'Let's be bad guys.' My Son to me: 'Dad, they're BAD guys?' by chrisisall

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'Let's be bad guys.' My Son to me: 'Dad, they're BAD guys?'

POSTED BY: CHRISISALL
UPDATED: Monday, March 30, 2009 11:14
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Monday, March 23, 2009 11:17 AM

It's all good Bytemite. Nicely stated and fair. Quite how we all got around to this I don't know but it's been interesting.

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Monday, March 23, 2009 11:47 AM

CHRISISALL

Quote:
Originally posted by Cybersnark:

The universe needs chaos. It's chaos that allows evolution and change.

Didn't Gary Oldman say that in Fifth Element?

The laughing Chrisisall

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Monday, March 23, 2009 12:11 PM

AGENTROUKA

Quote:
Originally posted by TheSomnambulist:

- And these laws that existed before are...? Based upon which writings? I'm only asking because I'm ignorant of that of which you speak so matter of fact. I was under the impression that the religious belief behind most societies of the ancient world dictated the laws that it's society would endure and strive to uphold - wether it was the Phoenicians, Egyptians or whomever, not the other way around. But hey, I could be wrong - I have been on so many occasions before.

Legal systems not based on writing were pretty common among German tribes, for example, so written evidence can hardly be the measure of existence for ancient law. The Code of Hammurabi is an actual early legal text, though, from around 1800 B.C.

And I was specifically talking about the ten commandments you singled out before, not a separation of law and religion. Obviously there was no strict separation of spirituality and other aspects of life in early societies, but that doesn't mean that they only considered killing wrong because their religious theories declared it, but that spiritual experience and social insight went together. Murder being unpleasant and thus generally undesirable would have been a social insight in the very earliest of human societies and religion, being a way of making sense of the world, would incorporate that. Then religious study in turn influences social insight by putting it into a certain context.

Laws being developed over time within a society, based on a variety of factors.. just seems to make more sense to me than placing it all in the hand of religion. Where would religions get the idea for such laws if not based on social insight?

ETA: Once again Bytemite said it much better and more concisely than I did. Why do I even bother?

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Monday, March 23, 2009 12:24 PM

BYTEMITE

You're better with the details, AR, and you covered the idea of universal human sensibility influencing law and then religious law much better than I did.

Let's see. Going by specific biblical examples... There's a law in the bible that believers shouldn't yet pork, as it is an unclean meat, unholy in some way.

This was actually an early public service announcement about health and hygiene. People observed that unless treated properly, pork meat could make people sick. Not understanding why this was the case, they made a religious law against the consumption of pork to protect the public.

I also think that a lot of the religious laws regarding women and their cycles were intended to aide couples in producing offspring and increasing fertility. And, though I have much, much less evidence for this, I suspect the laws against homosexuality were ALSO made based on viable offspring/fertility reasons.

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Monday, March 23, 2009 1:20 PM

MSA

I'd go with " sometimes good people make bad decisions because they didn't think through all the choices. Everyone makes mistakes. It's important to realize when you make mistakes and try to make up for it ( show him the Train Job where Mal makes a mistake by robbing Alliance and then fixes it... I'd cut it before he kicks Crow through the engine though)

To love someone is to see a miracle invisible to others.
--Francois Mauriac
It's fuzzy-minded liberal thinking like that that gets you eaten.

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Monday, March 23, 2009 10:29 PM

PEACEKEEPER

Keeping order in every verse

Guys, at the end of the day good people are taught the difference between right and wrong by good parents and a good social environment. Providing your kids get a basic grounding from you in everyday life, thwey will be mature enough to realise that the entertainment industry doesnt need analysing in such great detail. They will already know the parameters as a matter of course. If your children are going to be socialised purely on the basis of film and tv, then youve got a problem.But im sure youve already taught them the basics before that.I would stop worrying about it and just carry on screening what they watch. Films have ratings that enable you to pick and choose carefully. Once that choice has been made, watch, enjoy and dont worry about it so much.

