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In the future, criminals will no longer be locked up in jail, but will instead suffer the "death of personality". This is a process whereby one's own identity is wiped from the mind and a new one put in it's place - one selected that will serve the community it hurt for the remainder of their days. This is done by a Telepath (or Teep as they are called).
This episode of Babylon 5 concerns one such person - Brother Edward, "though as the story opens, he no more knows his destiny than a tea leaf knows the history of the East India Company" [Douglas Adams, Hitch-Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy]. He is unaware of his past existence.
In the world of today, we assume that the technology that would allow us to perform such an operation would not exist or at the very least I can indeed hear the multiple cries of "civil liberties" and "human rights".
Ascribing something to the criminal that they did not to their victim.
I digress. The point is that in a past life Brother Edward was a murderer, known as The "Black Rose" Killer due to him leaving a black rose in the mouth of his victims. Unbeknownst to him the relatives of the victims he murdered have spent a long time and a lot of effort in tracking him down and ensuring that he gets his just deserts as they felt that they had not had justice done when he was brain wiped. To this end they have employed the services of a Centauri telepath to break the mind wipe and have him re-live his past life in flashes.
He is now in a situation where he does not know what is real or indeed who he is
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A preamble to a blog which I respectfully submit to "The Twilight Zone" of the internet and written for the sole intention of being read by a wise and thoughtful person I encountered in "The Good Shepherd Place" on Buzzen - FarmerT (and Olivia).
I have spent the past few days having amazingly intelligent conversations with this person, who lives in Kentucky and is a religious man.
He said: "I do not believe in God, I know God exists" and at the same time said that he was willing to change, alter or delete any of the things that he had been told.
Brother Edward's purpose (or rather, that of the Mission to which he belongs) is to record the names by which the alien races call "God" (alluding somewhat to a story by Arthur C. Clarke entitled "The Nine Billion Names of God").
He states that the core of his belief is the scene in the Garden of Gethsemane, when Jesus, knowing the Roman soldiers were coming for him could have decided not to stay - he could have fled, delayed the inevitable. Instead he chose to stay and face what was to come. Edward often wondered whether , given a similar situation, he would have the strength to stay.
During his crisis of faith Edward says to Brother Theo (his mentor) "How can I be forgiven for my sins when I don't even know what they are" to which Theo replies succinctly "God knows, even if you have forgotten."
Delenn, the Minbari ambassador explain her belief thus: We believe that the universe itself is conscious in a way we can never truly understand. It is engaged in a search for meaning. So it .. breaks itself apart, investing its own consciousness in every form of life.
Here is another quote:
Words have meaning and names have power. The universe begun with a word, you know. But which came first: the word or the thought behind the word? You can't create language without thought .. and you can't conceive a thought without language. So which created the other and, thus, created the universe?"
The reason I write for this person, whom I will probably never meet in real life is that above all he is a genuine person with passions and beliefs and a way of living that suits his needs and he does not feel it necessary to impose that upon anyone else by force or otherwise. He is astute enough to realise that we are all individuals and each of us has our own interpretations of such weighty matters as time, the universe, the existence or otherwise of God.
There are those religions that indoctrinate with blinkers - our way is right, everyone else's is wrong and they must be shown they are wrong or else.
As a single guy who has never had a girlfriend I have attended numerous dating events. I would only ever ask four questions.
1. Who are you?
2. What do you want?
3. Why are you here?
4. Where are you going?
The answer to the first is the key to understanding the answers to the other three.
I then said that I would like the opportunity to ask the first two (and perhaps all four) to "God"
When FarmerT asked me why I was here I replied thus:
I was born as molecules in the hearts of a billion stars, molecules that do not understand politics, policies and differences. In a billion years we, foolish molecules forget who we are and where we came from.
I would like to add here a supplemental to that answer
The molecules of my body are the same molecules that make up this world and the nebula outside, that burn inside the stars themselves. We are star stuff, we are the universe made manifest, trying to figure itself out.
I think that as a race we should remember that we are only custodians, not rulers of this world.
The late Carl Sagan (d. 20/12/1996) wrote a book of an era when future generations will have escaped self-destruction and natural catastrophes to move beyond the confines of Earth. He wrote:
"They will gaze up and strain to find the blue dot in their skies. They will love it no less for it's obscurity and fragility. They will marvel at how vulnerable the repository of all our potential once was, how perilous our infancy, how humble our beginnings..."
Pale Blue Dot (the title of the book) refers to the insignificant appearance of Earth as viewed from deep space.
We, as humans, are only visiting this planet. Our tenure upon it's surface is brief, transitory, of the moment.
Dr. Franklin, during a short but brutal conflict, states this:
When a patient starts to slip away .. when he looks at you .. and his eyes grab hold of you the way a drowning man grabs hold of anything to keep him from sinking.. I mean, afraid .. so afraid .. and then, just at the last, it's as if they look past you to something else, and the look on their face, it's like nothing you can describe. And then .. just as they look past you, the moment that they look past you, you can't help but meet their gaze and, just for an instant, you see God reflected in their eyes. I've seen a lot of reflected Gods today, Susan .. and I'm wondering how we can keep believing in them when they've stopped believing in us.
The Minbari race is a race based on the principle of three. They have three casts - warrior, religious and worker.
"You had forgotten the worker caste, hadn't you? When our two sides fight, they're the ones caught in the middle, forgotten until it's their time to serve, to build, and to die. They built the temples we pray in, the ships you fight in. They look to us to guide their hands. But prayers are fleeting and wars forgotten. What is built endures. They do not wish to conquer or convert, only to build the future. And now, they will have that chance. The religious caste and the warrior caste will advise and counsel. We will serve, as is proper. Religion and war must act in the service of the people, not the other way around. "
Note the last line of this quote:
Religion and war must act in the service of the people, not the other way around.
Perhaps someone should remind George W. Bush of that someday.

Rod Serliing said:
"The tools of conquest do not necessarily come with bombs and explosions and fallout. These are weapons that are simply thoughts, attitudes, prejudices - to be found only in the mind of men. For the record, prejudices can kill and suspicion can destroy, and a thoughtless, frightened search for a scapegoat has fallout all its own - for the children, and the children yet unborn..." (closing narration of The Twilight Zone episode "The Monsters Are Due on Maple Street")
"No moral, no message, no prophetic tract, just a simple statement of fact: for civilization to survive, the human race has to remain civilized. Tonight's very small exercise in logic from The Twilight Zone." (closing narration of The Twilight Zone episode "The Shelter").