Justice and Blame

Discussion of the nature of Ultimate Reality and the path to Enlightenment.
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Cory Duchesne
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Justice and Blame

Post by Cory Duchesne »

Blame and Justice are often tangled together, and it’s unlikely that anyone could ever approach ethics in any other way than as a fantasy. Justice is a game that involves finding fault with entire social systems. You can’t really find fault with anything other than the whole of existence. The blame is not on any one thing, including oneself. Blame is generally a moral instinct, but it is a very poor one. Justice is simply a creative act that is born out of a highly critical self awareness. Wherever we see justice, we see a form of strength subjugating a form of weakness. Justice is blame taken to such an impersonal level that large sections of humanity get roasted.

We flash our teeth at others in an overly moral context often because we are compensating for some part of our character that has been overly criminal, overly fearful, overly guilty, ashamed, or overly insecure. Moral disdain becomes a kind of compensatory weapon. John Lennon had this problem, as it’s been well documented that he was physically abusive to his wives and psychologically abusive to his son.

Therefore, "the posture of ethics" is often the result of heightened sensitivity to crime through experiencing it first hand. To John Lennon's credit (and the many people like him) not everyone who behaves criminally tries to compensate. There are times where justice means seeing ones own compensation as positive. Also, moral compensation is often born from being victimized. Only after we feel victimized do we develop a sharp moral sense.

Of course, presenting oneself as overly ethical is sometimes the natural posture of someone who is naturally sensitive to moral ugliness. Such persons don’t need to be criminal or to be victimized in order to show consistent moral concern. This is a rare condition of psychological health. The highest state of health is applying the spirit of justice as a creative fantasy, born out of a critical spirit that seeks reformation. Nobody is to blame and nothing is taken personally. Faults are seen not in people, but in the assumptions that dictate the behavior of the people. As the population suffers through it’s vanity being stuck with a sword, the moral health of the species undergoes a rebirth into higher levels of order.
dinosarecool123
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Re: Justice and Blame

Post by dinosarecool123 »

There is no true justice.There can never be justice from any perspective no matter what the situation may be. Take in consideration this: A lion hunts and kills a young child and in retaliation is killed brutally by men. Was justice made? Was the lion at fault for following his natural instincts and trying to fulfill his needs? were the men not justified by the death of a child? In nature and in society there is never true justice.
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Diebert van Rhijn
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Re: Justice and Blame

Post by Diebert van Rhijn »

Hi d.a.c., what you're trying to analyze here is a "true"" or absolute form of justice. But one really has to look at it from the more relative context where rules exist. The instinct is just a set of ingrained rules and human society or culture has added a "second instinct" on top of that. Rules demand consequences. When the rule is followed, justice is generally perceived or "made".

Any absolute view of "nature" or "reality" is by definition amoral. But also unlivable because by which rule would one live or act? First there's an ordering and from this order rules are born. Everyone is free to oppose the rule but in practice people just assert another rule, another sense of justice against it. Generally, if you are born out of a society, which is always a morality or some set of unwritten rules -- the "just" thing to do is to answer to them while the unjust is to break them. This is just how the terms are defined. Is it possible to become born again somewhere else? You still won't escape your own ruling though, your own definitions which come into play soon enough. This is why Nietzsche wrote that a man cannot command if he not first learns to obey.
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Cahoot
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Re: Justice and Blame

Post by Cahoot »

“There is no true justice.There can never be justice from any perspective no matter what the situation may be. Take in consideration this: A lion hunts and kills a young child and in retaliation is killed brutally by men. Was justice made?”

Yes. A lion that has tasted human meat and lives free is a threat to humans because past experience with the species indicates that it is likely to return to those easy pickings.

“Was the lion at fault for following his natural instincts and trying to fulfill his needs?”

Maybe, if you toss out the assumption that savage innocence is the controlling factor.

Not all lions kill humans, not all humans in the proximity of lions are killed by lions, and lions are distinct from one other in adaptability ... a propensity to kill humans may be one of those distinctions that leads to an early Darwin award for that breeder. For survival purposes, evidence of that propensity trumps the need for human understanding of that propensity.

“Were the men not justified by the death of a child?”

Yes, given that the lion that killed a human will kill no more humans, and the lions that don’t kill humans will kill no more humans.

“In nature and in society there is never true justice.”

Justice is an interpretation of causation involving specific events. It occurs in the mind and is linked to situations, which are changeable and affect the manifestation of justice. In observing nature, justice is an interpretation of perceived phenomena. One interpretation is that in nature, everything gets what’s coming to it. This interpretation of justice is often used by individuals in society who say, I have a right to everything that’s coming to me (said when hoping for the best and not a curse), which works fine when the individual meets the responsibility for that right.

Life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness have been called God given, or natural rights that also exist within a societal structure, and are not granted or conferred by that societal structure. Thus these natural rights may, or may not, conflict with the societal structure. Depends on the society. Even though they are natural rights their existence is not guaranteed unless the responsibility for them is met. In light of this then we can say that in society, when God-given rights are not infringed by the structure of the society (in the form of authoritative individuals acting on behalf of that structure), and the responsibility for the God-given rights is met by the individual, then there is true justice.
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Re: Justice and Blame

Post by Tenver- »

Everything is as it must be. Is this not the most terrible thought?

