Can a people's court seek the truth...? According to Carl Sagan, truth is a thing of this world and every person who claims to have the truth is participating in a power play. When you set up a court and say, "We're going to be for the people," what you really mean is "We're going to be for the people who agree with us about what the people need. We're going to exclude everybody else." Every revolution is basically like that. You can't set up a people's court without getting power for yourself and excluding the people who disagree with you. -Timothy Keller
The best justice is still only a group of people who agree that they don't prefer the other group. Justice, at its best, is racism, sexism, or some other -ism: "We agree we don't like group X and won't tolerate them." This defines every American court that has ever existed. Outlawing murder and rape is only another way of saying, "We're powerful enough to discriminate against you." It's the rule by the majority. If there were enough murderers who can vote, "justice" would be to allow murder and discriminate against some other group.
There is a sturdy rebuttal for this pessimistic, downward spiral: we should have "good" laws, and the "good" laws are those which make the society work most smoothly. In other words, even if enough murderers voted to allow it, killing people is bad for our society because it hinders a smooth-running society, so we outlaw it. Stealing makes people mad and they fight. That is bad for society, so we outlaw it.
This is reasonable and seems to make things better, but only for a moment. Who says society working smoothly is the preferable condition? To say "the murderers are the ones who are making the less desirable condition" is pure arrogance. In fact, for every murder that has been committed, there has been an argument that would support the idea that the right kind of murders make society better: a man killing an intruder in the night feels it is right to protect his family, the soldier feels it is his duty to overthrow the oppressive, and Hitler was committed to the idea that killing off the weaker people would further the genetic progress of humanity. The opinion that the condition of unrestrained murder is worse than societal harmony has no objective value. It is purely a preference, however widely that preference is held.
Ultimately, every group must admit: "We agree we hate group X and refuse to tolerate them." Granted, many groups hate a very small group of people, but they are all "something-ist" because they all claim that justice exists and strive to adhere to it. It would appear that only the devout anarchist is truly without prejudice because he claims no leader and no formal justice. Unfortunately, as you may have already discovered, he falls to the same fallacy as the rest because he still claims that his proposal is better than the rest, lumping him, once again, with the rest.
At this point, and very far away from the logic of the whole topic, I find a remarkably curious rising-up deep within myself: I am frustrated, and perhaps offended at the insinuation that I am an "-ist" and I wish to find myself in a different, undiscovered group who discriminates against no one. But why do I desire to find myself in the group that hates no one? Why the underlying assumption that leading a non-discriminating group would make me inherently better than the rest, when there is no reason to believe that those groups who hate no one are more just or are better than those groups who don't!? In fact, the very desire to be in a non-discriminating group discriminates against those who DO discriminate. When I realize that traditional justice is only my group hating the other group, I can't even hate the haters. Stuck without a non-discriminatory group to join, I realize that ultimately, the most objectively just or tolerant thing to do is going to be to put myself to death and remove one more bigot from this earth.
But if I am unwilling go that far, I can at least work toward goodness with all my might. I can strive to actually achieve hating no one - not even the haters. I can show no discrimination between the different kinds of haters, claiming, "All hating is the same. To hate one person for being a Jew is equally acceptable as hating another for being a rapist. Neither hater should be prosecuted." It is then that I realized I have achieved nothing. It hits me: all the hating I've been avoiding is now acceptable. I should have acted on every evil and perverse impulse instead of this futile pursuit of tolerance. It would have been equally as "good" and would have felt a million times better!
My point is that every revolutionary who has claimed an injustice, every court that has ever sentenced any person to any punishment, any parent who has become indignant at the gross mistreatment of their child violates this elementary law that proves them wrong: no person has any right to the way they prefer, just because they prefer it. Why hero-worship a Buddha or a Gandhi or a Jesus? Why respect an Abraham Lincoln or a Winston Churchill or a Martin Luther King Jr. when there is no point to justice; no point to a revolution? These men only fought one kind of hating to create another. They overthrew one oppressive institution to fortify a more covert one, replacing the obvious bigots with the bigots in denial. Every new nation, every "good" group is built by people who only pretend to have a better way. Every revolution is racist and American courts can never be "for the people."
The only remedy for this would be an ultimate authority, setting out an objective standard.
I wish I were wrong and I gladly invite some truth to make this scenario more bearable.
I rarely say this about anyone, but I was very excited to see that you have a blog. It seems I get to enter the mind of Mister Coller.
