post #5: Do laws make people bad?

The story of Nelson Mandela was presented in the last week of discussion facilitation and it was rarely discussed in answering the theme “what make human bad.” The autobiography is the history of a human which falls in the humanities disciplines. The National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) defines humanities as “the study and application of the humanities and human environment with particular attention to reflecting our diverse heritage, traditions, and history and to the relevance of the humanities to the current conditions of national life.” The definition of humanities from NEH seems complex and just by reading the definition, it is difficult to fully understand what humanities are. Indeed, the humanities are complex studies because they look at how humans interact with each other and with the environment. The humanities include the broad spectrum of disciplines: history, philosophy, literature, art, religion and etc. Social sciences also deal with human interactions like politics, psychology, laws and so forth.

From the excerpt of Mandela’s autobiography Long Walk to Freedom, provides his experience of imprisonment at the Pretoria Local Prison and shows his viewpoint on South African government and the apartheid existed in South Africa. Although Nelson Mandela used non-violent methods at first, he created the armed group called Umkhonto we Sizwe and used violence to fight back. Despite of use of violence, his story of revolt and imprisonment fighting for the equality and the rights of black people is seen as heroic acts and people do not criticize his unlawful acts toward the government. Hobbes would argue that Nelson Mandela’s unlawful actions are justifiable because he said in Leviathan that all humans have right to defend yourself and your rights. On the other hand, the government would argue that Nelson Mandela is evil because he is a tremendous threat to the government authority.

As Nelson Mandela’s story shows, Nelson Mandela can be both a good person and a bad person in terms of different perspectives. In the mindomo map, one of the classmate said “there are often free-persons who are “worse” than incarcerated prisoners who are able to avoid jail time because they have an elevated social status.” While Nelson was incarcerated in the Pretoria Local Prison, he met the guy named Moosa Dinath who was a prosperous businessman serving a two-year sentence for fraud. Because Dinath was wealthy enough to pay the prisoner authorities, he had privileges in the prisons: “he wore clothes meant for white prisoners, ate their diets, and did no jail work at all.” In this case, it shows the power of laws can be abused by the authorities.

Work Cited

Mandela, Nelson. Long Walk to Freedom: The Autobiography of Nelson Mandela. Boston: Back Bay Books, 1995. Print.