Curt Howland wrote: > -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- > Hash: SHA1 > > On Thursday 09 October 2008, Gary F. York was heard to say: > >> What on earth are you going on about? I already said I did not >> condone 'punishment' or 'retaliation'. I'm about restitution and >> restraint. >> > > I'm also reminded of the idea that, if the perp is just too nasty to > stay and pay their restitution, they can just leave and be an outlaw. > > Go work in the Foreign Legion, the asteroid mines, etc. > "Who knows what evil lurks in the hearts of men?" Perhaps The Shadow knows but I wish we knew as well. More importantly, I wish we knew how it got there and how to get it out.
"Evil" is such a very useful if old-fashioned word. And evil, as such, is not a libertarian concept particularly. Not all NAP transgressions are evil and not all evil acts are NAP transgressions; the existence sets overlap but neither subsumes the other. The NAP presents a minimum standard of behavior that we hope we can get a bunch of people to agree to uphold. It has the singular advantage of restraining itself to actual behavior. But evil can exist both in thought and deed. We have evil thoughts; sometimes we do evil deeds. And if pinning down the NAP is a can of worms, trying to get everyone's agreement on the meaning of evil would be a whole warehouse full. For me, evil rests solely in the desire for, or the actual attempt, to harm another sentient being. My take on evil is one reason I reject 'retaliation' as anything to promote. If someone harms me or another I certainly want them to stop. Further, I don't want them harming others. I want them to not _want_ to harm others. Where the initial harm was inadvertent, I want them to become -- not so much _careful_ as cognizant of the possible consequences of their acts. And I don't want, nor do I want to want, to harm the person who first harmed me. "Heat of battle," can bring people to do things they later may regret. I know that and I think most 'juries' would allow for that. But retaliation in cold blood or as a primary principle in law? Not for me. It encourages the very thing I'd rather see less of. Evil. Same with 'punishment' as a deterrent to crime. It's an ugly, ugly concept and is self-defeating I think. It embraces evil to deter evil. Surely not the way to go. The desire to bring another low, to make them feel pain, to make them feel like they're the lowest of the low or irredeemably bad? I'd far rather they just changed their ways and made restitution. A problem, certainly, is how to know when someone has actually "changed their ways?" And then too, some things can be done for which restitution is unlikely or actually impossible. The perpetrator may have 'changed their ways' but some damage can't be undone, the victim "made whole," or the damage assessed, paid. What then? I suppose it's a cop-out to say, "There are no easy answers." Problem is, there just aren't. If we expel them from our group, outlawry, there will remain the chance that they might come back, unredeemed, and wreak more havoc. But if we exclude the chance that they will come back by killing them, we also forever preclude the possibility of redemption and forgo the possibility, however slight, that they would prove their worth -- become valuable associates. We do know that most violent crime is now committed by the young (35 and down, I believe). That alone suggests some possibilities. 1. Many of us haven't a clue how to raise kids and it takes those kids a number of years to figure out how (and why they ought) to get along with others. 2. The whole society is raising kids wrong (see the public education system) and it takes those kids a number of years .... 3. We do something really wrong when we apprehend wrongdoers. (Prison system/criminal justice system). Witness the number of repeat offenders. 4. Many young people can't foresee an attractive life for themselves and hence, fail to value the society as a whole (gee, wonder why?) and the people that comprise it. They have a group of friends which they consider 'us' and everyone else is 'them'. It's far easier to contemplate aggression against a 'them' than an 'us'. Eventually they grow up and manage to work something out. Mostly. The list should be extended but there is reason to suspect that a libertarian or AnCap society would have a great deal less violent aggression than now exits. G.
