Alec Bălășescu - How and from whom did I learn justice?
Alec Bălășescu took the stage of People of Justice '23 to tell us how and from whom he learned justice. His moment, however, also included the lesson of kindness, of respite, of emotions that we should allow ourselves in oder to build an authentic and strong self. And he convinced us: we learn from the people we meet if we know how to listen to them!
But what if... the sense of justice and the human soul are faces of the same coin? The law and justice are not the same thing. The law, in a way, by sentence, is violence. The more we listen to both sides, the more we realize that any story has more than two sides.
I'm Alec Balasescu, I'm an anthropologist and... I thought that... Or I was invited to talk about... justice for people who deal with this. And each of us has... somehow, a sense of righteousness and justice and I was just reading... McCarthy's volume, Stella Maris, and he was saying something very interesting: ”But what if...the sense of justice and the human soul are faces of the same coin?” And I wanted to tell you where I learned about justice. I hope I can carry the story to the end because it's about my grandfather. He was a lawyer. Yeah. Thank you. And he taught me about the world through stories. And a lot of his stories were about... the trials he had witnessed or participated in.
He was born in 1911, lived out his youth before the war, while after the war he could no longer work. But... He told me so: {\i1}The law and justice are not the same thing. Justice is obtained only through continuous conversation. The law, in a way, by sentence, is violence. We need it, precisely to stop the greatest violence possible. But let us not forget, there is spirit. There is the letter of the law, but also the spirit of the law. And for that, he told me a story. One of the many stories. I don't know if I can tell it, I'm very sorry. It's a very beautiful story. It's the story of a trial in which... the defendant was an old woman. She was accused by a nobleman, as it was then, of stealing wood from the forest. Whatever. The old woman's lawyer stood up and said: Okay…You say that… My grandfather said: ”Look, and he was coming to court, the landlord came, he had a...an ermine collar”. A white thing, like this, with... a black thing, like they wore back then. And... a fur, it's a very valuable fur. And the lawyer says: ”Well...you're saying that this old lady is stealing from you and doing you damage for which you are judging her. She's a widow. Let us not forget, she's a widow. She has four or five children. Because she's a widow, she doesn't have a cart and she can't carry wood. She carries them with her back. How much can she carry? And she carries wood that is already on the ground, fallen. Because she can't cut down trees. She carries them to warm her children. You, sir, you have a fur that would feed her family for a year. How can she be guilty? That's the story. Thank you.
I wanted to add something else. Whenever... and I thought of the name of the theater that we're in, Lucifer, which means, at the same time, right, "The Evening Star. The star. But also Lucifer. Right? Lucifer. Usually, we associate him with the evil, right? And always, in a trial, we have the good and the bad. In systems theory, we say: that the more we listen to both sides, the more we realize that every story has more than two sides. And it might be that the light of heaven may come from the flames of Hell. Thank you.