Carmela, perhaps the only way to do justice to your post is by responding to each of your paragraphs.
CarmelaBear wrote:I used to think that the law was orderly and good. It appears to be the opposite of chaotic violence and retribution and wild westiousness. Compared to no law at all, it is certainly better than no law, just because nature doesn't do a good job of policing human behavior or teaching youngin's goodlier manners.
Indeed, if one must choose between lawlessness and order, order would be the more natural human choice for conducting the self. But would it not be a more natural choice of conduct for any living entity that is endowed by something resembling reason?
However.....and this is a BIG however......we now have the benefit of science and medicine applied to the study and gentle, positive, humane influence of human behavior and the development of the capacity for joy and fulfillment in human experience. There is every reason to believe that it is absolutely counterproductive to resort to the reactive, negative, and sometimes destructive and heavy-handed, manipulative approach represented by the Rule of Law.
Are you claiming that the scientific discoveries of our current times are capable of replacing the Law? Some ‘gentle, positive humane influence of behaviour’ can also be described as propaganda (on the large scale) and brainwashing (on the smaller scale). Where will you draw the lines between brainwashing and gentle, positive influencing of the individual? There are ways of persuasion that completely disregards the individual’s own preferences and just as harmful to the victim as physical rape of his/her body would be. Isn’t it more humane to have well defined laws and enforce these laws consistently?
In Anglo American law, there is civil law, which uses what is boldly called "redistributive justice" to rob from Peter to reimburse Paul with ungodly amounts of money and property, entirely out of proportion to anything but passionate overreaction and vengeance. The other kind of law is criminal, where truth is actively suppressed through such absurdities as the "right to remain silent, and everything you say can and will be used against you in a court of law" and ideas of due process that overlook real problems that need to be solved. Further, criminal law makes no rational attempt to separate the person who acts from the action. We say the person is guilty, instead of noting that all of us are essentially innocent and worthy, and our conduct reflects our time and place and circumstances when it is less than perfect.
OK, I get it. There are problems with the system, but then again, can you design a system that will work without ANY fault? Shouldn’t we repair the system before we throw it away in exchange for something we haven’t even tried yet? Generally speaking, it is very risky business to try something new when there are ways to mend the old – me think. Look at the number of marriage breakdowns in our times for instance! How many marriages could be saved if people took the Law seriously?
I for one will never fathom why so many people make up their own marriage vows today. In the traditional Christian ceremony the words express exactly what a marriage supposed to deliver: ‘ … to forsake all others … for better for worse, for richer for poorer, in sickness and in health, as long as we both shall live.’ That’s all. Two people due to their own volition enter into an agreement that is valid for the rest of their natural life. I believe there is something fundamentally wrong with the claim that a marriage can break down because either party was not persuasive enough to keep the other ‘honest’. Where is a person’s real worth if not in the reliability of his/her word or conduct?
There is a difference between balance, on the one hand, and retribution and vengeance and hurting and killing people out of rage and pain on the other hand.
Here's an example. Say that someone is attracted to an illicit drug that makes a person feel good. Life can be an awful experience, and an easy high is more than tempting.
Caught by authorities, in the act of self-abuse, the reaction of the law is as follows:
Privacy is viiolated. A search is conducted that makes no allowance for one's medical needs or personal integrity or the needs of those who are dependent on the person who is discovered to be using an illegal substance.
An arrest is an assault and battery and a kidnapping, sometimes conducted in a violent and extremely painful and traumatic manner.
Taking someone into custody is a form of holding someone hostage. Bail is a form of ransom. The tortures and risk of death while awaiting trial are very real, either at the hands of officials or at the hands of fellow inmates in correctional facilities.
Little or no attempt is made to ascertain the medical or other physical and emotional needs of the person who is incarcerated. If you need to take pills to keep from having a heart attack, you may be out of luck. The number of ways you can be placed in danger of losing life and limb and more money than your whole family can afford is unbelievable.