ReplyDeleteI think that what you are saying is that without an objective standard, higher than a manmade standard, every “cause” and every “crime” is, at some point, working against a group or individual and is only justifiable to the degree that the agent in power justifies it (meaning it isn’t intrinsically “good” or “bad”). Right? If that is the case, then every action that is self-justified is justified enough, and will probably become the “moral standard” if enough people agree to its justification. In other words, if moral law was written democratically, then a majority vote decides what is right, and those in the wrong would be so only because they couldn’t campaign well enough.
I agree with what you said, so I don’t know if this qualifies as a tangent or an “in addition to what you said.” Regarding your dilemma, you proposed that an ultimate authority would remedy the spiraling moral meaninglessness and I might add that an ultimate authority may only complete it – a conclusion I don’t find to be any more comforting. Here’s what I mean:
A person’s/group’s decisions, regarding right and wrong, are relative to that individual’s/group’s situation and circumstance, and they don’t have any “real” authority to say whether they are “actually” good or bad. I think this is where the dilemma lies: morality isn’t an authority/power-to-authorize in itself. People advocate for specific morals, but morals do not advocate for people - or even for morality itself. I think it is our tendency to forget that morals aren’t really equipped to defend us, because when we are under attack it is on the basis of someone’s morality; and not our own. The very foundation we would use to defend ourselves is actually being used to defeat us. In addition, morality certainly cannot stick up for itself. It surprises us when we see injustice, and we are most taken back when the injustice happens to us. Morals, by themselves, have no power to enforce their mandate; leaving the powerful with the prerogative to enforce adherence to a moral (most likely their moral), and the powerless to obey or…die as martyrs, I suppose. Using your example, the serial killer on death row could be the martyr dying for the cause of unrestrained murder.
However, having an ultimate authority wouldn’t do anything to change this system. The ultimate authority, if he chose to, could distribute justice based on “his” morality, and everyone else could obey or face the consequences. The biggest kid on the playground can get the longest turn on the swing-set, unless there is a teacher somewhere near. The ultimate authority is simply where the buck stops. Is there theoretical logic that dictates he has the “right” morality, other than the logic that argues that he is in the position to know better than we do? For example, what if the ultimate authority didn’t like people with beards? Sure that is arbitrary, but who knows if being arbitrary is actually fine in the ultimate authority’s book. All I know is I’d be shaving every day or facing the wrath!
Proving that our cause is just is only a short part of the challenge – especially if we only have to prove it to ourselves. Perhaps that’s why there are so many revolutions and causes, and why there is a feeling of hope when “something new” begins to take over “something old.” I think it is our tendency to use morality to justify ourselves, our causes, and our actions, when… it reality… morals are much better at condemning. The “new” causes simply haven’t been around long enough for the current people to have built a solid case against them. In a zero-sum world, you are right, non-existing agents and actions are the only inoffensive ones. The argument against this would need to prove we don’t live in a zero-sum world. Doesn’t Solomon have something to say about all of this?
Anyway… just some additional thoughts to your post. Read it last Friday and was glad to see you’re writing.
I've tried to comment on your comment several times, but they just grow into their own separate essays! Thanks for the fodder for future blog posts! (I don't know what fodder is)
ReplyDeleteTo put the practical part briefly, I think the bottom line is that pain and suffering is a problem for Christians (I hope this is not too tangential - here I've eliminated the essays-worth of reasoning that link the debate of ultimate authority with its usual root: the problem of pain). However, it is a bigger problem if there is no God. The very fact that suffering is a problem is itself a problem if there is no God. And that was my goal here: "Why should there be such a thing as injustice if there is no ultimate law?"
I think that most non-sociopaths have sense of justice in their heart - at least when it gets violated. When known murderers are acquitted, when the underdog/handicapped are mocked, when little girls are raped, something snaps inside that is more than "Hey, mister - that violates a piece of legislation!" It's bigger than ripping the tags off your pillows before you buy them. If all laws are equally arbitrary, I should only feel more strongly about offenses against myself or my family. But there's a strong desire in me to hang JonBenet Ramsey's murderer by his eyelids.
The fact that some such tugging exists within every person seems TO ME to be at least a shadow of a God. Not everyone feels the same degree of tugging on every issue, but there is obviously some common theme in approximately 6 billion people. With that many similar effects, shouldn't there be some unified cause(s)? "Where does the sense of injustice come from?" is a question that I think needs more practical attention by atheists. I've read Sagan and Dawkins and even Penn Jillette :) I can't find an atheist who is both (1) willing to go to the logical end of atheism and (2) has an answer for this dilemma. It's always either/or.
As for your comments "The biggest kid on the playground can get the longest turn on the swing-set" and "it is our tendency to use morality to justify ourselves, our causes, and our actions, when… it reality… morals are much better at condemning" ... those provoked much longer responses :)
Thanks for the comment and the challenge!
I hope to be more interested in finding the truth than already possessing it!