Clear Up Perspectives

One of the big problems with how people look at politics today is that they expect it to solve all their problems. If we look at the slate of candidates, particularly if we limit that slate to those who have some kind of reasonable chance of actually winning, we can easily see that there’s no one who matches up with our positions, quite possibly no one is close, and all too often there’s no one whose positions we find to be even in the realm of what we can reasonably ask for as acceptable. And so it’s really easy to look at that and think that there is nothing we can do. But if we do this, we are asking too much of the system.

Similarly, we often look at someone decrying a particular action or type of action and see people throwing their hands up and saying “But what are you going to do? You can’t possibly try to outlaw that in every situation.” But, even ignoring for the moment that in some of these cases you indeed can outlaw the thing, this is, largely, missing the point as well.

You see, in lots of situations, the political aspect of things is going to be silent. And due to the nature of the world, with so many people bent in so many different directions, and due to the sheer breadth of issues we are faced with in the world today, there’s going to be a lot of the political spectrum that is out of order. This is something which is simply, and sadly, true in the present, and true in the foreseeable future. Certainly, we should strive to change this, to get everyone into that perfect harmony, but this process is a long one, and a slow one, and in the here and now, we have much more pressing concerns.

The ethical aspect, on the other hand, is never silent. We are always to be seeking out the right thing to do; trying to do that it is which we ought to. If everyone only had this down pat, then the whole political thing would be one giant moot point. Of course, this is not the case either, but the ethical question remains the more fundamental issue.

But we can already see that the assumption that legality equals morality is wrong in all kinds of cases. Perhaps the simplest is lying. Lying is something which is immoral//unethical, rather clearly (at least in most cases – there’s going to be some arguments around the fringes, but those aren’t super super relevant for the point I am making here), but which is totally legal (again, there’s some cases where that isn’t true, but that doesn’t affect the larger point). Basically, there is a big difference between things that shouldn’t be done, and things that we as a society need to force to not be done. The former group is much much larger than the latter. And it again goes back to ethics. Sure, the thing might be clearly unethical, but that doesn’t make it ethically okay to force other people not to do it. If nothing else, this reduces the ability of the person to actually make the good choice. He or she isn’t really choosing to do the right thing, which is in and of itself a positive, if he or she is being forced to do it. Of course, there are some actions which are just so bad/harmful/what-have-you that we are justified in stopping other people from doing them.

But let’s look at the hypothetical scenario wherein, say, murder, is not illegal (not such a hypothetical in many instances….). So, even in these societies, first of all, the ethics of the matter compels everyone to not commit murder, regardless of its legality. And let’s say that a murder is committed in one of these places. Well, ok, most people are going to know and agree that murder is wrong. But their reaction to this murder should not be “It is outrageous that murder is legal!” I mean, don’t get me wrong, that is outrageous, and it should indeed be changed; murder ought to be illegal. But that is not the core of the issue here. The core of the issue, regardless of legality, is that there was someone who, given the circumstances they were in, decided to take the course of action to murder someone else. The outrage should be primarily at this, and not at the law. Now, in such a situation, we are called to try to stop this in a number of ways. The first and foremost way is to try to work on people’s hearts, change people’s hearts, so that they will know that murder is wrong, and then they won’t do that. This is the ultimate goal that we want to get to. At the same time we can be pragmatic and try to change the circumstances that people are in, so that even if they are not totally of right heart (and in fairness, none of us are perfect, though of course that isn’t a justification for the actions, only a reason to be understanding and compassionate towards the people), they won’t want to commit these actions. One of the tools here to change these circumstances is the law – make the thing illegal, enact penalties, etc. But this is not the only circumstantial tool we have. We need to combat poverty and helplessness and all these other factors which often propel people toward committing such acts (again, these are not justifications, but they do drive people towards this). So very often, one of the big solutions, and one which I believe should be able to get through some of the political stalemates we see, but even if not, which we can achieve privately, is to combat these sources of downtrodenness. Doing this will not only help with existing problems present throughout society in many cases, but it can help to reduce these incidents of what are objectively crimes.