[ SECRET POST #3659 ]

[case]

⌈ Secret Post #3659 ⌋

Warning: Some secrets are NOT worksafe and may contain SPOILERS.

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Notes:

Secrets Left to Post: 02 pages, 32 secrets from Secret Submission Post #523.
Secrets Not Posted: [ 0 - broken links ], [ 0 - not!secrets ], [ 0 - not!fandom ], [ 0 - too big ], [ 0 - repeat ].
Current Secret Submissions Post: here.
Suggestions, comments, and concerns should go here.

Comments

Re: Unpopular / Controversial Opinions

[feotakahari]

Aesthetically, but it's also a personal thing because I'm a Utilitarian and we don't really do "justice."

Re: Unpopular / Controversial Opinions

[diet_poison]

Why not?

Re: Unpopular / Controversial Opinions

[feotakahari]

Utilitarians don't distinguish between good people and bad people. It's more about whether people are causing harm, and the goal is to get them to stop causing harm while causing a minimal amount of harm yourself. We're very focused on mercy and rehabilitation, to a point that many people find it uncomfortable.

To show this in action, there's a point in the Lone Wolf gamebooks where Lone Wolf meets a dead villain who has been condemned to eternal suffering. The villain asks for Lone Wolf's forgiveness in order to escape this fate, but also sets a trap that will kill Lone Wolf. The choices in the text are to forgive and fall for the trap or not forgive and survive to continue the story. A Utilitarian hero would recognize the trap and forgive anyway, on the grounds that eternal suffering is fundamentally wrong.

(And yes, this has a lot of relation to Christian ideas of "love your enemies." This is a big part of my love-hate relationship with Christianity, since it galls me all the more when people use Christ as a justification for hating each other.)

I realize that "social justice" has nothing to do with justice in that sense, but that just makes the name even stranger. Why call it justice when it doesn't relate to systems of justice?

Re: Unpopular / Controversial Opinions

[diet_poison]

I mean, I don't think your viewpoint is mutually exclusive with the concept of justice, and justice is also more than a branch of government.

I have a very strong sense of justice and it really doesn't have anything to do with whether someone is a "good person" or a "bad person".

Re: Unpopular / Controversial Opinions

[feotakahari]

So what does justice mean to you? Just curious.

Re: Unpopular / Controversial Opinions

[diet_poison]

Justice is based on actions, not value or "goodness" of the individual. If you hurt someone, you should be held accountable. If you're hurt through no fault of your own, you deserve restitution. I also believe human beings have intrinsic value and there are certain things that are always unjust (slavery, murder/genocide, abuse, poverty due to other peoples' greed, etc.) The latter would just fall under "human rights" for some people, I'm sure, and they do to me too, but they overlap with justice.

Re: Unpopular / Controversial Opinions

[feotakahari]

Maybe the distinction is past vs. future. I read once about a war criminal who was found a decade later living as an ordinary citizen in another country. She said she'd seen and done horrible things and wanted to put them behind her. In thinking about what punishment she merited, all the questions that came to mind began with "will," e.g. "Will this discourage others from committing similar atrocities?" or "Will this bring the victims' families any measure of peace?" It sounds like you would ask more questions beginning with "did" or "was."

Re: Unpopular / Controversial Opinions

[diet_poison]

I think a really important aspect of justice from a legal standpoint is deterrence. There's also fear - if you know you are living next to someone who is dangerous, you might want to avoid that situation. Sometimes those stances have more merit than others. It's not always simple.

Re: Unpopular / Controversial Opinions

[feotakahari]

I can't say I'm much for deterrence from a practical standpoint. Goodness knows it hasn't done anything against illegal drugs.

Re: Unpopular / Controversial Opinions

[diet_poison]

I don't think most drugs should be illegal, but I suppose that's neither here nor there. (I imagine you probably don't, either.)