Senior Seminar. By now you should be far enough into Samuel Butler’s Erewhon to know “that illness of any sort was considered in Erewhon to be highly criminal and immoral.” At the same time, actions that seem more properly to be criminal or immoral are treated by the Erewhonians as illnesses.
Ha ha ha — that Erewhon sure is a wacky place! But are we any better? Can you provide examples of ways that our own culture confuses criminality and illness?
Thursday, February 19
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One of the aims of the prison system is to punish, but also to rehabilitate. The logic follows that if someone commits a minor crime such as theft, their punishment can act as a treatment of sorts, and they can emerge a "cured" person. For those committing more serious and heinous crimes such as rape or incest or pedophilia, some view it as a psychological disorder that, with proper treatment and medication and therapy, can be "cured" or at least put into some sort of a remission.
I think Butler's method of reversing the conventional treatment for the sick and criminal was a good move. On page 53, the straightener says, "You should resist [being sick], we can do nothing for the bodies of our patient's; such matters are beyond our province." This actually struck me with a considerable amount of common sense. As individuals, the only thing we really have control over is the decisions we choose to make in regard to the standards we choose to follow. We can make decisions that lead us to have healthier bodies, but really, no matter how good a diet and how healthy a lifestyle you lead, physical ailments from the common cold all the way to cancer can strike at any moment regardless. In this way, it does make more sense to spend more efforts trying to keep healthy the only capacity we really can control, our mind. However, this also makes the system even sillier because it punishes those who have no control whatsoever over their well-being and also doesn't take into account any psychological inhibitors that may make freedom, decision, and morality more complicated.
Recently, the wacky fields of psychology and psychiatry seem to be making diseases, which I would term: Excuses, and publishing them in their version of the Bible, the DMV.
I recall learning about psychiatric diseases that contributed to stuff like "compulsive shoplifting", "compulsive lying", and, you get the picture.
These fields are contributing to our culture confusing criminality and illness. Sometimes, a ferret really is just a ferret, know what I mean!? (If not, I'm referring to Sredni Vashtar, that ferret, could be phallic, but maybe it's just a ferret.)
Certainly diseases such as AIDs and HIV have a stigma associated with them to where people do not want to be near someone who has these diseases (I'm reminded of the movie 'Philadelphia' and Denzel Washington's reaction immediately following his first encounter with Tom Hanks' character). It seems to me that the people who have contracted these diseases have become jailed in their own world. They are automatically shut-in and locked into their lives. They will never be allowed certain jobs, they will never be allowed certain romantic gestures, they will never be able to receive affordable healthcare.
But it's not just these complicated, life-ending diseases. When someone has a cold or the flu they are essentially told to stay home and not to infect anyone. They are put on house arrest until they are cured. When a child gets pink-eye he/she is forced to stay away from their friends and their education in order to prevent the disease from healing.
But is it wrong to prevent illnesses? Certainly it is wrong to say that someone is a criminal because he got sick. But is it wrong to seclude said individual until he gets better? I don't think so in the least. For the common good of the people, I can only say that it is imperative that people with contagious illnesses be detained willfully until they are healthy.
Illness vs. sickness is a delightful flip-flop! This scenario makes me immediately think of Andrea Yates, the Texan house wife who killed her five children. This is not only a huge crime (against both morals and law) but it was also chalked up to illness. So illness and crime are really not on opposite spectrum. Like Sheth says, when a person is sick they are told to stay home in their own sort of 'incarceration'. To be locked away in a hospital room is almost near the same as being locked away in a jail cell. And I assume that the food is probably the same. The lines between the crimes and illness are becoming more and more blurred, especially with all the loop holes in the law that can blame crimes on illness and the treatment of our sick.
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