. Reading Madikizela's book examining her experiences of interviewing Eugene de Kock, nicknamed 'Prime Evil' in post-apartheid South Africa, I cannot help but dwell on the question she often raised, where does responsibility lie?
Does responsibility lie in the perpetrator unless one can prove beyond all doubt that they were given no other choice but to act in the way that they did? Or does it lie, at least in part, with systems that support such actions, which create the ideology that legitimises the crimes, the perception of necessity, the influence of upbringing, environment and personal circumstances. What is it that has meant that I am generally law-abiding, conscientious and slightly over-burdened with a sense of what ought to be?
A particular extension of this question that interests me is the idea of the age of criminal responsibility. The very existence of an age of culpability implies the belief that by a certain age you will have learnt right from wrong, according to the codes of your society. But what happens if you haven't? Or what happens if the right and wrong you are given to understand are not the same as those elsewhere and can you be held responsible for not acting according to a code you have had no exposure to?
I don't propose to answer this question, indeed to do so would be impressive given the debate on the subject has raged for much of the last century, but it is running round my head and I thought I would start the new year as I mean to go on... asking lots of questions to which there are almost certainly no answers.
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