Life is wholly non-moral. It is only our lust for power that spins a moral interpretation on it.

Compassion? Greed, lust for power. Love? Will to replicate, manipulation. Pity? Fear of losing out on valuable goods, a desire to optimize the use of available resources.

Our own little feelings make these things seem valuable to us, an ingenious mechanism by the whole machinery of humans and other animals.

If you see things like this, you will see that life is absolutely without moral origin or intent.

Who will save us from this little delusion of ours? Only Zarathustra can and will with the aid of his older brother, Nietzsche (or cousin, however you would like it).

What does Nietzsche say about "the good and just" in his book about Zarathustra? He calls them therein "the last men", those that signify the most dangerous condition of society, people who willingly sacrifice the future to themselves. One day, Zarathustra shall bring a horrendous fire to all these "good and just" people, as they are the first to be eradicated being the most dangerous and parasitic type of people...
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Cahoot
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Re: Justice and Blame

Post by Cahoot »

Another tale is Crime and Punishment … theory unravels as awareness encounters a force of morality that lies beyond the control of will.
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Cahoot
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Re: Justice and Blame

Post by Cahoot »

Tenver wrote:Everything is as it must be. Is this not the most terrible thought?
Of course not.

Included in “Everything” is the will to change what will be, and if that give comfort in the face of the terrible, then good!
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Re: Justice and Blame

Post by Tenver- »

Cahoot wrote:
Tenver wrote:Everything is as it must be. Is this not the most terrible thought?
Of course not.

Included in “Everything” is the will to change what will be, and if that give comfort in the face of the terrible, then good!
And if it doesn't?

Consciousness is also a curse. Right now, all we have against this terrible thought is nihilism. Laissez faire - "all is vain"! Before that, it was paradise. In the future, it shall be the superman (or, in other words, art). Man above all else needs to forget himself. Something which is hard in our days - the whole guilt-thing.
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Cahoot
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Re: Justice and Blame

Post by Cahoot »

Tenver- wrote:
Cahoot wrote:
Tenver wrote:Everything is as it must be. Is this not the most terrible thought?
Of course not.

Included in “Everything” is the will to change what will be, and if that give comfort in the face of the terrible, then good!
And if it doesn't?

Consciousness is also a curse. Right now, all we have against this terrible thought is nihilism. Laissez faire - "all is vain"! Before that, it was paradise. In the future, it shall be the superman (or, in other words, art). Man above all else needs to forget himself. Something which is hard in our days - the whole guilt-thing.
If it doesn’t, there’s always transcendence.
Tenver-
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Re: Justice and Blame

Post by Tenver- »

Cahoot wrote:
Tenver- wrote:
Cahoot wrote:
Tenver wrote:Everything is as it must be. Is this not the most terrible thought?
Of course not.

Included in “Everything” is the will to change what will be, and if that give comfort in the face of the terrible, then good!
And if it doesn't?

Consciousness is also a curse. Right now, all we have against this terrible thought is nihilism. Laissez faire - "all is vain"! Before that, it was paradise. In the future, it shall be the superman (or, in other words, art). Man above all else needs to forget himself. Something which is hard in our days - the whole guilt-thing.
If it doesn’t, there’s always transcendence.
What is transcendence?

--

Man looks at the cows - and is envious! ;)...

Nietzsche, On the Use and Abuse of History, part 1:
"Observe the herd which is grazing beside you. It does not know what yesterday or today is. It springs around, eats, rests, digests, jumps up again, and so from morning to night and from day to day, with its likes and dislikes closely tied to the peg of the moment, and thus neither melancholy nor weary. To witness this is hard for man, because he boasts to himself that his human race is better than the beast and yet looks with jealousy at its happiness. For he wishes only to live like the beast, neither weary nor amid pains, and he wants it in vain, because he does not will it as the animal does. One day the man demands of the beast: "Why do you not talk to me about your happiness and only gaze at me?" The beast wants to answer, too, and say: "That comes about because I always immediately forget what I wanted to say." But by then the beast has already forgotten this reply and remains silent, so that the man wonders on once more.

But he also wonders about himself, that he is not able to learn to forget and that he always hangs onto past things. No matter how far or how fast he runs, this chain runs with him. It is something amazing: the moment, in one sudden motion there, in one sudden motion gone, before nothing, afterwards nothing, nevertheless comes back again as a ghost and disturbs the tranquillity of each later moment. A leaf is continuously released from the roll of time, falls out, flutters away--and suddenly flutters back again into the man`s lap. For the man says, "I remember," and envies the beast, which immediately forgets and sees each moment really perish, sink back in cloud and night, and vanish forever.

