Gabor Mate's new book, The Myth of Normal - Trauma, Illness & Healing in a Toxic Culture, is a "must-read" especially for legal professionals. He demonstrates that most behavioural issues and struggles are born from an overbearing and limited societal standard, that either creates trauma, ignores it's effects, or both. He shows that a compassionate approach is necessary to cure injustice and suffering, and to create a more healthy, nurturing and healthy culture.
In the legal context, this would mean considering the underlying traumas behind criminal, unethical or unhealthy conduct. The current "trauma-punishing-and-inducing system" would give rise to an empathy and compassion based system, where rehabilitation and healing are the aim, rather than judgment and punishment. He quotes Métis scholar, former inmate and Governor General's Academic Medal winner Jesse Thistle:
All us criminals start out as normal people just like anyone else but then things happen in life that tear us apart that make us into something capable of hurting other people. That's all any of the darkness really is. Love gone bad. We are just broken-hearted people hurt by life.
And psychologist and former prison guard, Dr. Nneka Jones Tapia who "as a Black woman... knows institutionalized racial trauma well" :
We tend to reduce people to their behaviour: "You're a murderer, you're a robber, you're a thief." But we are not our worst behaviour. I have had the blessing to see that everyone who is incarcerated has strengths and they have the capability of loving, if only we gave them the opportunity. It's not just people that need the healing. It's the system that has to be indicted and transformed.
In the legal context, this would mean considering the underlying traumas behind criminal, unethical or unhealthy conduct. The current "trauma-punishing-and-inducing system" would give rise to an empathy and compassion based system, where rehabilitation and healing are the aim, rather than judgment and punishment. He quotes Métis scholar, former inmate and Governor General's Academic Medal winner Jesse Thistle:
All us criminals start out as normal people just like anyone else but then things happen in life that tear us apart that make us into something capable of hurting other people. That's all any of the darkness really is. Love gone bad. We are just broken-hearted people hurt by life.
And psychologist and former prison guard, Dr. Nneka Jones Tapia who "as a Black woman... knows institutionalized racial trauma well" :
We tend to reduce people to their behaviour: "You're a murderer, you're a robber, you're a thief." But we are not our worst behaviour. I have had the blessing to see that everyone who is incarcerated has strengths and they have the capability of loving, if only we gave them the opportunity. It's not just people that need the healing. It's the system that has to be indicted and transformed.