Following Radical thoughts to radical conclusions.

I have been having flashbacks now and then to Dr. Puhek's courses including Society and the Individual and War and Revolution.

Here's an excerpt:
"It is through this intelligence that the god of religions is present to and in us. The error of religions is to conceptualize god as an external object that directs life from the outside. God is not an alien being who rules on lives.  God is not a thing to us and we are not a thing to god.  This false image of estrangement is implicit in any and every positive concept of god. No concept can capture god for god is infinite and must remain ultimately nameless, but so is the second side of the universal intelligence we possess. At our core is the chaos of our nothingness and god is the Nothingness it knows. This infinite divine is the ground that all life rests on – the source of inspiration and the heart of what we humans take to be our individual and personal self."

Those are the beginning and last paragraphs of a short essay: Life, Intelligence, & Fringe Ideas

But I was just thinking about his talk about Justice, law and order...

"Just as physics is under the illusion that the opposite of matter is anti-matter, so we are under the illusion that the opposite of law and order is lawlessness and disorder. Nothingness as the ground of being is neither law and order nor lawlessness and disorder. It is, indeed, the source of both. Singularity and nothingness are that out of which all things their order and disorder arise. It is the greatest of the errors to think that something cannot come from nothing; there is nowhere else from which something could arise.

Let us learn how we can about life from physics. But let physics learn what it can only learn from the direct experience of life."

I agreed with Puhek on almost everything, with the exception of his take on art, but I kept thinking about his way of debunking how we go from A to B, or specifically how good intentions paved the road to hell so to speak. I've always wondered what kind of conclusion I could draw theoretically if I followed my own thoughts about certain topics. Justice is definitely one that I think is particularly revealing. Here are some of the truth that I hold evident that dictates the following thoughts:

1. Every moment is a good moment to face yourself, and to learn. (this comes from a kind of philosophy that my dad espouses, his other ones I'm not to keen on such as "it always works out in the end")

2. Choices are easier to make when there are less of them, unless it's down to two which in reality is extremely rare compared to how often we're told that something is binary, only this or that.

3. "Terrible or not, difficult or not, the only thing that is beautiful, noble, religious, and mystical is to be happy." - Arnaud Desjardins

4. "We work to become not to acquire" - Elbert Hubbard (or at least this should be the point)

5. You can't force anyone to learn anything, you can only present models, opportunities, support, structure, placebos, expectations, and feedback.

So I'm going to throw out 5 examples of according to my logic, what would be my idea of appropriate Justice having the kinds of assumptions that I have.

Serial Killer or school shooter: Confinement away from people and psychological treatment with loss of having media attention privileges. Their access to having their words or viewpoints published in the media would be abolished for their own privacy. The death penalty only ensures that their idea of immortality will last forever, all theatrics would be stripped down to highlighting moments when this person was considered well, and not sick.

Running a red light: Work as paid traffic police for a week for the minimum wage with a vest that distinguishes this person from a cop as a person who ran a red light.

Accidental killing: Depending on the ability of the victim's family, the accused would be enforced to produce a gesture of good will (such as making dinner) and live with the family for the period of a month to help with errands and attend grief counsels. 

Taking bribes: Besides a fine in the exact amount accepted, paid every 5 years, the funds would be transferred to a charity/non-profit whose mission matches the victim of what went unregulated. On top of this, like a hacker, this person would lose all privileges to use a computer for a year.

Corporate Greed: Death Penalty. Due to the nature of a global economy where money can be moved or  extracted at an astonishing rate, this crime must have a consequence that deters mass stealing over 500,000 dollars. It will send the message that acquiring this much wealth illegally is not worth your life. Those who are accomplices in the crime but may not have made this much money will have to watch the proceedings. There would be no warnings if the amount stolen is over five million dollars, the death penalty would be scheduled within the year. Money that is among family and friends can be raised to delay the death penalty, but the same amount considered stolen would have to be raised every year to put it off a year. The money raised would also go to a charity/non-profit whose mission matches the victim of what went unregulated.

In a sense reading back over these, I can tell that I believe that consequences should highlight experiencing something from another perspective, and that somehow what I would consider fair deals with distributing the money to where it belongs not to the agency enforcing the laws but to people and organizations that may have been wronged. It's also seems to touch on cultural ideas of what is taboo or moral and how societies might account to preventing such actions in the future... I think my conclusions are interesting, but difficult to implement, but only possibly because they don't fit today's idea of what is culturally acceptable.