JOURNAL: 022406 JUSTICE, ODYSSEUS, THE CYCLOPS: I AM NOBODY
In my deeply existential stage as a philosophy student I grew very comfortable with the idea that all speech was rhetoric and all knowledge was subjective. To some extent I still believe that we live in a universe that is meaningless.
My take is that the universe is chaos and has no meaning. But, I believe that there is a world outside of me and I believe that other identities exist in that world. As identities we have come together to form societies. As a race we have come together to agree that the universe has characteristics. In different languages we have agreed to call such characteristics light, dark, hot, cold, dry and wet and all of the usual "sensations" that we share.
However, I do not believe that those sensations are objective characteristics of the things we encounter. Instead, I think that the only reason we agree that some things are hot and some things are cold is because the biological tools we use to examine the world are biologically similar. The world we define is not an objective catalogue of the things in the world. The world we define is a catalogue of the common ways in which we perceive the things of the world. Objects are not hot or cold in a manner independent of our senses. Hot and cold is simply a subjective biological byproduct of what happens when we encounter externalities.
I acknowledge that this view does say something about the universe. Though the world of externals may not contain things which are hot and cold, the world of externals must have at least some common characteristics which cause us to perceive them in common ways. I do not know what fire is. From a biological standpoint I know what it feels like and what it does. As a creature with common biological tools you agree with me that fire burns. And this is true of everything that we put on fire. This does not mean that fire, as an external thing is actually hot, it simply means that the things which we all call fires have similar characteristics which we call hotness. However, the fact that we agree that biological affect of encountering fire is heat does not mean that the external things we call "fires" is in any way limited to qualities which we perceive. The external things we call fires could have an infinite spectrum of other characteristics which do not fall within the range of our biological ability to perceive. The same can be said of anything external to us which shares characteristics we sense in a biologically similar way.
Now step back from the world of external objects and consider the ephemeral world of concepts. Think of justice. Is there any logical or rational process that we can use to take the five blunt tools of sensation and extrapolate an objective definition of such an intricate concept?
For years I was convinced there was not. My study of existentialism, theologies and ideologies and the world of "ists and isms" left me so baffled that I abandoned the concept of justice to the subjective world of aesthetics. It was simply a term of art. However, I left the embryo of academia and entered the abortion clinic of the criminal justice system. Practical application changed everything.
To put it bluntly, criminal law is a compost pile. It is the leftovers of humanity after the corpse of mankind has been stripped clean in the slaughter house of reason. My belief in justice became my "pocket full of poesies" and protected me from the stench of social decay. It was one of many intoxicants I used to blunt my primary senses. Life was sharp and painful. It was like being hit by a tornado while working in a razor factory. Life needed to be dulled. I wrapped myself in a shroud of "justice" simply to protect myself from being skinned.
Now, far removed from the foxhole, I find myself again wondering if that word really meant anything beyond the confines of my mind. Today in class I asked about justice. All agreed with the principle that "all are innocent until proven guilty." Yet many felt that the state should be permitted to break the law in order to obtain that proof. They felt that if a confession was genuine and true, even if obtained by torture, that the evidence should be used and the criminal prosecuted. All agreed that the state agent should be prosecuted as well, but many could not get past the idea that "justice" required that the criminal be punished regardless of how the state obtained the evidence.
That was considered justice here. It would not be considered justice in many parts of the US. The "reality" of the crime was more important than the process of obtaining that reality. The ends justified the means so long as the individual police officer who used torture was punished as well. The most important thing was that both must pay for their crime.
Words do not do justice justice. I now find myself back in the realm of abandoning that word back into the world of aesthetics. I was outraged by the thought and then I was outraged at my outrage. How pious and arrogant. I disagree with them entirely, but not because I have an angle on some objective truth about the world. I go back to my original point and realize that I do not even believe that a fire is hot. How can I reasonably go from that position to the position that humans have an inalienable right to due process and inherent halo of innocence until there is a showing of guilt. It was painful to see that the shroud of faith and my need to dull the sharpness of certain realities had stunted my growth.
Words do not do justice justice. Now I must unlearn over a decade of tainted reasoning. I replaced God with logic and tied logic to experience. I forgot that experience was an anchorless ship adrift in the sea. I thought I had found an island wisdom and woke up to find that I was the Cyclops devouring Odysseus' crew. I have poked out my eye. I have taken leave of the island. If anybody asks what my name is, tell them I am "nobody."
