Let me come clean about how shallow a person I am. I’ll put myself in harm’s way for a thrill, but not for a cause. Not even to save the life of a loved one? Well maybe, if the likelihood of serious harm is minuscule. But I figure that time heals all wounds, including guilt. So no.
Notwithstanding I appreciate living in Canada, I don’t love my country. And I certainly wouldn’t give my life for it. Likewise for any of the myriad issues I feel ‘strongly’ about. So though I take all kinds of things seriously, apparently not all that seriously. And what I want to explore in this entry is what it would mean to actually take something all that seriously, in precisely the way I don’t.
Some people – not me, by the way – think aborting a foetus is murder, in precisely the way a man beating his wife to death is murder. If I heard the man in the apartment next door beating his wife to death, that “a man’s home is his castle” would not prevent me from breaking down the door and trying to stop him, if need be by lethal force. So though I don’t personally think abortion is murder, I have nothing but respect for the pro-Lifer who, to put an end to what he regards as a ‘genocide’, breaks into an abortion clinic and mows down the staff. Apparently he, for one, is taking the matter all that seriously.
But what I don’t understand is the pro-Lifer who claims to take the matter all that seriously, and yet does nothing to put an end to what he regards as a genocide. I think what it shows is that he does not take the matter all that seriously.
It might be argued that he takes it seriously, but not enough to override how seriously he takes his own life and liberty. Fair enough. But what about if his own life and liberty are not at risk? Or at least no more at risk than the occasional passing another car when we shouldn’t, which we all do. Even then he won’t attack the clinic. Why? Because being opposed to killing he doesn’t want to sully his own hands? But hadn’t we decided that by his own lights he would not be sullying his hands if he was protecting the lives of hundreds of as-yet-unborn children? At the very least we can say that he doesn’t take the murder of hundreds of as-yet-unborn children seriously enough to do the one thing that would protect them from being murdered.
I’m using the abortion clinic massacre scenario here because it’s the most clear cut case of ex hypothesi justifiable homicide. What could be morally worse than murdering hundreds of children? And so what could be more morally defensible than preemptively killing the would-be murderer? Replace abortion with the Holocaust and we get whether it would have been morally permissible – some would say morally mandatory – to have preemptively assassinated Hitler.
Be that as it may or may not be, I want to move on to less obvious cases. Let’s not argue about whether this or that is or is not an injustice. Nor if it is, whether it’s an egregious one. Let’s just accept that Tom believes that his government’s abrogation of freedom of speech is an egregious injustice, and that this egregious injustice has proven incorrigible. That is, neither the courts nor even public opinion has been moved, or will ever be moved, to reverse what’s happening to this human right in the country. But suppose that, were some in-Tom’s-view-culpable functionary to be shot, and the reason for her having been shot made known, the fear of a similar fate would guarantee her replacement would think twice, and if need be thrice, about … And let’s further suppose that Tom has reason to believe he would not be identified as the ‘culprit’. Then, it seems to me, that Tom not killing the in-his-view-culpable functionary would show that he does not take freedom of speech all that seriously.
Now multiply this example by the hundreds – indeed thousands – of putative egregious injustices that could be put an end to by these means, coupled with the observation that these means are almost never deployed. What this shows, I submit, is that pretty much no one takes these egregious injustices all that seriously. As I confessed at the outset, I certainly don’t.
On the one hand, therein lies the pity. Think of all the injustices, not to mention social irritants, that could be eliminated over night by a single bullet, coupled of course with a viral report via social media. No more ICE violations of the Fourth Amendment. No more scam phone calls. What could possibly go wrong?
On the other hand, a lot. The dark side of vigilanteism is that it too readily allows us to grow impatient with the procedural guardrails that sustain a civil society. One academic going postal might save the institution from devolving back to the training of priests and commissars. But a pro-Lifer going postal is likely to trigger a civil war.
Or is it? We didn’t have a civil war prior to Roe v Wade. And so far at least, we haven’t had a civil war in the wake of its reversal. So what vigilanteisms will and will not trigger the disintegration of civil society is an empirical matter. And to a large extent a predictable one. Let’s test our intuitions on one more example.
Suppose I’m an abolitionist, which in fact I am. Not about slavery. Don’t be silly. But about capital punishment. If I took my abolitionism all that seriously – and I don’t, remember – I would announce – anonymously of course – that in the wake of the next execution ten fandomly chosen Texans will be killed. No doubt my bluff will be called. I call their call. Another execution, another ten Texans. There may be a third execution, but I doubt there’ll be a fourth. And for sure there won’t be a fifth.
For the rabid abolitionist this would be a good thing. But if he can get his way about capital punishment, why can’t someone else get his way about prayer in school, or the tax on cigarettes? So what you and I have done, in effect, is entered into an unwritten agreement with each other that this is not going to be the way we negotiate our druthers. Unless, as I say, our druthers are non-negotiable. And it’s this ‘unless …’ that motivates us, and policy-makers on our behalf, not to push each other too far.
Just for the Phil nerds among you, Thomas Hobbes called this desideratum the Law of Complaisance. Don’t piss your neighbour off so much that he goes postal on you. “A man may endeavour to peace, as far as he has hope of attaining it.” But, he cautioned, “when he cannot obtain it, that he may seek and use all helps and advantages of war.” Something to keep in mind when we notice a fellow citizen taking seriously what we all take seriously, but taking it just a tad too seriously for our liking.
Categories: Humour, Social and Political Philosophy
Paulosophical Vimplications 
Leave a comment