Remember, all of this is about saving you from yourself, and keeping you from ingesting something that may or may not be dangerous!
If you were to add up the penalties for all the crimes committed against the defendant, the "law" would be in prison for several lifetimes, and all this violence and injustice is meted out in response to a drug use violation.
The way I gather it, your main claim is that the playing field is not even; some people are more disadvantaged than others to function as law-obeying citizens. So … what’s new? Has the playing field ever been even? Can it ever be even? Yet, it was the Law that kept human civilizations going, not lawlessness.
Okay, you say, what about people who commit murder? Good question. My answer is simple. There is absolutely no difference between one human being killing another and another killing one. If it's murder to kill your wife, it's murder for the rest of us to kill you. If it's wrong, then it's wrong. If it's neutral, then it's neutral. If one is right, they're both right. The notion that our reasons are better than someone else's reasons is based on the idea that we are different and better than the person who kills. I don't buy that at all.
OK. Now you’ve lost me! It seems common sense truth to me that a person who plays the game by the rules is a BETTER person than the one who does not play the game by the rules.
For example, if I sat down to play cards with you and I cheated you, you’d be quite rightly angry. No? You might not even play with me again since I not only destroyed your fun but also destroyed your trust in me being a good person. That trust would need to be rebuilt before you’d play with me again, I think. Does this seem too harsh? Emotions aside, rational beings evaluate their own conduct and the conduct of those they must interact with. The consequence of this evaluation is that some people turn out to be better than others.
All law is en-forced. That means it is forced upon people. That means that every penalty or liability or consequence is artificially conceived and handed out through the use of threats of coercion and violence. Law is not the opposite of disorder. Law is simply a nice, lovely, cutesy, whitewashed way of politely and firmly turning human beings into helpless victims, broken and sometimes killed, with absolutely no sense of the harm done to the innocent people who suffer unnecessary losses just to make ignorant, vengeful masses feel good about themselves.
Law is not smart about human behavior, about the value of the human person, about the value of true equality, about the fact that there are better ways to handle difficulties and problems than by demonizing human beings and hurting them and killing them.
People are people. They are good.....all of them. Behavior can pose problems. People are not their behavior, and people are not problems.
I don’t know in what part of the Universe can you find all people EQUALLY good. Not even sure if I’d like to live in a place where there is absolute sameness of living entities who are practically indistinguishable from one another by their conduct. Since such place does not exist – not even hypothetically - it seems the best we can do with what we have is to enforce the Law.
If I sound a bit dogmatic, I'm sorry, but I know an assault and battery and a kidnapping and a hostage-taking and a ransom extorting when I see them. When this is done to the innocent for many years, it's a travesty, but when it is done to those whose lives were ruined by society long before they took up guns and decided to steal funds or whatever they've done to upset us, we have to acknowledge our role in their predicament.
Healthy, happy people don't need laws. They have self-respect and they respect others. There is a rational and humane response to any human error, no matter how terrible it is.
The law sucks, and lawyers and judges know this. Law-makers know this. They love assaulting and battering. They get their rocks off from stealing mothers and fathers from innocent children. They have created one of the world's largest institutions of slavery ever known to man.
Human beings are good.
Problems can be solved or survived with dignity and grace.
Human beings are not problems.
The law means well. The law is like the parent who kills his son for stealing. He means to save society from his own evil.
Law based on anything but love is hopelessly ineffective and misguided.
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It is manifestly not the case that all human beings are naturally good and capable of making equally good moral judgements in order to govern their own conduct. If anything is hopelessly ineffective and misguided it is the attempt to overlook unappealing aspects of individuals by the help of one’s unconditional love for all. Carmela, I ‘m afraid you are contradicting your own self when you claim that there is no need for Law and law enforcement. You can’t claim that all people are naturally good and claim that people can govern their own conduct.
What need is there to govern one’s own conduct if we are all equally good?