I hail you from the cold North and offer season’s greetings!
The Old English would have said, Glæd Geol Eallum! [roughly pronounced: Gled Jule Yalum!], which means, ‘A Happy Yule!’
I prefer to welcome Yuletide.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q-VG83CblYUThis is the season for conviviality, warmth and fellow-feeling. We can have no appreciation of what this warmth means without the contrasting reality of coldness. The most salving warmth is that of the friend who lifts you at your lowest with a mere word or look of reassurance, or the stranger who greets you with a smile when all the world seems against you. It is the winter, the cold season, that forged us emotionally and turned us into social creatures. Those of us of northern European ancestry can reflect that, long ago, in the depths of unforgiving winters, by roaring fires amidst dark trees, our forebears huddled together for warmth, often in great fear of the elements or starvation, and developed the mores and attitudes that were passed down to us - of trust, honour, community, and respect for the mystery of the ineffable.
Yuletide itself was a celebration. It nominally still is, but back when the summer harvest was a make-or-break affair and life was precarious, there really was something to celebrate at high winter. It signified that the days would start to lengthen and pointed towards Spring and a reinvigoration of life. The rich, heavy food and drink that fills you up and warms you at this time of year is a call back to when food harvested in the summer was stored for when it would be needed most, which is that time of year when fruits cannot just be picked off trees and people would be at their hungriest and most vulnerable: in the winter.
In warmer or arid parts of the world, what – if anything – was or is there to celebrate? Those societies became more literate and passive in human relations than Europeans because they knew nothing of the cold and lived in perpetual climates without any real struggle against the elements. Life is easier, less challenging, without the cold, and perhaps qualities such as forgiveness, good cheer, generosity, and a sense of humour would be less innate to people in such circumstances, who then have to be formally taught these things and have them codified into written Law – a religious tract, maybe - as they develop the basics of a civilisation. Those descended from the Northern Peoples, bearing the genes of ancestors who were forged through a fire of struggle, in which the exercise of every muscle, bone and sinew was a fight against instant death and for survival amidst cold forests and tundra, perhaps had less need for writing or laws and lived a freer, more elemental and instinctive, even sexier, existence.
Jeremy Bamber does not experience this season, or any season – he is of course locked in Wakefield Prison, a high security establishment. This is an artificial environment that roughly apes Bentham’s Panopticon principle, a real-life dystopia, without residual human experiences. Why do we lock people up? Human beings are not meant to be locked in concrete and mortar boxes any more than animals, so it is a relevant question. One reason derives from Christianity: the idea of penitence for one’s crimes (hence the old name for a prison, still used in American English: the penitentiary). Another obvious reason is that some people are considered dangerous, but would we lock a dangerous wild animal in a box? We would, I hope, set it free, with a resolution to keep it as far away from people and civilisation as possible and not go near it. The resolution to lock sentient beings in cages seems to arise from certain fundamental preconceptions and beliefs about human needs. It is supposed that a prison – even highly-restrictive prisons such as the supermax institutions of the United States – can be humane if a person’s basic physiological needs, such as food, shelter, somewhere to sleep, etc., are met and the prisoner is safe and given or allowed some constructive tasks with which to occupy himself. The American psychologist, Abraham Maslow, posited a hierarchy of needs which seems to (perhaps unintentionally) coincide with this type of thinking. Maslow’s hierarchy begins with basic physiological needs such as food, shelter and sleep at the foot and psychological needs at the top, and between these, things such as safety and shelter, and love and belonging. Maslow was assuming that the fulfilment of life’s purposes depended on, first, the satisfaction of elementary physiological needs. This implies that any sort of treatment of a human person can be considered humane so long as his basic needs are met, and that more sophisticated psychological and motivational needs are things to strive for, rather than essential prerequisites. This in turn implies that the enforced denial of the more advanced needs may be humane under certain circumstances. After all, why should a murderer be allowed self-actualisation?
But is all that a true commentary on the human being? The very question, ‘Why should a murderer be allowed self-actualisation?’, perhaps hints at the problem with Maslowian thought. Possibly Maslow - and prisons - get things exactly the wrong way round, in that the things they start with should be the things they end with, and the things denied to prisoners – love, sex, self-esteem, and self-fulfilment – should be the true starting-point and ought to be the fundamental right of prisoners to have, just as they are for all. Of course, food, shelter and clothing are fundamental things in an incidental sense, but in the reality of red-clawed Nature – the true Real World – our ancestors strove for these things and love, belonging and self-esteem were prerequisites of their capabilities to do so, not ambitions. Civilisation reverses this and grants us the rudiments of survival automatically while asking us to aspire to be full human beings, something we ought to start with.
A traditional society becomes tradition because it provides its members with Maslow's advanced psychological goals as basic essentials: in other words, a reason for existence is more important than having food to eat. That sounds off or odd, but it's not. People who know who they are and why they are here do not need Maslow’s hierarchy, which is really meant for 'civilisation'. Civilisation is the opposite of tradition (or reaction), the former breaking down the latter. The Civilisation versus Tradition distinction can be illustrated by the differences in criminal justice of the two types of societies. In the past, when survival was the aspiration, virtually any sort of significant crime was classed as something akin to ‘murder’ because the very nature of criminal behaviour threatened survival and tribal existence. The special term from old English law for a significant offence, the felony, was meant to denote those who were enemies of the community, felons. A felon would be hung, or cast out and exiled from the community in the belief that he would perish to the elements. In other words, the felon was denied the supporting means for meeting his physiological needs, if not killed outright. He was, in effect, if not literally, extinguished. As alluded to earlier, fear of the elements is what created high trust, conformity and respect for law among northern Europeans. That distant past is a foreign country. Rightly or wrongly, we do things differently now. Jeremy Bamber was not hung or cast out to the elements. He stands convicted of the murder of five people, including his own parents, his own sister, and his nephews, two six year-old-boys, but remains ensconced safely in a prison, with all his basic physiological needs met at the expense of the state until his dying day. Sheltered, fed, clothed and watered. So, what is the issue?
