Few, if any, things in life are binary.
Let us take an act, for now we will forget the issue of whether the act is illegal or not, right or wrong or not, and concentrate just on how it would make us feel, if that act were done to us.
There are two aspects to it;
- Do I have the urge, eg does it profit me somehow, or do I have no urge.
- Do I have the opportunity.
Item 1 can actually be subdivided, to whit;
- Do I have the urge?
- Is it legal?
- Is it, by my compass, immoral?
- Do I have the opportunity?
Let’s say the act is to take a 20 out of your wallet, but, it doesn’t really matter at this stage.
The *one* thing that is binary is;
- Do I do it?
- Do I not do it?
To a large extent, all that matters to you is do I do it, if I do not do it, the WHY I do not do it doesn’t really have a great deal of bearing upon you.
The lawmakers and enforcers would take the opinion that (from the red text) not only are there almost no cases where 1.1 / 1.a does not play a part, however small, in preventing me from doing it, that part, however small, is never insignificant, even if for no other reason than pour encourager les autres…
To make this so, YOUR role in the question (in the blue text) is always insignificant, no matter the temptation or provocation MUST be discounted.
Generally speaking I make a pretty good neighbour, I won’t steal from you, attack you, or some such, is this because the law says I must act so, or because of my own internal moral compass?
The answer is my internal compass, when I was at school I stole something, from a guy who had just stolen something from me, it was called “rough justice”, I admitted it and the head said he had no option but to sack me, though he shook my hand and wished me well, the boy I stole from denied all knowledge of anything except my theft from him, so he was not sacked, and went on to become a figure of note in The City.
So, essentially, we have the difference between the law, and the moral compass, the law will always make an act illegal, no matter what the circumstances, which is what happened with Jeremy Forrest, the teacher jailed for five years.
The moral compass is however subject to the ambient environment, and as such may at times be just, where the law is manifestly unjust and wrong.
Despite being falsely accused of rape by the psycho skank ho ex as part of a child custody battle, not being a rapist, I dunno what makes em tick, is it the power, or the violence or what, I literally have no idea, and despite fucking loads of wimminz with rape fantasies, it is not something that *does* anything for me sexually.
The law, in this case, does not protect a single wimminz anywhere on the planet from me.
Long before it could ever be a factor, my own moral compass shit-canned the whole idea.
It can be argued, since many actual crimes are committed every day, that the “law as deterrent” simply doesn’t work, those who have no moral compunction against mugging pensioners certainly aren’t deterred by the law, in fact the only instances where the deterrent of the law works is in low level stuff, like parking tickets, driving insured, and driving sober, but even there there are those for whom it does not work.
I have never ever ever heard of a murderer (and yes, I have known a few) who saw the law as a deterrent, just another obstacle to be overcome, like the problem of disposing of the body.
So, we have a situation where, if you exclude the low level stuff, for which the law is nowadays arguably a sledgehammer to crack a nut, it basically does not achieve any of its stated goals, and 99% of the civility in society is down to nothing more than individuals with their own moral compasses.
The problem here is moral compasses are firmly rooted in the flux of the ambient environment, when society breaks down, suddenly it is not just your wallet that I might take, you canned goods and your life might be just as appealing.
Unfortunately, in this scenario, the law has ceased to exist.
So, logically, we have a situation where the law cannot exist in a place where the vast majority of the population does not enjoy stability in the ambient environment, thus giving rise to the better aspects of human nature, and allowing the moral compass to function.
Historically we can look at things like the texas ranger and the travelling magister / village headman, they only dealt with the exceptional transgressors, much of human activity did not fall under the auspices of the law.
If we look at modern western society, which historically speaking are right up there on the edge of dysfunction and collapse, we find unprecedented levels of the total manpower and output of said societies devoted to “the law”
Again, in these societies, we see the same things over and over and over, that the law has become so overpowering and far reaching and complex, that it has *dramatically* reduced the scope of the moral compass left to the average man in the street.
Not only can I not steal you wallet, I can’t tell the truth about you because you were born with a vagina, or black, or disabled, and I must give preference to you in all things, and in fact YOU are the one who is not merely entitled to MY wallet, you are entitled to my future earnings for the next 30 years, with no proof of any kind required that said monies go anywhere even remotely near the auspicies under which they were taken from me, eg child care.
It costs around £10 a week to feed a large dog, and it costs about the same to raise a child, everything else is excess.
In my own FRA case the state spent, thanks to legal aid for the skank ho and all the court hangers on and childcare specialists and shrinks and cops and so on, well in excess of a quarter of a million quid, coming to an answer that everyone knew they would get to from the outset, mummy is god.
Karl Marx was WRONG, you don’t destroy the family and alienate men or anything else to destroy a society.
You just make the law so powerful it smothers the moral compass of everyone in society.
Historically, this has never ended well.