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If the punishment from the state is a slap on the wrist, it doesn’t justify retaliatory murder, but justifiable homicide when you know you’ll be raped again and

• martin-t 1y ago
  The way I see it, there are 2 concepts - morality and legality. Morality is complex to codify perfectly without contradictions but most/all humans are born with some sense of morality (though not necessarily each the same and not necessarily internally consistent but there are some commonalities). Legality arose from the need to codify punishments. Ideally it would codify some form of morality the majority agrees on and without contradictions. But in practice it's written by people with various interests and ends up being a compromise of what's right (moral), what people are willing to enforce, what is provable, what people are willing to tolerate without revolting, etc. > retaliatory murder Murder is a legal concept and in a discussion of right and wrong, I simply call it a killing. Now, my personal moral system has some axioms: 1) If a punishment is just, it doesn't matter who carries it out, as long as they have sufficient certainty about what happened. 2) The suffering caused by the punishment should be proportional by roughly 1.5-2 to the suffering caused to the victim (but greater punishment is acceptable is the aggressor makes it impossible to be punished proportionally). Rape victims often want/try to commit suicide - using axiom 2, death is a proportional punishment for rape. And the victim was there so they know exactly what happened - using axiom 1, they have the right to carry out the punishment. So even if they were not gonna be raped again, I still say they had the moral right to kill him. But of course, preventing further aggression just makes it completely clear cut. --- > No one should take matters into their own hands I hear this a lot and I believe it comes down to: 1) A fear that the punisher does not have sufficient proof or that aggressors will make up prior attacks to justify their actions. And those are valid fears, every tool will be abused. But the law is abused as well. 2) A belief that only the state has the right to punish people. However, the state is simply an organization with a monopoly on violence, it does not magically gain some kind of moral superiority. 3) A fear that such a system would attract people who are looking for conflict and will look for it / provoke it in order to get into positions where they are justified in hurting others. And again, this is valid but people already do this with the law or any kind of rules - do thing below the threshold of punishment repeatedly to provoke people into attacking you via something which is above the threshold. --- BTW thanks for the links, I have read the wiki overview but I'll read it in depth tomorrow.
  • aspenmayer 1y ago
    My thoughts and views on this matter are informed by my beliefs as much as by the law. Morality doesn’t flow downstream from legality, but the other way around: legality is downstream of morality. Unjust laws ought not be followed in the same way that unlawful orders must be disobeyed. Yet, one must submit to the law and its consequences in order for civil disobedience to function. Let he who is without sin cast the first stone. Vengeance belongs to the Lord, after all. I find their actions troubling, but not inherently justified. The fact that they faked injuries in order to present themselves as victims is especially concerning, but considering their father’s connections in the police department, I think they feared retaliation even after their abuser was killed. It’s a really tragic case. The fact that they were questioned initially without legal representation or knowledge of their rights further muddies the waters, but all we really know is a man is dead. He should have been tried and convicted, and then jailed or executed, because he seems entirely guilty, but we don’t have all the facts. I think we know enough to determine that he was isolating and abusing them, with no escape or end in sight. They were not able to imagine any other life. They deserved to look their abuser in the eye in court and see him convicted, but their own actions, and his, seemed to make that a near impossibility. With conviction comes the possibility of forgiveness and salvation, and I hope that they are able to find the peace that forgiveness brings, not that he himself seems to deserve it, from them especially. The good news is that the women are likely to have all charges dropped. The cycle of violence associated with feuds and bad blood are linked with honor cultures especially. I don’t know much about the psychology of the individuals involved in this case, but the fact that their father literally rang a bell and expected his daughters to be at his beck and call leads me to believe that he didn’t see them as having the same rights as he did, if he even thought of them at all outside of what they could do for him. Their uncle, the brother of their father, seems to claim a grievance, and I am concerned that this cycle of violence may not be over. Hurt people hurt people. Hate can’t drive out hate. Only love can do that. I hope that the girls can find some peace and happiness in this world, and even someone or something to love. Lord knows they found little of that in life so far.
    • martin-t 1y ago
      Sorry for a late reply, it took me a while to read the article. As far as I can tell from it he was a habitual abuser and his death is not a loss for society, quite the opposite. One thing people struggle with is the idea that every life has infinite value. That is obviously nonsense. Then they say every life has a very high value and it's the same for every person. That is also nonsense - if you get attacked by two people, do you have the right to kill them both in self-defense? Yeah, because their 2 lives are less valuable than your 1 life. Most importantly, value to whom? To the person whose life it is, it is indeed very high. Than there's the family, friends, acquaintances, state, society and humanity at large. And to each of those groups, the value is different. The key realization is that to some of those groups, the value can be negative, very negative in fact. Every dictator is no doubt loved by his friends (especially those who get privileged positions from him) so his value to his friends is very high but to his society, the value is often negative. This particular abuser is interesting because his life had a negative value to both his daughters and society/humanity. But he still has family members willing to protect him because his life had positive value to them. This is sad, if he was my family member, I would not protect him. But a lot of people put family before morality - they are genetically predisposed to do so, even if it's detrimental to humanity at large. > Morality doesn’t flow downstream from legality, but the other way around: legality is downstream of morality. No, that's how it should be. Sadly, legality is downstream of morality + practicality + provability. Morality because if the law is too unjust, people revolt. Practicality because it's practical for the people in power to make laws in their favor and because too much morality makes for a weaker state - too many people end up in prison instead of being economically productive. And provability because even though morality operates on reality (it depends on the actual truth), legality requires proof to dispense punishment. This is one reason why the idea of an all knowing god is so tempting - you can cross provability off the board because the god will dispense punishment based on the actual truth. > The fact that they faked injuries in order to present themselves as victims is especially concerning, but considering their father’s connections in the police department, I think they feared retaliation even after their abuser was killed. Exactly. Lying and manipulation are not wrong on its own. They are multipliers. If the goal is good and you used them to achieve it, nothing wrong happened. However, I generally see them as massive red flags because although they are tools good people should absolutely use, they should be used as a last resort and people who reach for them too early generally do so out of habit which basically revels their true nature. > The cycle of violence I hate this term. WW2 axis was destroyed through overwhelming violence. There was no cycle because the good violence was so thoroughly the bad people were all either dead, soon to be executed or no longer had power to continue it (or decided to play innocent victim and keeping them alive was _practical_ in the case of the Japanese emperor). > Hurt people hurt people. There is some truth to this but I feel like this happens because we don't allow victims to fight back and perform the punishment themselves. People who were wronged want to hurt the aggressor but that person is usually untouchable by them (otherwise he wouldn't dare wrong them in the first place). So the anger ends bottled up inside them and ends up hurting others. This is why I hate this celebration of victim hood and the idea that the victim has to be defenseless and ask others for help. We should not just let but encourage people to fight back.