I would argue that it is possible for all a person’s physiological needs to be met but their treatment to still amount to torture. Jeremy Bamber is being tortured. For Jeremy, every day is high winter, all year round, even in summer. He does not feel the cold or see snow. He does not see the Sun. The walls and ceilings block out the seasons. That is not a way for a human being to live. In his novel,
The House of the Dead, Fyodor Dostoevsky wrote: “
The degree of civilisation in a society can be judged by entering its prisons.” Judged by the standards of Jeremy’s treatment, we are not civilised. Incarceration that involves the denial of normal human relationships and the separation of the individual from the natural world is cruel, as it is a denial of the essence of the human being that was forged long ago in those dark winters. It strips him of his identity. One could even say that incarceration is, per se, an act of dehumanisation. It is soul death in slow motion. This is an important observation, not just in the interests of humane treatment, but also because the conditions we create for prisoners could be the microcosm for ‘free’ society in the future. We have seen how, since March 2020, the state has agglomerated to itself huge powers over the day-to-day private lives of ordinary people in the name of public health. In effect, Britain has turned itself into an open prison, an official carceral society, with technology being used to make our lives more restrictive and prevent people from walking in the countryside or in public spaces, even leaving their homes. Once the state is allowed to take such power, it rarely gives it back without a fight. The closed prison, as the ultimate raw exercise of state violence against the individual, is the model for the prison outside.
Jeremy cannot pick his friends. They pick him. He cannot get up and go where he likes. He can only go where he is allowed. He – rightly – lost these and other rights when he was convicted of terrible, heinous murders, and if he did it, then he fully deserves these restrictions. Yet I still maintain that Jeremy should have at least a theoretical right to be paroled, and while he remains in custody, he should be offered normal human experiences. He should feel the sand beneath his feet, see the blue sky and feel the sea breeze, indeed snow, and autumn leaves. I maintain that a human being should have that right, regardless of what he has done, and that no manmade institution can or should keep a man captive for the entirety of his life if he is no danger to others.
I acknowledge that this is another Christmas for the victims, those who have lost loved ones. I especially think of Colin Caffell, who lost his sons. It is trite to observe, but necessary to remind ourselves, that this is a loss that can never be replaced. All of this tragedy raises deep questions. Not just the Why Are We Here and Why Does God Let Bad Things Happen style of philosophical questions, but human-scale ethical questions such as whether, if we refuse to hang the felon, we have the right to keep him incarcerated in close conditions for the remainder of his natural life. Is that not torture? Can the human conscience bear the reality of the suffering of at least one individual? Can someone who stands by and accepts, approves of, even enjoys, the suffering of another human being be described as having a soul, even be human? Or is that person just an animal, guided by baseness and lower qualities such as vindictiveness? Can the world be just if even one person suffers? Can we describe ourselves as good if we allow suffering? I believe to reach answers to these questions, we all need a religion, something that gives us a compass and certainty and that can give hope to lonely, forgotten souls, whether they find Salvation through Christ or meaning and comfort in the Old Faiths, or turn their face defiantly against the preternatural and embrace completely the great shifting sands of materialist existence.
For me, the answer is in a blend of science and tradition. My god is the star, which is the ultimate source of all life, the all-creator, and to which I must return. I find appealing the humility of being one speck in a Universe so big and timeless in its scope and meaning that it is beyond any human reckoning or understanding, and in the absence of God, always will be. The uncertainty of existence and our place in the Grand Scheme is mystical and mystifying and I hope that it will be forever because it is part of the stuff that makes us human, giving us that distinct quality that raises us above the other intelligent mammals: imagination. We invent legends and stories and conjure myths from truths. We have magic and religion, spirits and holy ghosts, gods and goddesses. No other living creature is comparable. This quality exists not from knowing, but from not knowing. Knowing can be suffocating, while not knowing can be liberating. We have souls because, paradoxically, we are mortals who understand that we will face death and are conscious of our own journey to death (Being-towards-Death, as described by Heidegger). As Heidegger argues, mortality is liberating and invigorating, imploring us to live our lives in anticipation of death, yet we also want to live above and beyond the blackness of endless time and somehow carry ourselves forward.
Great writers have produced literature that charts our soul-journeys through love, passion, sex, murder, tragedy. We are not just base animals. We can imagine the plight of others, whether deserved or not, and our consciences demand that the soul is set free from incarceration. Man must be set free in the here and now, in this world. Imprisonment is the denial of love to the imprisoned and solves nothing. Some attempt to excuse suffering by looking to a Higher Power and promises of justice in the End. Christ gave his blessing, but it was peremptory as he is the dispenser, and more fundamentally, His love is not of this world. He was a being above love because he loved everyone. Only humans of the world can express love to one another, even through the simplicity of a hand to be held. A prisoner is separated from these blessings in a cold cell and must live with ghosts of the past, shouting in his head and dancing on the cell wall, mocking him. It is the worst who deserve love because they are the most in need of it, if they are to be rescued from this Hell. I say, ‘Welcome, Yule’, because we should never forget who we are.
Bless everyone here.