My take is that the universe is chaos and has no meaning. But, I believe that there is a world outside of me and I believe that other identities exist in that world. As identities we have come together to form societies. As a race we have come together to agree that the universe has characteristics. In different languages we have agreed to call such characteristics light, dark, hot, cold, dry and wet and all of the usual "sensations" that we share.
However, I do not believe that those sensations are objective characteristics of the things we encounter. Instead, I think that the only reason we agree that some things are hot and some things are cold is because the biological tools we use to examine the world are biologically similar. The world we define is not an objective catalogue of the things in the world. The world we define is a catalogue of the common ways in which we perceive the things of the world. Objects are not hot or cold in a manner independent of our senses. Hot and cold is simply a subjective biological byproduct of what happens when we encounter externalities.
I acknowledge that this view does say something about the universe. Though the world of externals may not contain things which are hot and cold, the world of externals must have at least some common characteristics which cause us to perceive them in common ways. I do not know what fire is. From a biological standpoint I know what it feels like and what it does. As a creature with common biological tools you agree with me that fire burns. And this is true of everything that we put on fire. This does not mean that fire, as an external thing is actually hot, it simply means that the things which we all call fires have similar characteristics which we call hotness. However, the fact that we agree that biological affect of encountering fire is heat does not mean that the external things we call "fires" is in any way limited to qualities which we perceive. The external things we call fires could have an infinite spectrum of other characteristics which do not fall within the range of our biological ability to perceive. The same can be said of anything external to us which shares characteristics we sense in a biologically similar way.
Now step back from the world of external objects and consider the ephemeral world of concepts. Think of justice. Is there any logical or rational process that we can use to take the five blunt tools of sensation and extrapolate an objective definition of such an intricate concept?
For years I was convinced there was not. My study of existentialism, theologies and ideologies and the world of "ists and isms" left me so baffled that I abandoned the concept of justice to the subjective world of aesthetics. It was simply a term of art. However, I left the embryo of academia and entered the abortion clinic of the criminal justice system. Practical application changed everything.
To put it bluntly, criminal law is a compost pile. It is the leftovers of humanity after the corpse of mankind has been stripped clean in the slaughter house of reason. My belief in justice became my "pocket full of poesies" and protected me from the stench of social decay. It was one of many intoxicants I used to blunt my primary senses. Life was sharp and painful. It was like being hit by a tornado while working in a razor factory. Life needed to be dulled. I wrapped myself in a shroud of "justice" simply to protect myself from being skinned.
Now, far removed from the foxhole, I find myself again wondering if that word really meant anything beyond the confines of my mind. Today in class I asked about justice. All agreed with the principle that "all are innocent until proven guilty." Yet many felt that the state should be permitted to break the law in order to obtain that proof. They felt that if a confession was genuine and true, even if obtained by torture, that the evidence should be used and the criminal prosecuted. All agreed that the state agent should be prosecuted as well, but many could not get past the idea that "justice" required that the criminal be punished regardless of how the state obtained the evidence.
That was considered justice here. It would not be considered justice in many parts of the US. The "reality" of the crime was more important than the process of obtaining that reality. The ends justified the means so long as the individual police officer who used torture was punished as well. The most important thing was that both must pay for their crime.
Words do not do justice justice. I now find myself back in the realm of abandoning that word back into the world of aesthetics. I was outraged by the thought and then I was outraged at my outrage. How pious and arrogant. I disagree with them entirely, but not because I have an angle on some objective truth about the world. I go back to my original point and realize that I do not even believe that a fire is hot. How can I reasonably go from that position to the position that humans have an inalienable right to due process and inherent halo of innocence until there is a showing of guilt. It was painful to see that the shroud of faith and my need to dull the sharpness of certain realities had stunted my growth.
Words do not do justice justice. Now I must unlearn over a decade of tainted reasoning. I replaced God with logic and tied logic to experience. I forgot that experience was an anchorless ship adrift in the sea. I thought I had found an island wisdom and woke up to find that I was the Cyclops devouring Odysseus' crew. I have poked out my eye. I have taken leave of the island. If anybody asks what my name is, tell them I am "nobody."
posted by KELLY FRAZIER at 10:34 AM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home