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Thursday, March 26, 2009 11:42 AM

IMNOTHERE

Quote:
Originally posted by Bytemite:
And I also take the fact as circumstancial evidence that pretty much all religions have some version of some very similar laws (thou shalt not kill, thou shalt not steal in the very least).

I'd put most of that down to "natural selection" of religions: the religions which survive will be the ones who's rules foster long-term stable societies. Say what you like about the major modern religions, they are associated with civilizations which have endured.

Any religion which tells its followers "thou shalt eateth deeply of thy neighbor's brains" or "stealeth all that ist not nailed down, and if it ist nailed down setteth it alight" probably isn't going to survive long enough to write any long bibles. They're the ones from those mysterious uninhabited islands with the big golden altar and all the bones, or the smoldering remains of a ranch somewhere in the Midwest...

Sadly, this religious Darwinism doesn't seem to stop civilisations indulging in sophistry over precisely whom thou shalt not kill or what thou shalt not steal, especially if the "whom" or the "what" belongs to someone else's civilisation...

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Thursday, March 26, 2009 11:53 AM

BYTEMITE

It's a good point: religion CAN be a vehicle for moral law and bring moral law to a population, and what you suggest does play a role in its survival. I would add that a positive view on procreation and sex also would be important, except we have one very major modern example that suggests it isn't as important as we all would think.

Anyway, my argument is more about whether religion is the original source of law, or if law had to come first.

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Thursday, March 26, 2009 11:56 AM

CHRISISALL

Law came first.
Ugg has bone, Ugg makes rulz!

The laughing Chrisisall

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Thursday, March 26, 2009 2:01 PM

IMNOTHERE

Quote:
Originally posted by Bytemite:
I would add that a positive view on procreation and sex also would be important, except we have one very major modern example that suggests it isn't as important as we all would think.

Perhaps that just shows that its easier to stop people robbing and murdering (which nobody particularly wants to happen to them) than it is to stop them procreating (which many people of both genders seem to aspire to)...

Quote:

Anyway, my argument is more about whether religion is the original source of law, or if law had to come first.

Is there a difference? We can try and rationalise law in terms of its effectiveness in maintaining civilization, but look out of the window and you'll find the main pillar supporting the law is the great army of people who think that you should follow the law as an act of "faith" because It Is The Law.

That's certainly what all the people emailing the BBC this morning supporting the use of anti-terror surveillance powers (that we need to stop the Bad Hats nuking our cities) to prosecute littering and dog fouling seemed to think.

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Thursday, March 26, 2009 2:19 PM

BYTEMITE

Following the law as an act of "faith" in it is different from religion. A religion must involve explanations about why things are the way they are. A law just tells people what to do. Laws are part of religion, but law is not a religion.

Besides, there are reasons to follow some laws apart from faith.

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Saturday, March 28, 2009 4:02 AM

IMNOTHERE

Quote:
Originally posted by Bytemite:
A religion must involve explanations about why things are the way they are. A law just tells people what to do.

Until you ask (to put it in a non-denominational way) what the turtle is standing on*. Then most religions will quickly resort to telling you what to do (i.e. stop asking questions).

Quote:
Besides, there are reasons to follow some laws apart from faith.

But is there any compulsion or enforcement without some sort of faith? You can construct a rational "enlightened self-interest" justification as to why it is, on the whole, better not to (say) steal, but to make it an absolute law rather than a guideline needs something extra.

The general consensus elswhere on this thread (with which I don't disagree) seems to be that our Big Damn Heroes are sometimes in the wrong, even though we still love them.

If you stole Bernard Madoff's wallet and distributed the contents among his creditors, I don't think there would be any shortage of jurors ready to convict you because stealing is wrong. No rational, evidenced argument that, in the current climate, a spot of light Robin Hood-ing would do wonders for public morale without necessarily destroying society would trump the "its the law" argument.

