The Tale of the Good Human

It might just be a peculiarity of my personal life. But I do not believe that. I believe there is something more to it: I know surprisingly few assholes. And of those few I do have the questionable pleasure of knowing, there are some where I believe to know why they are assholes. Those people are not inherently evil, they seem to live their lifes in the only way that appears bearable to them and I don't envy any asshole I know. The same is true for saints in my acquaintances: I know none. But I am not concerned about the saints, I am concerned about the assholes, because they mean trouble for society. I know people who cheat the state or their insurance - indeed most seem to do so in some cases. But I cannot really blame them. Those are not bad people. So where does all the bad come from that I see happening in the world? Who is it that lets people starve, wages wars, sells weapons, produces drugs ... ? The mystery of the missing assholes has riddled me for a long time. The disturbing answer is - or rather part of it - it's me. I definitely let people starve that I could save easily.

The blood in my veins, the culture in my head: both are descendants of the Nazis. Only two generations ago these people committed the most horrible crimes in the history of man. Many of my people committed these crimes and most of the others let it happen. At least they closed their eyes against the evil that was going on. My grandfathers both died before they could tell me their thoughts about these days. Not so my grandmothers. But you don't want to hear them talking about the dark days of greater Germany. Let it suffice that they revealed an ugliness in their souls. Still I refuse to see them as bad people as I refuse to see me their grandson as a bad person. Even if there were such a thing as bad people, it still is a statistical impossibility, that - independently from genetic propagation, or Germany today would not be the land I know - such an enormous concentration of bad people should suddenly aggravate in Germany and disappear again as if it had never been there.

I do not believe in people being bad - or good for that matter. I believe that people are people. So what should it be? And why does this matter so much that I spend pages on it?

The kernel of a modern society is its rules. Actually this whole text is exclusively about rules and how to determine them. A central issue of social organization is how the society deals with people that break the rules. If society does not care, or if the basic assumption is that some people will always break the rules because they are bad or whatever, then society can cheerfully punish anybody that does not respect the majority vote (or the dictators or parties decree or whatever). But if one does not believe in people being bad, society has a problem - every act of breaking the law implies an unuttered statement: the delinquent does not accept the rules that the society dictates. Sure, a society can simply ignore such statements, we have a millennia long history of doing so. I do however think that society should not ignore these statements. It should always ask itself, why the crime was committed, if there is something wrong with the way the society is organized.

The reasons for committing crimes can be split into two categories: Temptation and hopeless social circumstances. As a side note it should be mentioned that in my culture those from higher social classes that succumb to temptation are treated much better on average than those from the bottom of the social latter who partly act out of desperation.

Temptation happens when a potential gain through an illegal act is high compared to the chance of being caught. Thus there are two levers to fight temptation: Make the punishment harder (I am against this) or increase the chance of being caught.

The other problem is much harder to address. Let me give an example: A heroin addict is in a completely hopeless situation. He needs his poison. Heroin is banned in any nation on earth, thus he is outlawed. And black market prices for heroin are very high. His only chance - apart of giving up his addiction which is very hard especially in desperate social circumstances - is to break the law to get the money for illegally purchasing his drug. It might be assumed that his situation is his own fault. But what makes somebody choose drug induced happiness over reality? I think something must have gone terribly wrong there, long before a drug addict commits his first crime to buy another shot.

Those that are worst of in a society are most likely to commit crimes that are a result of their lack of faith into that society. If a society wants to prevent crimes from happening because of desperate social circumstances, it must follow John Rawls principle of philosophical liberalism. That principle states that a society should be organized in such a way that those worst off profit the most.

A modern society is - in every sense that this text is concerned with - nothing but a set of rules. This makes no sense if the rules are not accepted. Thus a society cannot accept its laws being broken without loosing credibility and logical consistency. It must react to crimes by asking itself what part of the crime was due to malfunctioning social organization.

And by the way, I think life would be better yet, if one would not have to ignore the drastic social injustice, the suffering in modern societies.