Justice (post 11)

We value our own happiness
We value our relationships with those we love
We value bringing joy to our loved ones, and we regret bringing them pain

This simple and universal moral code helps encourage us to build and maintain loving relationships and to act for the benefit of ourselves and those we love.

When interacting with friends or family, we should attempt to act in our own and their best interest.  When interacting with strangers, we should be open and inviting to the formation of friendships.

Simple.

The difficulties come when we find ourselves in competition with loved ones and/or strangers, or when strangers or loved ones are in competition with each other.

When such situations occur, as they often and inevitably do, what is the optimal way to respond?  When, if ever, is it appropriate to resort to violence? (and by violence I am being general - including verbal or physical attacks on or theft of someone's person, character, ideas, property, etc.).

This is perhaps the most important question in the world.

In attempting to answer it, it may be useful to distinguish the violence that stems from utility (violence as a mean to some other end) and the violence that stems from malice (violence for the sake of itself).


Let's take the alarmingly common example of one child bullying another on a playground.  If I put myself in the shoes of the bully, what could be my reasons for initiating this violence?  It might be because I want the other child's lunch or toy, or because it will make me more popular with the other children, or because he bullied me before and I want to stop him from trying it again, or because I just enjoy watching him suffer.

The first three reasons are out of utility - there is something to be gained from the bullying - a material object, status, security.  The fourth is due to malice.  It is cruelty in its most pure form - taking enjoyment from watching someone else suffer.

I think we can add to our list of universal morals the belief that violence due to malice is wrong.

This points back to something I was attempting to explain a couple of posts ago, and that is that we are more likely to act out of malice whenever we believe that others are evil.  It is, so often, our belief in the evilness of another that feeds the malice within ourselves.

Putting the issue of malice aside, we still have the question of when or whether there can be justification for violence out of utility.  And I think here there is, again, a near universally accepted conclusion:

Violence (without malice) is justifiable whenever the benefit outweighs the harm.

This is perhaps not so helpful, as it just shifts the question to how do we properly weigh the benefit and harm?  Philosophers have been wrestling with this for centuries.  I do not have an answer, but I have an observation.

When calculating the effects of violence, it is human nature to put a premium on the joy and pain of those we are closest to, while discounting the feelings of strangers.  We all do it, but some do it to greater or lesser extents.

Over time, as the world has become more and more interconnected, the degree to which a stranger's pain can detract from our own happiness has increased.

Thousands of years ago it may have been possible for a member of one clan to slay a member of a distant clan and be completely insulated, in terms of human connections, from the misery such a slaying may have caused.  The killer could return to his people and rejoice in their company without fear of any of them having ties of affection with the victim or the victim's loved ones.

Today such insulation is impossible.  They say that through six or seven chains of relationships, we are connected to every human being on Earth.

If it is universally true that we suffer when our loved ones suffer, then - even if I harm a complete stranger in a foreign country - the harm I incur upon him will pass to those who love him, and then to those who love them, and so on until, within a handful of connections, it has returned to my loved ones, and thus to me.