Even as an atheist, you can't prove every assumption that underpins your life from first principles - some things you have to take on faith. What Faith-with-a-capital-F provides - whether it is in a religion, a particular body of laws, a political ideology - is a single, pre-packaged, not-to-be-sold-separately set of beliefs.

Me, I prefer the a-la-carte approach.

(* Yeah, yeah, I know, its a

turtle - it swims - but what in?)

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Saturday, March 28, 2009 7:22 AM

BYTEMITE

Quote:
Originally posted by ImNotHere:

Until you ask (to put it in a non-denominational way) what the turtle is standing on*. Then most religions will quickly resort to telling you what to do (i.e. stop asking questions).

Demands and outcry raised from defensiveness are also different from a law.

If you were to start talking about the Pope's stance on birth control, then I would agree with you that is a law developed from religion. I've never said that those DON'T exist.

Quote:
But is there any compulsion or enforcement without some sort of faith? You can construct a rational "enlightened self-interest" justification as to why it is, on the whole, better not to (say) steal, but to make it an absolute law rather than a guideline needs something extra.

For the particular laws I'm talking about, those against murder and those against stealing, I'd argue that yes, in most people there is a compulsion of enforcement. Most humans don't like to see other humans suffering, or like to see another person injured or dead. When one person kills another, the consequences of their actions are right there before them, and most people are negatively affected, especially if the death was accidental, but sometimes even when it was not. If a person were to see consequences of their theft, as our BDH's do in the train job, often they would feel remorse, and sometimes they might return the stolen goods.

The main obstacle in the way of this natural enforcement is justification. The murderer telling himself his victim deserves it. The thief telling himself he needs something more, and that his victims won't miss it. The problem with justification is that it is an attempt to rationalize what others would view as wrong or a mistake. I hold that any event in which justification is utilized is evidence that the justified event was or would be a mistake or wrong. It hasn't steered me awry yet.

Quote:
The general consensus elswhere on this thread (with which I don't disagree) seems to be that our Big Damn Heroes are sometimes in the wrong, even though we still love them.

If you stole Bernard Madoff's wallet and distributed the contents among his creditors, I don't think there would be any shortage of jurors ready to convict you because stealing is wrong. No rational, evidenced argument that, in the current climate, a spot of light Robin Hood-ing would do wonders for public morale without necessarily destroying society would trump the "its the law" argument.

But that's just the thing. Our BDH's ARE wrong, even if they try to make amends for what they've done, as in the train job. That they feel they have to make amends is evidence that they think they've done something immoral. The act of making amends doesn't make their original action right.

The Robin Hood analogy doesn't always apply, and often rarely applies to them. Furthermore, I think that the Robin Hood stories are just that. In real life, it never turns out that you can steal from the Sheriff of Nottingham and the regent of Yorkshire without ultimately negatively effecting the lower class under their jurisdiction. The lower class will be punished for accepting the wealth that Robin Hood tries to distribute to them, sometimes indiscriminantly if the tyrants were unable to determine who actually had their money.

Since Bernard Madoff is a thief, and reviled by the public, I'm relatively reassured that he will be punished without any need to resort to vigilantism. And I also think the money will be redistributed or, if the money is all gone, reimbursed to the creditors without the intervention of the public... And in this climate, taking more money from the public pool to give to those creditors, well, who suffers there? On the other hand, his clients and creditors tend to be important parts of or unstable economy, so NOT giving them money has consequences as well. All in all, it's a lose-lose situation.

Quote:
Even as an atheist, you can't prove every assumption that underpins your life from first principles - some things you have to take on faith. What Faith-with-a-capital-F provides - whether it is in a religion, a particular body of laws, a political ideology - is a single, pre-packaged, not-to-be-sold-separately set of beliefs.

Why?

I'm willing to concede that without religion or even faith, there are some people who won't conform to important civil laws. For that reason, religion, ideology, or faith in law can be an important vessel for some laws.

But accepting law based on faith seems to me like a very large danger of never questioning the validity of some laws.

