3 II. Self-rehabilitation as Defense and Reparatio of the Injuries of the World. 8. The above does not necessarily mean that there is no antidote against the cruelty of the absurd and of indifference. In the midst of omnipresent suffering, one may seek refuge in an enhanced inner life, in remembrance of beloved ones, and in luminous moments of the past; human beings are capable of accepting their suffering and their destiny insofar as they entail, even under the most adverse conditions, “adding a deeper meaning to their life”.5 Remembering does in fact have “an ethical value in and of itself. (...) The belief that remembering is an ethical action is set in the depths of our human nature (...). Insensitiveness and amnesia seem to go together.” 6 9. Writing on his detainment conditions and his efforts to flee both the suffering and the degeneration of the spirit, Oscar Wilde, referring to the "Zeitgeist of a heartless period”, reflected that time and space are “mere accidental conditions of thought,” and that in prison what he had before him was only his past.7 There is always the possibility of refuge in one’s own inner life. As Wilde expressed it, the wretched, “when they are imprisoned, although denied the beauty of the world, are at least safe, to a certain extent, from the world’s deadliest blows,” since "they can hide in the darkness of their cells, and turn their very misfortune into something akin to a sanctuary. The world, once it has obtained what it wanted, goes on its way, and it lets them suffer in peace.” 8 10. In his incisive meditations in De Profundis, Wilde addressed the need for rehabilitation of prison victims: "There is not a single degradation of the body which I must not try and make into a spiritualising of the soul. (…) I am advised by others to try on my release to forget that I have ever been in a prison at all. I know that would be equally fatal. It would mean that I would always be haunted by an intolerable sense of disgrace, and that those things that are meant for me as much as for anybody else - the beauty of the sun and moon, the pageant of the seasons, the music of daybreak and the silence of great nights, the rain falling through the leaves, or the dew creeping over the grass and making it silver - would all be tainted for me, and lose their healing power, and their power of communicating joy. (...) For just as the body absorbs things of all kinds, things common and unclean …- so the soul in its turn has its nutritive functions also, and can transform into noble moods of thought and passions of high import what in itself is base, cruel and degrading; nay, more, may find in these its most august modes of assertion, and can often reveal itself most perfectly through what was intended to desecrate or destroy. The fact of my having been the common prisoner of a common gaol I must frankly accept (…) must accept the fact that one is punished for the good as well as for the evil that one does. (…) Society takes upon itself the right to inflict appalling punishment on the individual, but it also has the supreme vice of shallowness, and fails to realise what it has done. When the man's punishment is over, it leaves him to himself; that is to say, it abandons him at the very moment when its highest duty towards him begins. It is 5 . See V.E. Frankl, El Hombre en Busca de Sentido, 22d. ed., Barcelona, Herder Edit., 2003, pp. 6365 and 101, and see pp. 102, 156 and 158. 6 S. Sontag, Ante el Dolor de los Demás, Bogota, Alfaguara, 2003, p. 134. 7 O. Wilde, De Profundis, op. cit. supra n. (2), pp. 113 and 127. 8 Ibid., pp. 62-63. . . .