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PaperclipPerfector  8d ago (text post)   34310 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of February 3, 2025

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I disagree strongly that what you describe is sadism: what you describe is the natural desire for justice. Calling that sadism is a trick the left uses to attack the idea of punishment as a whole. C. S. Lewis wrote about this in his essay "Delilnquents in the Snow": though he was describing 1950s Britian what he wrote applies to the modern U.S.A. just as well.

According to the classical political theory of this country we surrendered our right of self-protection to the State on condition that the State would protect us. Roughly, you promised not to stab your daughter's murderer on the understanding that the State would catch him and hang him. Of course this was never true as a historical account of the genesis of the State. The power of the group over the individual is by nature unlimited and the individual submits because he has to. The State, under favourable conditions (they have ceased), by defining that power, limits it and gives the individual a little freedom.

But the classical theory morally grounds our obligation to civil obedience; explains why it is right (as well as unavoidable) to pay taxes, why it is wrong (as well as dangerous) to stab your daughter's murderer. At present the very uncomfortable position is this: the State protects us less because it is unwilling to protect us against criminals at home and manifestly grows less and less able to protect us against foreign enemies. At the same time it demands from us more and more. We seldom had fewer rights and liberties nor more burdens: and we get less security in return. While our obligations increase their moral ground is taken away.

And the question that torments me is how long flesh and blood will continue to endure it. There was even, not so long ago, a question whether they ought to. No one, I hope, thinks Dr Johnson a barbarian. Yet he maintained that if, under a peculiarity of Scottish law, the murderer of a man's father escapes, the man might reasonably say, 'I am amongst barbarians, who . . . refuse to do justice ... I am therefore in a state of nature ... I will stab the murderer of my father.'

Much more obviously, on these principles, when the State ceases to protect me from hooligans I might reasonably, if I could, catch and trash them myself. When the State cannot or will not protect, 'nature' is come again and the right of self-protection reverts to the individual. But of course if I could and did I should be prosecuted. The Elderly Lady and her kind who are so merciful to theft would have no mercy on me; and I should be pilloried in the gutter Press as a 'sadist' by journalists who neither know nor care what that word, or any word, means.

"Justice" often just means "revenge". Nietzsche wrote some great takes on this, I can dig them up if you want, from a psychological perspective his takes were really good as far as I remember, and I could probably defend them.

For now, though, I want to say that I do see the logic in murdering the murderer of your father if the system fails you. But this would be a personal revenge. Those that I find the least justifiable are those who take "revenge" on others behalf - "cancel culture" is one manifestation of this, but there's more, and they're all based in aspects of mob culture/herd morality/social dynamics which are closely tied to malice and which can be prevented by the slightest bit of wisdom and self-understanding. It's a simply form of stupidity, holy simplicity if you will. I know that the left are not religious, but they're bigger moralizers than those on the right, and their values come from the bible even if they do not realize it. Or at Nietzsche said:

"We see: an authority speaks - who speaks? - One may forgive human pride if it sought to make this authority as high as possible in order to feel as little humiliated as possible under it. Therefore - God speaks! One needed God as an unconditional sanction, with no court of appeal, as a "categorical imperator" -: or, if one believed in the authority of reason, one needed a metaphysic of unity, by virtue of which this was logical. Now suppose that belief in God has vanished: the question presents itself anew: "who speaks?"- My answer, taken not from metaphysics but from animal physiology: the herd instinct speaks. It wants to be master: hence its "thou shalt!"- it will allow value to the individual only from the point of view of the whole, for the sake of the whole, it hates those who detach themselves-it turns the hatred of all individuals against them"

And this would explain why the death of god has not lead to the death of morality to the extent that one would expect. The morality was grounded more in instincts than it was grounded in religion. Religion merely served to legitimize it

Textbook descriptions of the reasons for criminal punishment are deterrence (general and specific), incapacitation, rehabilitation, and retribution. That last is pretty similar to revenge, and it bothers a lot of people who feel themselves to be somehow above that sort of thing to include it. But it's important. Without it, you are addressing the needs of some abstract "society" but you are not addressing the needs of the person actually victimized.

I do agree with your take if we stress "The person actually victimized". I dislike it when people are offended on other people's behalf. Some take it further, and look for signs of flaws in others, scanning them for traits that they can "expose" to the world, as if they were "moral police". The Nietzsche quote I'd choose here is "And some who cannot see the high in people call it virtue that they see the low all too near, thus they call their evil eye virtue" In either case, I consider revenge to be rather imperfect. Even if you had a society in which one could always get the perfect amount of revenge, I'd still not want to be there if the crime rate was high. Rather live in a country with little crime. Prevention is simply better. I can only speak for myself though - maybe there's people who enjoy revenge so much that it makes up for the events for which they take revenge.

I can only speak for myself though - maybe there's people who enjoy revenge so much that it makes up for the events for which they take revenge.

What is best in life?

Has a C. S. Lewis quote for that.

✔

The desire for justice is often sadistic.

It’s a pretty common societal failure mode.

What do you mean when you say “sadistic”? The textbook definition would be something like “sexual gratification gained from inflicting pain to others”. Do you mean that the desire for justice, which seems to be a human universal (even monkeys seem to desire justice) is often a source of sexual gratification? I doubt that’s what you meant, since that clearly isn’t the case. I suspect that by “sadistic” you meant “evil”, and that you believe desiring justice is usually an evil desire. I would disagree strongly with that. Or perhaps you only meant that people often are pleased when justice is served; yet, why shouldn’t they be?

I've never known sadistic to have a definitionally sexual component. I always understood it to mean taking pleasure from seeing others be harmed, somewhat similar to schadenfreude but more intense.

So what I mean is that the desire for justice often has a component where people want to see the perpetrator be harmed as retribution, sometimes severely.

Like, beheading thousands of people during the French revolution, that was justice steeped in sadism.

Sadism by definition has a sexual component. People use is a bit broadly these days, but that's what the word means.

And of course justice has a component where people want to see the guilty harmed in proportion to their crimes. Calling that sadism makes the word meaningless. It is good and right to be pleased when justice is done, and displeased when justice is not done.

I would disagree that the Great Terror during the French revolution was justice steeped in sadism because it was not justice at all. People were killed who committed no crime and deserved no punishment. Justice is people getting what they deserve, and nobody deserves to have their head lopped off because they disagree with you politically.

Well, different people disagree on what is justice and what isn't.

Another example is "mob justice", or any form of "cruel and unusual" punishment.

It's something that humans often do, that's all I wanted to say.

I think the healthy, measured response to what’s been done to the modal US citizen in the last eight years or so is nothing short of white hot, borderline murderous rage.

Sometimes that’s truly the appropriate response. Many people and institutions have spent incredible amounts of money, time and energy gaslighting people into not believing this.

I was fooled for a very short amount of time, but I know in my heart what’s right.

What’s been done to the modal citizen exactly?

I’m often just deeply surprised at what feels like absolutely nothing to me to other people they seem to take as some existential life defining offense.

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