The most restorative, and effective, practice I have heard of arose among the Babemba in South Africa (and other sub-saharan regions), where an offender sits in the middle of a circle with the entire village around him and every person in the village in turn says something positive about him.

It is a struggle to liberate all of us from the humiliating image of the human being—one that’s sustained by the endless propaganda of our powerful mass media—and replace it with something more beautiful and much more true, something that will help us accomplish the “great turning” from revenge to reconciliation, from fear to generosity and compassion.