crime and punishment

Monday, July 16, 2007

What is this law of decent human behavior or natural laws or moral compass or whatever you feel comfortable calling it?

Is it an instinct? I am not denying we have certain instincts, for example the herd instinct or sexual instinct or the instinct of a mother. We all know what it feels like to be prompted by instinct. Its a strong desire to act in a certain way.

BUT this feeling of desire to act in a certain way is much different than the feeling you "ought" to act in a certain way.

If someone is in danger, you may feel you should help (herd instinct) and you may feel you should flee to save yourself from danger. In addition to these two impulses, you have a feeling you "ought" to follow the impulse to help. It is a separate thing, this "ought" and it cant be itself and one of the first two impulses or instincts.

For arguments sake, if instinct was the moral compass and like in this example there are two impulses, which then is the good choice and which is the bad choice?

Confused? Dont be, although this easily could be a stumbling block, hold fast and i'll make another point.

Lets use a soldier as an example in this situation. In battle, he would have both impulses, herd (help and fight) and flee. There is obviously going to be times he should fight and times he should flee, how would this instinct define the "good" choice? If he killed a man in battle that could be justified, but if by the same instinct he killed a man over a simple argument back in his hometown after the war, how would you justify that?

Or we could use a husband as an example. He obviously should have a sexual instinct or desire for his wife and fulfill his marital duty, but what if he had a sexual desire for some strange woman and acted on that against her will. There is time to suppress any instinct so there must be another standard or law of behavior that leads a person to know when to encourage or suppress a given impulse.

You could also think on this like a note on a piano. Every single note is right at one time and wrong at another. Think on this law of human nature as the "tune" directing the notes or "instincts".

Ok, we have ruled out (at least in my mind) that its not instincts, could it then be what we have learned, perhaps from our parents?

You cant rule it out, but this law of human decency is more than that. Lets say we have two sets of parents and one set of parents upheld this "law" and taught the children well and another set of parents did not embrace this law and taught their children a different set of rules, one that encouraged a more subjective rule. Is one right? Is one wrong?

If no set of rules were truer than another, there would be no sense in preferring a savage society to a more decent one or a Nazi society to a society that embraced a "golden rule" mentality.

The moment you say one set of rules is better than another, you are using a "standard" to make that determination. We are measuring the rules by a standard that the majority of the civilized world inherently knows.

If there was no standard, then we would all agree that no one deserved any punishment, or imprisonment or even the death penalty regardless of the crime.

If someone killed a person dear to your heart, would you not declare that the perpetrator deserved punishment? You would and you would be using this law of human decency as your standard.

Thanks Mr. Lewis, its all you big dawg, its all you.