The Mercy Seat

One of the images that sticks in my brain and forever will happened in Hodgell's Godstalk. It's near the end when Jame finds her best friend Dally strapped to the Mercy Seat, bound down with strips of his own skin. He was flayed alive by a mob for a crime he didn't commit, but honestly, even if he had committed it, the punishment was excessive.

In the way that many modern people are, I was not just horrified by this idea, but also a little bit smug about it. I was a teen at the time and believed, as I believed when I learned about the real-life public executions from history, that my society was beyond this. Now, as an adult, I don't believe we are.

We may not throw literal stones at people now (at least, not where I live), but that doesn't mean we don't strap people down to a seat and skin them alive. When it comes to people being punished online, we can be ruthless.

Recently a contestant on a reality talent show was found to have committed crimes of a predatory nature outside of the show. This person was disqualified and I feel that disqualification was just because this contest is looking for someone who represents them in a certain way. They were within their rights to remove the person from the contest.

It didn't stop there though. The next hours past this news breaking were intense. Suddenly people were condemning this person, threatening them, demeaning them, denouncing them. The mob had turned, a new person on the Mercy Seat, more skin to be ripped away.

This person is guilty of what they were accused of doing. They admitted to it. What they did hurt people. There were reasons for punishment to happen, but not reasons for punishment to come from everyone in the world.

How we are people react to the person on the Mercy Seat isn't about them and it isn't about the victims. It's about us. It defines who we are. If we use this as an excuse to be violent, unforgiving, and destructive, that isn't an indication that we are people of justice. It is an indication that we are people who are violent, unforgiving, and destructive.

I don't go to people's homepages or whathaveyou and rip at them, but I have, in the past, been caught up in the anger and indignation of what certain people did. It was wrong of me. That isn't the person I want to be. That isn't what I want to put into the world. I can do better. I hope we all can.