Justice

[Triple Zero]

Hm, I gotta think about that. It's kind of late over here for ethics, so that'll have to be tomorrow.

[Golden Applesauce]

I'm not sure what you mean by "wrong righted", zero. The essence of a wrong is an immoral action. You can't change the past so you can't possibly make the immoral action into a moral action. Nor will making a moral action somehow balance out the previous immoral action and make everything aaaaaaaaaaallllllllllllllll better. Not to mention that the usual stance of justice as a wrong righted is taking a generally thought to be immoral action and deeming it to be moral when used against a certain entity. This is not more than closure in the form of vengeance.

I mean, its perfectly fine if you want to believe in justice but it shouldn't be made out as something moral or /noble/. Just more monkeys shitting on each other.

Leibniz thought you could.  He explains the Problem of Evil by saying that while there may be evil, God figures out a way to turn it into good with interest.  Note that you still go to hell for your actions, even though they lead to the improvement of the world which is greater than it would be if you had just acted morally in the first place.

On a more serious note, I personally like the Liberation Theology theory of Justice (which they usually call Social Justice, I guess to distinguish it from Vengeance Justice?)  So if someone has their basic human rights and necessities taken, you obviously can't go back in time and prevent that from happening.  But you can still attempt to return human rights and necessities now, and work to prevent similar wrongs from happening again.  So, "righting wrongs" not in the sense of "doing wrong to the wrong-doer" but "doing right to the wronged."

[Kai]

I'm not sure what you mean by "wrong righted", zero. The essence of a wrong is an immoral action. You can't change the past so you can't possibly make the immoral action into a moral action. Nor will making a moral action somehow balance out the previous immoral action and make everything aaaaaaaaaaallllllllllllllll better. Not to mention that the usual stance of justice as a wrong righted is taking a generally thought to be immoral action and deeming it to be moral when used against a certain entity. This is not more than closure in the form of vengeance.

I mean, its perfectly fine if you want to believe in justice but it shouldn't be made out as something moral or /noble/. Just more monkeys shitting on each other.

Leibniz thought you could.  He explains the Problem of Evil by saying that while there may be evil, God figures out a way to turn it into good with interest.  Note that you still go to hell for your actions, even though they lead to the improvement of the world which is greater than it would be if you had just acted morally in the first place.

On a more serious note, I personally like the Liberation Theology theory of Justice (which they usually call Social Justice, I guess to distinguish it from Vengeance Justice?)  So if someone has their basic human rights and necessities taken, you obviously can't go back in time and prevent that from happening.  But you can still attempt to return human rights and necessities now, and work to prevent similar wrongs from happening again.  So, "righting wrongs" not in the sense of "doing wrong to the wrong-doer" but "doing right to the wronged."

^Awesome answer.

[The Wizard]

But you can still attempt to return human rights and necessities now, and work to prevent similar wrongs from happening again.  So, "righting wrongs" not in the sense of "doing wrong to the wrong-doer" but "doing right to the wronged."

Supremely well put.

[Cain]

Personally I'd prefer to do both, unless the situation was so that I only had one choice, in which case I'd likely default to righting the wrong.

I guess I'm going to hell, then.

[Cain]

In case the gambling, drinking, sex before marriage, promotion of heresy, disbelief, not keeping the Sabbath sacred, not honouring my parents, eating shellfish, wearing clothes of mixed fibers, going near pregnant women, eating pork, lying, consorting with false prophets, disobedience to constituted lawful authority, drug use, revenge, lust, insolence, malice, theft....and so on and so forth haven't already put me there.

[Cain]

I'm not sure what you mean by "wrong righted", zero. The essence of a wrong is an immoral action. You can't change the past so you can't possibly make the immoral action into a moral action. Nor will making a moral action somehow balance out the previous immoral action and make everything aaaaaaaaaaallllllllllllllll better. Not to mention that the usual stance of justice as a wrong righted is taking a generally thought to be immoral action and deeming it to be moral when used against a certain entity. This is not more than closure in the form of vengeance.

I mean, its perfectly fine if you want to believe in justice but it shouldn't be made out as something moral or /noble/. Just more monkeys shitting on each other.

Leibniz thought you could.  He explains the Problem of Evil by saying that while there may be evil, God figures out a way to turn it into good with interest.  Note that you still go to hell for your actions, even though they lead to the improvement of the world which is greater than it would be if you had just acted morally in the first place.

