Repair the Fear

Spelman closes her thoughts by invoking more thought on the reader. Spelman says “The story of H. reparans throws into sharp relief how we humans have responded to the fact of being creatures who are inherently limited by the resources at our disposal, who are subject to the ever-present possibility of failure and decay, who sometimes seek continuity with the past, and who face the necessity of deciding whether or not to patch up relationships with our neighbors—in short, it reminds us of some facts about the human condition that perhaps we tend to find disturbing.” (138–39) and this brings together many thought she expressed throughout the text.

We see many natural occurrences in life as disturbing such as aging. This “human condition” is one that all people experience yet we treat wrinkles as marks of the devil. In fact, my grandmother has fourteen doctors that she visits often and countless pills that keep her alive, visually she spends money on creams and dyes that make her look younger. This seems to be a reoccurring theme with age in woman; “look young”, “feel young”, “be young.” With age comes death and people are afraid of death. So woman try to reverse the effect of age. We make the thought of age seem somehow perverse as if you look young you cannot die. We make it seem as if nobody else is going through these. Doctors spend their whole lives trying to repair others and are distraught when a patient die, but in the same way we would rather concentrate on fixing other objects and people and not worrying about our own problems.

This is most obviously seen in hypocrites, but can be found in everybody. I have a friend has many insecurities that see can easily ignore when she has a boyfriend, but seem to creep into her thoughts whenever she is single. Because of this she stays in relationships constantly. One guy in particular she has been on and off with for five years. They know they are not good together and the relationship is not healthy and always ends in tears, but they would rather try to repair the shattered pieces of their relationship than face the thought of loneliness. This brings forth a thought that Spelman doesn’t bring up. We would rather have something that is broken beyond repair or poorly stitched together then to not have anything. But, this “human condition” of being alone, one that is natural is one that we find an awful thought. This is further proven by the phrase “It is better to have loved and lost than to never have loved at all. Humans are afraid to be lonely because they must spend time with themselves and as we are creatures that innately look for things that we can repair we find innumerous faults in our self when lonely.

As I see it we repair because we feel helpless. If a man has repaired his liver, it will not kill him. If a young woman repairs her relationship she does not have to focus on repairing herself. In both cases people wish to repair one thing to avoid another. We also dive into other repair jobs overcompensating for the fact that we cannot fix each other so we will fix objects. People and relationships don’t come with manuals, but we will forever try to fix them. All people run into this at some point in life whether in regard to themselves or another and they realize not all things can be fixed. This gives them an extra surge of pride when they can fix something. People begin to overcompensate for the fact that they cannot fix themselves or their relationships by fixing physical objects. Women keep a clean house to make people forget that she cannot fix her marriage.

Lies Prevent Protection

In Repair by Spelman she continues to provide examples of how repair is used in our lives. She brings forth topics and ideas that the average person, including me, doesn’t think about. For example, she brings up the thought of restorative justice. She describes how the community, the victim, and the offender can benefit from this type of justice rather than our current justice system. She outlines how the restorative system works and even touches on why it wouldn’t work, explaining that the retributive system would step in at that point.

However, there are so many issues with this system. As Spelman points out “it requires that all do their best to tell the truth.” This statement acknowledges that the truth is hard to come but it introduces the fact that both parties can be lying. This system is based on the fact that the community wishes to repair itself. The offender can be non-remorseful about their act and dubious in any apology they are asked to give. These lies could be for many reasons. Humans can be very vindictive and the offender could have purposely inflicted pain on the victim and has no remorse for doing such. He/she also could be experiencing any number of disorders that prevent him/her for not having the ability to feel remorse for their actions at the time.

On the other hand, this process can cause the victim to lie and in turn condemn his/herself to unnecessary pain. This is touched on when Spelman speaks about how when someone apologizes the responsibility is in turn put on the victim to accept it. The danger in this is that the victim then has pressure in court to accept this apology and get over their trauma and/or grief for the good of the community. This is not to say the community will purposely pressure the victim, but to accept a public apology is and act that puts pressure on anyone. This is especially true if the offender is putting in effort to reverse the damage and repair the community. This can be very harmful to the victim as they are not allowed the time to adjust to the trauma before the offender is in their vicinity and no matter how sincere the apology was the victim will never be able to trust the offender.