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Saturday, March 28, 2009 10:32 AM

IMNOTHERE

Quote:
Originally posted by Bytemite:
But accepting law based on faith seems to me like a very large danger of never questioning the validity of some laws.

I think you've got my point turned around.

My impression is that the vast majority of "law abiding" people accept "the law" as an act of faith, and rarely question it (unless they've broken it and need a way out).

I'd regard questioning laws as good - up to a point - but you won't find much certainty that way, and people seem to like certainty, which is why religious, political and legal belief systems are so popular.

But even if you question the law "up to a point", deciding where that point lies will be a personal "leap of faith" unless you propose a highly unethical series of experiments to establish empirically (e.g.) exactly how many guilty men can acceptably be let free to avoid sending an innocent man to jail.

Would a touch of "Robin Hood" or other vigilante justice be the start of a slippery slope to anarchy, or would a bit more rough, poetic justice actually improve the stability of society? The truth is, I don't know, you don't know and our politicians don't know - so we accept the "slippery slope" argument on faith.

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Saturday, March 28, 2009 12:10 PM

BYTEMITE

I prefer to look at the application of law on a case by case basis. And most of the examples I hear of regarding vigilante style murder or theft, I can think of some unintended impact down the line that reaffirms that killing and stealing are wrong.

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Sunday, March 29, 2009 1:59 AM

IMNOTHERE

Quote:
Originally posted by Bytemite:
I prefer to look at the application of law on a case by case basis. And most of the examples I hear of regarding vigilante style murder or theft, I can think of some unintended impact down the line that reaffirms that killing and stealing are wrong.

Fine. That's the ideal way to do it - case by case, not entirely based on some simplified abstract principle of "right and wrong".

Except, if you're really going to do it rationally, it has to be a cost/benefit analysis which gives equal weight to any positive consequences (e.g. the vigilante may have taken a dangerous and hard-to-convict person off the streets or, by taking matters into their own hand, embarrassed some complacent authority into action). Now, maybe it is rare for those factors to outweigh the harm - but if you summarily ignore any possible positives and only tally the negatives (or, as is common at this stage, resort to dogma such as "two wrongs don't make a right", "the end doesn't justify the means" or "who watches the Watchmen

(tm)") then you're back to treating laws as articles of faith.

Question is, is society ready for that sort of reflection, or would the result be some sort of horrible by-the-numbers points system which totally lost sight of "justice".

Mind you, we're making it difficult by concentrating on the biggies like "thou shalt not kill" or "thou shalt not steal" which have a pretty strong consensus behind them.

More to the point would be (dragging this back to Firefly) whether Mal is right or wrong not to have his ship's papers up to date, or transporting wobbly-headed geisha dolls without paying the duties? After all, one of the failings of the Alliance is that the outer worlds get all the disadvantages of taxation and bureaucracy without seeing any of the promised benefits, and the black market could be all that is keeping the region from collapse.

On the other hand, ISTR something in the bible about rendering unto Cesar what is Cesars...?

Incidentally, in the book Queen of Angels by Greg Bear (spoiler shields in case you ever plan to read it):

Select to view spoiler:

...throughout the story, the first Artificial Intelligence is trying and failing to be "born" by passing the final test which will show it to be truly self-aware. Much philosophy is expended trying to solve this, but at the end what does the trick is news of a terrible injustice suffered by the AI's "sister".

Interesting idea - but then current thinking seems to be that the evolutionary pressure behind intelligence was social success within a tribe, and all that stuff about using tools and painting on walls was just an unintended consequence...

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Sunday, March 29, 2009 6:43 AM

BYTEMITE

Quote:
Originally posted by ImNotHere:
Except, if you're really going to do it rationally, it has to be a cost/benefit analysis which gives equal weight to any positive consequences (e.g. the vigilante may have taken a dangerous and hard-to-convict person off the streets or, by taking matters into their own hand, embarrassed some complacent authority into action). Now, maybe it is rare for those factors to outweigh the harm - but if you summarily ignore any possible positives and only tally the negatives (or, as is common at this stage, resort to dogma such as "two wrongs don't make a right", "the end doesn't justify the means" or "who watches the Watchmen (tm)") then you're back to treating laws as articles of faith.

