In The Court of Me

My friend and I have been discussing Natural Justice since around about December last year. We’ve never really argued with each other, so I don’t know how far I can call it a debate. Per se. I think why we have needed to circle back to it time and time again, however, is because of the consequences of it.

As you can guess, without straining your mental faculties overmuch, the debate started because we were discussing Punishment. Or the possibility of one. And the consequences of it. 

If I don’t punish a Wrong, how does that make the people who do Right feel?

If I don’t reward Right, am I rewarding Wrong?

If I let Wrong slide, does it naturally follow that I am punishing Right?

In a world where all of us can slip, make accidental mistakes, and do Wrong, how many times do I forgive? How many times do I warn? When do I let the hammer fall?

When things stop being theoretical and you are accountable for the actions that you take, suddenly these questions become very real. And decisions do not come lightly. When your decisions have real world consequences, everything becomes that much more difficult. And you don’t often win popularity contests when you mete out punishments.

So should you?

Should you bother yourself with such cumbersome musings and possible fallouts only in an effort to bring about fairness and justice? And believe me, not many people will see it your way.

Because we talk a lot about two sides of a coin. In Mizo parlance, Side A and Side B. This is indeed a start but as is well-known already, a little knowledge is sometimes more dangerous than outright ignorance, so also it is never enough to simply get two sides of a story, especially if they are polar opposites. Especially if you're only in it for the tragedy porn. Life is not a series of Black & White. In fact, most of life operates in the grey. It requires insight to consider and muck about the grey areas and emerge with some sort of ruling.

And you can't even know if you're right.

Natural Justice. When God put Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden, they were given a Law – don’t eat of The Tree. I think it’s a simple Test of Free Will, because you can never know if someone is obeying you if there is no consequence for if they don’t. And the couple chose to disobey. And God said: What have you done? And therein lay the principle of Natural Justice.

God already knew what Adam had done. But Adam was given the chance to explain his actions. And it was true what he said that the woman God gave him asked him to eat of The Tree. A defence counsel, I suppose. It shifted the blame of Adam’s actions on God; unintended consequences and all that. So while Adam was given the chance to defend his actions, and God did hear him out, he was still punished.

Actions and consequences. These days they call it: fuck around and find out.

You have to hear people out. It is a basic principle of Fairness and Justice. But the fact that you’ve heard them out, and granted they might have done what they have done out of ignorance or a myopic view of further ramifications, does not give them a Pass. They’ve done Wrong. They need to face the Repercussion. You could always lessen the sentence. But if a society fails to exert sanctions on Wrong, it will always lead to More Wrong.

The fact remains that Adam in the Garden of Eden broke the Law. There was just the one. And he broke it. He had to go. Sounds harsh, but sometimes you have to be cruel to be kind.

I suppose, all things considered, just hope you never have to apply this shit in your time.

Discovering Hell

It’s a good thing I’m not god or that I have any real powers because I very much doubt life would survive overmuch if I were. Free will, for sure, would not. It is a disturbing thought but if I am completely honest, I realise I would not be too opposed to autocracy if I were at the apex. The only thing that puts a pause in me being pro-dictatorship (even if the dictator would be me) is that I also firmly believe that the seed of destruction in any dictatorship lies in the system itself; that authoritarian rules cannot be absolute for long and from the very people being oppressed would be borne a saviour. Inevitable.

The other reason I would not make a very good god is that I am not that brilliant at handing out punishments. It is a sobering thought but I don’t often know people as well as I think I do. Which is very important if you are going to penalize someone because torture is a very strange concept and the same method often does not hold out universally. Even tolerance of pain is different across the multitudes. And of course, some people actively seek out thrill which others would call horror; kinks, as we say.

So what we call embarrassing or deeply terrifying sometimes do not have the same impact on other people. This makes certain prayers quite useless – or at least non-impactful. As in when you pray to god to maybe punish someone by dragging their names through the mud for, say, infidelity or monetary corruption. Clearly that infamy does not bother them because anyone who indulges in those things has already calculated the cost and has made their peace with the possible fallouts.

I’m Christian, so I am partial to: ‘As you sow, so shall you reap’, ‘Vengeance is mine, says the Lord’ and ‘There is nothing hidden that will not be revealed’ as I read them in the Bible. But that’s just a very lengthy, Abrahamic way of saying Karma. Anyhoo, because Karma sees all, Karma also judges all. And when she doles out her judgments, it is hardly ever in the way a mortal brain would expect but when you realise it, you think: of course, it could not have been any other way. Sometimes these penalties are deeply personal and/or incredibly secretive; sometimes all outward appearances would convince the world that sinners and criminals go about scot-free from their crimes because this is their world, but their lives are being eaten up from the inside and corroded from within.

It is hard to not wish harm on some people. Some people are just very disagreeable and generally overall non-likable. You want to maim them; not kill them, you understand, because of the moral implications of it and all the brevity of the retribution et cetera (read with eyeroll). Also if you indulge in these avenging business, Karma will have to sock it to you too and you don’t want to find out what kind of bitch-slap Karma has in reserve for you. In short, you never want to find out what hell is for you. So you do good. And take deep breaths. And hold your tongue. And all those things.

It’s a funny old world we live in. Sometimes I think heaven and hell are already here with us. (Also, sometimes I think it’s a bit like a multiverse, at the cost of sounding very MCU-y, but let’s leave that for another time.)