The lack of truth from the victim can also come in the form of prejudice. A victim can refuse his/her apology do to biases against the particular person or their race, ethnicity, sexual orientation, income, etc. This can cause problems because the victim may put their personal thoughts over the good of the community and make it more difficult to repair the community. In the same way, some people become very angry and vengeful when they are victims of violent crimes and if they do not view restorative justice as enough they can “take matters into their own hands” and commit crimes against the original offender. This is seen even in retributive justice, but in most cases if the victim is vengeful the offender is protected in a sense by being in jail. There are many instances in which people kill the rapists and murders of their children. One case, for example, involves a Texas man who was enraged by the fact that his daughter’s rapist was only given parole for his crime. He then shot the man and killed him. Many people seem to have the mentality that those who make others suffer must also suffer and by not putting the offender in jail it can put them in danger.

Another potential lie is that the offender will never be a repeat offender. In some cases, this may be true, but I believe “you can teach and old dog trick, but you cannot make them forget old tricks.” This means that people will by nature not change their long term beliefs without an extreme reason. For example, a woman is desperate to feed herself and her children and decides to steal food from a store and successfully does this for several months. Because she was able to get away with it for so long she felt safe in her actions. If she then gets caught and the community has her apologize and return what she has stolen. They might understand her situation and feel apathetic and help her, but once she is no longer sitting in their helpful hands and under there gaze she might fall into the same situation and having already drained the community of any help she will most likely steal again because it worked for several months. This can also be applied to more violent crimes such as rape. If person has such a lack of respect for another person’s body and wishes as to rape them after saying sorry, even if they are sincere in regard for the damage they caused, it is very difficult to teach a person that what they believe is wrong. This also connects back to the fact that this form of justice does not take into account for people with disorders. This is because people that commit certain crimes such as murder and the traditionally portrayed act of rape almost always have some mental disorder, disease or issue that prevents them from understanding, controlling or caring about their actions.
Overall, the immense amount of both intentional and unintentional lies that can be brought into a court room practicing restorative justice makes it a system that is very much unreliable and cannot provide an absolute guarantee that offender, victim, and other members in the community are safe.

R1

Throughout the text Spelman speaks about repair is defined differently for everyone. She uses examples like Willie and Fred and later describes that it is usually males that repair objects. She also gives examples of woman who can repair certain objects, but typically they hone in on relationships and the actual people around them when trying to repair.

Spelman speaks about three ladies in the first chapter that bring paintings back to life, they must repair the physical damage done by other maliciously. Although this can be seen as the women fixing the damage done by extreme emotion I see as a different way of portraying what women fix. It has been my experience that women are made to fix the visual aspects of life and men to fix the mechanical aspects; this is not to say either cannot do the others “job”, but that it is more common that they fit into these stereotypes. Spelman also gives the example that woman knit and repair clothing and this to be an exception to this rule. This “exception’ actually fits fairly nicely in the visual category of repair as “’’A patch… is never a disgrace, but a hole is.’’” This shows the visual aspects of other seeing that someone is at least trying to fix something rather than leaving it broken for the world to see.

Women are also wanted for their ability to better visibly work. For example, as Spelman points out “women are much more likely to appear in pinup calendars in the offices and shops of repairmen- mechanics, plumbers, carpenters, cobblers, and so forth- than as partners in such work”, but what she doesn’t recognize is that women are seen more often in repair shops and accepted not because of their ability to fix the engine, but because they are better able to match colors when painting the replaced part. This visual aspect of a mechanic’s duty is one more easily done by a woman’s eye. Women also are the ones that come in after a building is built and pick the flooring, the paint color, the furniture and placement of such in a building.

On the home front, women are expected to do even more in regard to visual repair. Spelman acknowledges this but interprets the act of cleaning as “restoring the workplace,” but to me it seems that it is an act of women once again repairing what is seen by others in an act to cover up that things go into disrepair. Woman seem to be good at repair in an act to erase the damage rather than bring whatever is being repaired “back to functionality.”
Even when it comes to actual humans Spelman says that “there is a kind of repair of humans that restores them to a state of basic functioning, of being able to use their energies and skills as they see fit… people are repaired so that they can get back in basic working order, in order to get on with what they want to do.” However, the ability to work is not necessarily what we want. When restoring emotional rehabilitation people seek to erase the bad feeling or ignore the disrepair that may exist in their home. Women often answer this call and help others not repair, but overcome the issue. In the quest to repair a home a housewife’s goal is always to get back to the way things were without any sign that things were ever in a state of disrepair. This contradicts what men seem to do as Willie always left his little flair on his work and Fred wanted everyone to know that he restored it.

Women seem to want to repair the things that are visual. They want other to see and encounter a life that is easy on the eyes and although they are willing to take credit they are less ostentatious about what they do and are willing to accept that not everyone will know or care about their accomplishments. On the other hand, men seem to seek approval for the repairing mechanical things. It seems as if they know that their work will not be seen directly so they much boast that they are capable.