That sounds like a more extreme formulation of the Doctrine of Double Effect:

The doctrine (or principle) of double effect is often invoked to explain the permissibility of an action that causes a serious harm, such as the death of a human being, as a side effect of promoting some good end. It is claimed that sometimes it is permissible to cause such a harm as a side effect (or "double effect") of bringing about a good result even though it would not be permissible to cause such a harm as a means to bringing about the same good end. This reasoning is summarized with the claim that sometimes it is permissible to bring about as a merely foreseen side effect a harmful event that it would be impermissible to bring about intentionally.

[Kai]

Some people are really twisted.  :/

[typ3]

I'm a little out of it from my accidental 20/6 sleep schedule I've been following this week (and it's bedtime according), so forgive me if I just sound stupid.

This realization came upon only a couple minutes ago after I had a run in with one of my friends. Now this friend is one of the folks at my school who gets picked on continually. It's gone on as long as I've known him. I've always backed him up, always made sure that it never got physical, but not letting him rely on me for rescue. So, I'm just walking around and I see this kid, Mikey. Mikey is another friend of mine, and he gets it even worse than my first friend. He's overweight, intelligent, and quiet, the small town triumvirate of victimization. And as usual, I find Mikey being followed by some asshole, who's getting his hard on by messing with the poor kid. And lo and behold it's my first friend, Jake. Jake who's been a victim his entire life, is turning around and doing to this other kid.

I lost it. I've been betrayed by friends, tricked by people who claimed to like me, all kinds of shit, but nothing has ever infuriated me like watching Jake torment poor Mikey. My hands shook, my face went red, and I tear Jake a new one. I scare the living shit out of him. He goes white and when I finally let the little bastard go, he runs.

Well, nobody's perfect... so let's throw this to his point of view. It'd be safe to assume he has at least a bit of frustration towards humanity because of all of this, and 'lo and behold your friend becomes a vent of his frustration because, you know, nobody's perfect. Now he's a bully for the same reason as any bully -- but a neophyte at the whole experience, unable to reflect at his loss of ethical control, unlike the schoolyard bully whom has accepted his own ways. What he's doing isn't right, no duh, but I'd bet that wrist slap sure woke him up.

People have to be selfish to an extent to take care of themselves, and that's why people will always (some less often than others yet still everyone) slip up to some injustice. No reason to lose faith in it. Some people are a lost cause, but fuck 'em. Teach justice to those that will listen. At times, a punch in the offender's face may be your only audio.

Now, I understand. Justice is gone. The Lady is curled up in a dark corner, crying out of sightless eyes. She bleeds from her palms, and she screams out at the world "What have you done?". We don't here her though. We're too busy drowning ourselves in pools of our own vomit and excrement, our only pleasure being the mindless cruelties we inflict on each other. Sure, we have courts and anti-bullying seminars and all the garbage that authority throws at us. But it's all just a blindfold, one making us as blind as Lady Justice.

The Lady Justice, that blindfolded bitch. She sold her scales to bureaucrats to count our their bribes. She gave her sword to the abusers so that they wouldn't hurt her. And she gave us her blindfold so we couldn't see what she had done.

The victim becoming the abuser is just a catalyst for me. It led me to an epiphany. We can't rely on Lady Justice to save us, or to even point us in the right direction. She's blind for Christ's sake! No. Justice is a dead memory. But there's Vengeance. It's not pretty and it's never fair, but at least it does something. When the greater good has sold its soul, we have to turn to the lesser evil.

Justice is gone. Time for Vengeance.

This further pushes the point I'm trying to make. It's selfish to think anybody is tallying what you do that's good or bad, like there's a karma system tallying up your actions in everybody's mind. People don't care what you do, only who you are. Also, this street justice has nothing to do with any icons of justice or injustice; on the larger scale, there will never be a right way since good and bad are individually subjective. And power will always corrupt: the massive incentives and demons pulling which way within that power have no context within your situation of morality. Besides, as a society, we have come a long, long way. We shit bricks over war and corrupt enforcers and the like, but in the past genocide, religious war, violent superstition, slavery, and violence in general was much more rampant than it is now. In fact, I'd say justice is doing great.

Don't let this event limit your will towards justice to only vengeance. Justice is more often fixed in negotiation than vengeance. And besides, if you set out to become some Dark Knight or whatever, you will inevitably just become an embodiment of injustice to someone else.

[The Wizard]

Don't let this event limit your will towards justice to only vengeance. Justice is more often fixed in negotiation than vengeance. And besides, if you set out to become some Dark Knight or whatever, you will inevitably just become an embodiment of injustice to someone else.

I've always wanted to be a super-hero...ha.