A criticism of my early views that laws are a common compromise of people who can take responsibility for their acts: To explain this better, I’ll explain my early views on morality and human freedom. I believed that they don’t co-exist. A moral judgement is a judgement of an act. An act done by a human in any emotional state is done with a rush to do it. Is it justified then? No! Does it need to be judged? Of course! But why? Why do actions of other people bother us? Why should we even live together?
Humans are condemned to be free. There is no way out. Is there a common essence for all of us? No. Is there a common purpose? No. Can we have objective morals? No. But we have understood that we can survive if we lived in groups. And it worked. Thus, we built civilizations, kingdoms, states and now nations. Now, do we need objective rules that repress us?
We need to understand that there is no supernatural judgement waiting to judge our actions. If we have to survive better, living in groups is the better way. And for that, we do need rules that don’t destroy society. We need society alive and functioning. So regardless of our opinion towards it, there is a forced common goal for all of us. That is to maintain harmony to live together intending no harm. Thus, we need objective rules that will however cause repression, but it should be a common compromise. “Humans are condemned to live together”
These rules should be applied in the best interest of maintaining harmony. Anarchy is amazing? Of course, it is. Imagine being able to live your own life independently, governing yourselves. But humans are beasts in nature; like any other animal. We have tried to refuse our true nature for a long time now. We have to accept that we all are predators, hunters, killers and thieves. Given certain pressure, everyone can break the threshold and can commit any treacherous act just to survive. It is there in all of us. That is our true nature, the true essence — we are animals.
Rather than judging our true nature to be filthy from the fixed-moral perspective, we should accept it. We should embrace the fact that we are all by birth predators and contribute to the common goal of harmony voluntarily. If it’s a rule book of God that condemns us to act accordingly to the rules, it causes repression. If it’s a spiritual guide, it causes repression too. You are suppressing your true nature rather than embracing it.
End of the day, rules, morals and laws only exist to maintain harmony. Why don’t we all contribute to it voluntarily? Rather than being suppressed by an unknown or a third-party-source (government), we can do it on our own. And the only third-party judge, the law should indeed exist, even though it suppresses our true nature, it is the necessary suppression we need to balance the harmony.
It won’t work if we ask people to create morals themselves. We can not blame the irresponsible for not taking the responsibility of creating their values. Again, it is natural. We are the beasts that we need to tame. And the taming; not because of a holy purpose. Or a moral judgement of a good/bad. But just what needs for society to exist. There is no objective good/bad, but just accepted/not accepted. Killing is not bad, it is just not acceptable. It is still natural for humans to kill, but we don’t need it now if we want to exist together.
I had this view that people who took responsibility to create their own values to not harm the other have compromised to create laws to control the irresponsible. I saw it in two perspectives. One being an unselfish contribution to the society. That is, that the law exists because the irresponsible cannot create their own values. The other being, a selfish act to preserve oneself. That is, that the responsible understand that we need harmony and thus to protect themselves from the irresponsible they have created these rules.
On further introspection, that might sound true, but such is not the case. There exists some common and objectively accepted thing in all of us. That is the idea of living together. This idea is the agent that causes morals, laws and values. People who don’t have these ideas of harmony are called ‘anti-social’ or sociopaths. According to what is not-accepted (bad) by all of us (those who wish harmony), a sociopath is bad (not-accepted), because a sociopath destroys the fundamentals of living together.
What is objectively bad is that which does not value or disregards the balance of the society. What is objectively good is that which does add to or does not break the fundamentals of society, at least. Thus, even though objectivity is a human construct, that is much needed. And as ironic as it may sound, it takes a person who is individual and independent to form a better society — so independent that one’s growth does not even depend on the decline of other people.
Penfluky 