A fundamenatal legal premise is:
"No person shall be punished but for an action violating a rule that was in force at the time when the action took place."
If my father was a murderer, no modern court of law would hold me responsible. Strangely, if my great great great grandfather had belonged to an oppressed section of society - identified by race or religion perhaps - I would likely be entitled to preferential treatment today, irrespective of my current living conditions.
There is a curious incongruity in the ways in which the modern world disseminates rewards and punishments. The law punishes individuals for what they consciously do. In contrast, government policies often reward groups of individuals for attributes they have no role in determining.
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4 comments:
It requires more attention to heal the scars of the past. The consequence of injustice and brutality remains for an extended time.
Look at the Arab-Israeli conflict. It has a 5K-year history behind it.
Even the worst of times pass. The scars remain in our memory. The mind refreshes these memories. Later, people hear of them and read about them, and identify with some of them. No scar can live longer than the lifespan of the person who suffered, unless we want it to.
You see, problems are of two kinds - those that nature creates for us, and those we create for ourselves. To me, a person who harbors rage for the sufferings of the past, despite living in a happy present, has created a problem for himself... and his rage is possibly going to be the harbinger of miseries for others. To give privileges now to a person, on the sole basis that not he but his ancestors suffered, when others are suffering in the present, is in my opinion a suboptimal, and not very meaningful, criterion for resource allocation :). Obviously, a person whose ancestors have suffered may still be suffering, possibly due to a conflict like the one you mention, and such a person deserves help by all means.
Justice is a man-made notion, a product of reason that distinguishes us from most species, but also one that nature does not recognize. The human brain has the ability to reason, but it also embodies the instincts of the earliest life-forms, instincts related to survival - fear and aggression among others. There was a transition point in time when humans became the dominant species on earth, thriving on the exploitation of all else. At that point, several of these survival instincts became dramatically less important for survival. But they remain in us, and we continue to hurt ourselves with problems that these feelings create. The conscious part of our mind has the ability to elevate us above our instincts, but one has to try very hard and try constantly because the instincts never take a break. Personally, if there is one quality that I can cultivate in myself, it will have to be kindness; and if I can have another, it will be the ability to reason without bias.
Great work.
hi, new to the site, thanks.
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