Back in January 2007, I found myself at a crossroads—I was at a spiritual retreat at a convent in New Jersey. I was coming to terms with a decade of bad behavior, awful, terrible, no-good things I had done, and I was sitting off in the corner of the room by myself, contemplating these transgressions, when one of the wise old men of the retreat came over to me and asked what was wrong.
I told him.
He said, “Every saint has a past, every sinner has a future,” and walked off, leaving me to my thoughts.
Let’s start with criminals. First of all, I will say that plenty of criminals are good people, and plenty of people who have never committed a crime are bad people. The law doesn’t specify “good” or “bad” behavior—it only delineates behavior that is prohibited. Is someone who drives drunk a bad person? What about the person who cheats on his spouse? Cheating on your spouse isn’t against the law, but it might make you a worse person than the person who has two extra drinks at the bar and gets popped for a broken tail light on the way home. I don’t attach any moral significance to breaking the law, in most cases. I mean, sure, murdering someone is bad and also is against the law. But cops often call lawbreakers “the bad guys,” and I don’t think that in a lot of cases, breaking the law means that you’re bad. The prisons are full of deadbeat dads who fell behind on their child support, locked up with the rapists and murderers, along with the scofflaws who were busted with an ounce of weed.
I’ll go further and say that I’d rather hire someone with a criminal record than someone with a low credit score. The guy with the DUI is labeled a bad guy for one single lapse of judgment over the entirety of his life. The guy with a 560 credit score has demonstrated a repeated pattern of being a slob, day in and day out, week in and week out, over the entirety of his life. More data points. I keep going back to the example of the DUI, which in the grand scheme of human wickedness, is pretty small beer. What about more serious offenses? The thief, the wife-beater, the con man, the pederast? Are any of these people redeemable? Can they find redemption, if they try hard enough?
Every saint has a past, every sinner has a future.
The truth is that everyone is capable of redemption—everyone—and this is one of the central tenets of Christianity. None of us is without sin, not Nelson Mandela, not Ruth Bader Ginsburg, not Ronald Reagan, or Ayn Rand. In fact, the person you hold up as your ideal, the historical figures that we all have reverence for, are very complicated people, and probably sin more in a week than you do in a year. Every once in a while, in the news, there will be a fall from grace. Matt Lauer, for example. A few years ago, I watched the video of Matt Lauer systematically dismembering Paula Deen on TV for her use of a racial epithet decades ago. Matt Lauer, of course, was not without sin, and if you watch that video today, and you see Matt Lauer’s righteous indignation, and then you understand it in the context of what happened afterwards, you suddenly have an understanding of that piece of scripture that says he who is without sin, cast the first stone. I don’t go on Twitter and start calling people scumbags and saying that they should go to jail. Even actual scumbags. Because I’m not perfect. I just can’t summon that level of righteous indignation, not for anybody or any reason. Because there but for the grace of God go I. It could be me.
Being a good person does not come naturally to me. It takes effort. But I try. If I didn’t try, I’d be calling people a fuckhead in emails about ten times a day. Some people don’t try. Charlie Munger said that envy is the worst of the seven deadly sins, because you don’t get to have any fun at it. But really, all sins are born from sloth, the state of not giving a fuck. Fuck it are two very powerful words, and by extension, most of our problems come from the use of fuck it. I don’t care. You should care. Look—we can have disagreements about how to help people in need. Some people prefer supply-side solutions, and some people prefer demand-side solutions. But indifference to human suffering is, well, bad. There are the people who want to save the world, the ones out marching in the streets. If you want to save the world, you start by helping one person, and that person helps another person, and so on. But most people don’t want to get down in the muck with other people’s problems. It’s too attractive to think about human suffering in the abstract, and go march in the street. As you can tell, I take a very dim view of marching in the street.
Back in 2016, I published my book All the Evil of This World, an episodic novel about seven characters involved in an options trade related to the 3Com/Palm spinoff. There was an underlying message in that book, and almost nobody got it. The title All the Evil of This World is ironic—our sex addictions, our drug addictions, or infidelities are all very pedestrian, and not evil at all. It was a story of seven good people whose lives were completely and utterly out of control. It was a big in-joke that nobody got. Most people read that book, had righteous indignation, and wrote Amazon reviews about all these degenerates doing bad things, without having even a moment of introspection on the myriad ways in which they, themselves, were bad. We all have secrets. I will say that again—we all have secrets. Some are sicker than others. But the average jabroni who read the book got to the chapter about the hookers and blow, and said, HE IS BAD, I AM GOOD, and reinforced his sense of superiority. Completely missed the point. It wasn’t just a book about a trade—it was a deeply philosophical book about morality itself. And that is why, to this day, it remains my favorite thing I have ever written. At age 49, I would have toned it down a little, so it’s probably good that I wrote it at age 42.
When a bad person does bad things, atones for them, makes restitution, does good things and becomes a good person, we have a word for this—it is called a miracle. Sam Bankman-Fried is depraved, and there isn’t a lot of evidence that he is too remorseful about his gigantic fraud. He may be one day. The best thing for SBF would be to serve the time imposed on him, rehabilitate, get released, and devote the balance of his life to helping people in similar circumstances. We are all in possession of one very valuable asset—our story, and how we can use it to benefit others. When I tell you my story, the story of my sins and my restitution, you identify with it, and you can see how redemption is possible. SBF doesn’t realize it yet, but one day he will be capable of doing much good in the world—by helping just one other person. And that person will help another person, etc. We could have a conversation about the criminal justice system, about how it doesn’t really help people rehabilitate, how criminals usually just end up being groomed into being even worse criminals, but a few years behind bars gives people a lot of time for introspection.
As you can probably guess, I am not a fan of the death penalty, for a billion reasons, and the interesting thing about the death penalty as a political issue is that the people who proclaim so loudly that government is incapable of doing anything capably and efficiently, will make an exception when it comes to executing criminals. Anyone, literally anyone is capable of rehabilitation. But it’s not for the people who need it; it’s for the people who want it. I have seen miracles performed countless times. I am a miracle. I had a future, and I took advantage of it.
Well said...redemption is "not for the people who need it but want it". Within the framework of a justice system such as ours where the victim(s) are due something (restitution or otherwise), we can probably do a better job at rehabbing criminals while they sit in prison, if they want for it.
Phenomenal.