True enough. It's mostly the killing factor in that equation I'm not so found of; I don't even support capital punishment when our legal system does it. Because of my perspective, cases where capital punishment might be appropriate are hard for me to determine. I kind of feel like everyone has some intrinsic value, and I don't like seeing families bereft, even if it's over a criminal.

Capital Punishment really doesn't seem to deter those individuals who might actually warrant it, and the system seems to be set up so prosecutors either manage to get a plea bargain, or get all the glory for going for the harshest sentence possible. I may not know the solution, but it seems to me there has to be one somewhere between imprisoning someone for the rest of their life with all the taxdollars that go into it, and our society killing people and undermining itself with hypocrisy. It suggests to me that our government and society has a frightening lack of respect for life.

Nor do I support cases of government theft; confiscation, using legal loopholes to push people off their property... It's a sign of corruption, a sign the system isn't working for the people anymore.

Quote:
More to the point would be (dragging this back to Firefly) whether Mal is right or wrong not to have his ship's papers up to date, or transporting wobbly-headed geisha dolls without paying the duties? After all, one of the failings of the Alliance is that the outer worlds get all the disadvantages of taxation and bureaucracy without seeing any of the promised benefits, and the black market could be all that is keeping the region from collapse.

Now we get to the point where I'll admit even my own logic is fuzzy. I admit that the consequences of theft (which smuggling kind of falls under if you squint, it's sort of stealing from the government) are a lot more complicated and harder to pinpoint than murder. And the argument I've been making is more successfully applied to cases when the criminal and the victim are of similar socio-economic status.

Because they're out on the Rim, when they steal, Mal and crew tend to be stealing from people without a lot of money. Even when they're stealing from the Alliance, like Niska tells them in the train job, it's often not the whole story.

But it can definitely be different when the victim is much higher on the food chain.

Like when the crew steals from the hospital on Ariel. Restocked every HOUR? Seriously? That IS a case of them never really noticing the medicine is missing, hopefully none of their patients need any in that hour.

Or when they take the Lassiter from Haymer, who apparently acquired it, and his vast wealth, in an unethical fashion during the war.

To kind of ease our consciences, Joss and his team of writers often go out of their way to have the crew takes jobs stealing from more shady types of people, like possibly that security business on Lilac, or to have them doing illegal salvage. Even I'll say that the Alliance laws against salvage have got to be the most bureaucratic, un-humanitarian bit of garbage to ever come out of parliament. The government would seem to just let very much needed supplies like food sit out in space when they don't have the resources to recover it. Not only is it wasteful to not allow independent groups to retrieve the supplies to get them circulating again, it's callous.

There are ways to make bad seem not quite so bad. But before I could actually say that the crew is doing the right thing in those cases, I'd want to examine unintended consequences closer. And unfortunately, we don't have further information on what those consequences could be.

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Monday, March 30, 2009 10:58 AM

CHRISISALL

Quote:
Originally posted by Bytemite:
But before I could actually say that the crew is doing the right thing in those cases, I'd want to examine unintended consequences closer.

What would've happened if they'd had to shoot someone during the heist in Serenity? Would they have tended the wound & forgotten the robbery?

The laughing Chrisisall

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Monday, March 30, 2009 11:14 AM

BYTEMITE

My initial response is no. But that does depend heavily on whether or not the Reavers show up.

If the heist hadn't been interrupted, they wouldn't have killed anyone. The only person who'd have been shoot would be the security guard, and that would have been by choice, so he didn't get fired.

If they'd had to shoot someone? I'd still say no, they wouldn't bother to treat them. Mal, Jayne, and Zoe gave the customers of the bank plenty of warning what would happen if anyone intervened. But they would have probably only shot to incapacitate, wound, or intimidate, not to kill.

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