Thus the beast lives unhistorically, for it gets up in the present like a number without any odd fraction left over; it does not know how to play a part, hides nothing, and appears in each moment exactly and entirely what it is. Thus a beast can be nothing other than honest. By contrast, the human being resists the large and ever increasing burden of the past, which pushes him down or bows him over. It makes his way difficult, like an invisible and dark burden which he can for appearances` sake even deny, and which he is only too happy to deny in his interactions with his peers, in order to awaken their envy. Thus, it moves him, as if he remembered a lost paradise, to see the grazing herd or, something more closely familiar, the child, which does not yet have a past to deny and plays in blissful blindness between the fences of the past and the future. Nonetheless this game must be upset for the child. He will be summoned all too soon out of his forgetfulness. For he learns to understand the expression "It was," that password with which struggle, suffering, and weariness come over human beings, so as to remind him what his existence basically is--a never completed past tense. If death finally brings the longed for forgetting, it nevertheless thereby destroys present existence and thus impresses its seal on the knowledge that existence is only an uninterrupted living in the past [Gewesensein], something which exists for the purpose of self-denial, self-destruction, and self-contradiction.

If happiness or if, in some sense or other, a reaching out for new happiness is what holds the living onto life and pushes them forward into life, then perhaps no philosopher has more justification than the cynic. For the happiness of the beast, like that of the complete cynic, is the living proof of the rightness of cynicism. The smallest happiness, if only it is uninterrupted and creates happiness, is incomparably more happiness than the greatest which comes only as an episode, as it were, like a mood, as a fantastic interruption between nothing but boredom, cupidity, and deprivation. However, with the smallest and with the greatest good fortune, happiness becomes happiness in the same way: through forgetting or, to express the matter in a more scholarly fashion, through the capacity, for as long as the happiness lasts, to sense things unhistorically."

In a way, animals (as distinct from humans) act far more rationally than man and deeply and thoroughly so, they do not immediately act on fear or presuppose that the world is worse than it is. Just imagine how great the blindness must be for an animal compared to a human. They do not immediately act on revenge or see in things the neccesary bond of revenge. In a way, they are far more rational than humans that so often live in conditions where revenge is needed and presupposed to be existant. Their ignorance IS bliss!

Just imagine how bad you can treat an animal and still experience it having tender feelings for you? Still daring to be vulnerable with you? How far you must push an animal before it considers "revenge"? How man longs for this rationality! To relieve himself of the guilt, to forget justice and be without blame... it is a sickness, it is surely, truly a sickness...
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Cahoot
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Re: Justice and Blame

Post by Cahoot »

Very good. Brings to mind Whitman.
For he learns to understand the expression "It was," that password with which struggle, suffering, and weariness come over human beings, so as to remind him what his existence basically is--a never completed past tense.
Oh yes. Old karma.

*

“I think I could turn and live with the animals, they are so placid and self contained;
I stand and look at them long and long.
They do not sweat and whine about their condition;
They do not lie awake in the dark and weep for their sins;
They do not make me sick discussing their duty to God;
Not one is dissatisfied-not one is demented with the mania of owning things;
Not one kneels to another, nor his kind that lived thousands of years ago;
Not one is responsible or industrious over the whole earth.”

- Walt Whitman
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Kunga
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Re: Justice and Blame

Post by Kunga »

Tenver- wrote:In a way, animals (as distinct from humans) act far more rationally than man and deeply and thoroughly so, they do not immediately act on fear or presuppose that the world is worse than it is. Just imagine how great the blindness must be for an animal compared to a human. They do not immediately act on revenge or see in things the necessary bond of revenge. In a way, they are far more rational than humans that so often live in conditions where revenge is needed and presupposed to be existent. Their ignorance IS bliss!
Just as Man is ignorant. Thinking he is top of the food chain. Ignorant that there are higher life-forms.
These other life-forms use humans, like we use animals. They've been here using us, for thousands of years. As we elevate our selves, thinking philosophical thoughts. We are cockroaches to them. Our loftiest thoughts are like the chirp of monkeys.
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Re: Justice and Blame

Post by Tenver- »

Kunga wrote:
Tenver- wrote:In a way, animals (as distinct from humans) act far more rationally than man and deeply and thoroughly so, they do not immediately act on fear or presuppose that the world is worse than it is. Just imagine how great the blindness must be for an animal compared to a human. They do not immediately act on revenge or see in things the necessary bond of revenge. In a way, they are far more rational than humans that so often live in conditions where revenge is needed and presupposed to be existent. Their ignorance IS bliss!
Just as Man is ignorant. Thinking he is top of the food chain. Ignorant that there are higher life-forms.
These other life-forms use humans, like we use animals. They've been here using us, for thousands of years. As we elevate our selves, thinking philosophical thoughts. We are cockroaches to them. Our loftiest thoughts are like the chirp of monkeys.
Higher life forms? The hidden reptile-overlords?... man's state is merely a sickness, a sickness which have given him dominance over other animals on the Earth. By cultivating civilization, he has learned to gain immense power and organize his behavior on the whole to have wild possibilities of power... but it has also fostered in him a sickness, which have made him become self-destructive as an individual.

Man is perhaps the weirdest of all animals, though he might easily happen to see himself as the standard of beings and as the most normal (and "pretty") of animals. Is there such an uncharacteristic being of animals as man? Unlikely. He would quite possibly be the worst representative of what it generally means to be an animal on the Earth. He still must, and will, remember his old capacity to forget!
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