[darwinist]

Justice Through Each of Our Eyes-

Many political ideas and theories have multiple meanings causing people from varying backgrounds different but distinct reactions. However, one political idea, justice, seems to have a meaning and definition that can be agreed upon by most; being righteous, the principle of just dealings and using the power of authority to maintain just order. The manipulation of the word for the use of a particular side is where the "slipperiness or controversy" of this abstract idea arises, in this situation both sides can argue that they are the righteous ones, making the question be asked, 'who is actually exhibiting the meaning of justice?'

possession of certain natural plants and chemicals a crime, punishable by long prison sentences.

After ten years, eighty-one billion dollars and millions of arrests, the government is still engaged in its "War on Drugs", making it the longest and most costly campaign in US history, which has been done in the name of Justice. These drug laws have been created in order to guard against the negligence of the individual person against himself, these are like laws for seatbelt use and
laws against suicide. Due to these types of laws, many of our civil liberties and natural rights have been infringed upon; this is the main point of the opposition.Jon Stuart Mills and John Locke support this idea that the only claim that government has in controlling the individual is in regard to others.If the government has already deemed an adult responsible enough to control their own finances, responsible enough to vote, and responsible enough to fight for their country, then certainly they should be deemed responsible enough to provide their own safety. In response to claims that these drugs bring about more crimes, violent crimes that are committed against others, like murder, is false.These crimes are due to the war being waged against drugs, a war which was declared by the U.S. itself, and one must remember no war is without casualties taken on both sides.

Now one must decide whether it is more just to protect the freedom of individuals, which is one if America's oldest themes and one of the pillars of the country's founding, or is it more just to have restrictions that the U.S. deems necessary for the safety of the society as a whole.

In order to bring about meaningful change, it's first necessary to understand the society in which we live. So, I begin by looking at the social and economic conditions that induce fear, loneliness, violence, and economic insecurity. I then examine the conditioning processes and agents that produce the masses of people who accept such conditions with hardly a whimper. Those that I examine include sexual repression, the patriarchal family, the education system, organized religion, and the mass media.

We live in a world which is deeply unsatisfying for most people, a world in which many of our most basic needs - for love, peace, freedom, security, and meaning in life - are not being met. Most of us face constant worry about economic survival, loneliness and isolation, or fear of it, and a constant feeling that there's never enough of anything good to go around, be it love, sex or money.

As well, for many - probably most - people, there's a constant fear of violence. And for even more, there's a feeling of powerlessness. The end result is hopelessness, apathy, and often bitterness, meanness, and, all too often, outright sadism.

Why do these conditions exist? There's no grand conspiracy, but there are a number of reasons for this lousy situation, and it's important to understand what we're dealing with if we're going to change it.

The economic situation is a major reason for our present societal difficulties. At present, most people in this country own almost nothing. The top 1% of the population own more than the bottom 90% of the population combined. The top 1% own 40% of the nation's wealth and the next 9% own another 30%, which means that the top 10% own 70% of the nation's wealth; that leaves another 30% of the wealth for the remaining 90% of us, with most of that distributed toward the top end. So, the bottom 50% of the population own nearly nothing - maybe a car and, if we're lucky, a heavily mortgaged house. It's also worth noting that there has been a distinct trend over the last 20 years or so toward a redistribution of wealth toward the upper end of the scale. In other words, since around the time Reagan was elected president, the rich have been getting richer and the poor have been getting poorer; and this trend is continuing under Clinton.

Compounding the economic insecurities most of us face is the problem of physical danger, and the fear of it. Many of the reasons for violence can be traced to economic inequalities, but even more basic is the common belief in violence and coercion as means to an end. This belief is so pervasive that we're often not even aware of it. Perhaps the most important example of this is government. Belief in the necessity of coercion is the foundation of government. Belief in the necessity of coercive organization, that is, government, springs from the belief that people are incapable of voluntary cooperation, and that the only way to get them to behave in a civilized manner is to force them to do so - at the point of a gun if necessary. This leads to things such as extortion and military conscription. Ultimately, it all boils down to the belief that it's OK to push people around if you're powerful enough to do it.

What makes things even worse is that most people not only see violence as the solution to violence, but that they think they have the right to use violence and coercion to force other people to be "moral." This belief comes squarely from the "thou shalts" and "thou shalt nots" of patriarchal religions such as christianity and islam, both of which have long and bloody histories of murdering and torturing nonbelievers, nonconformists, and heretics. So, it's no surprise that those who adhere to such religions have no hesitation in using violence to force others to submit, or simply use it for the sheer joy of inflicting pain. A couple of quotes from the bible illustrate the religious submit-or-die attitude:

The ironic thing about all this is that many of the religious folk most intent upon using violence and coercion to enforce "morality" are themselves quite fearful of becoming victims of violence. Yet the cruel policies they support produce violence.

A good example of this association of violence with "morality" is the war on drugs. It's painfully obvious that drug prohibition is not only destroying our civil liberties, but is also producing a lot of violence and property crime because of the combination of illegality and high profit margins; this results in turf wars by dealers, and crimes committed by drug addicts to support the high price of their habits. All of this should be, and is, obvious, but there is so much fear, authoritarianism and sadism in the general population, and so little ability to analyze data, that the war on drugs continues. And we all pay the price for it through destruction of our liberties, sky-high taxes, and the creation of what could well become a police state.

At the dawn of the modern state, patriarchal religion combined with competition-based economics to produce some truly toxic effects. Put briefly, these effects were the degradation and sexual enslavement of women, and the creation of the patriarchal family.

The available evidence indicates that relations between the sexes in human societies tended to be relatively egalitarian during prehistoric (hunting and gathering) times. But that all changed about 8,000 years ago when human beings began to practice agriculture (large-scale food production). That made it possible, for the first time in human history, for people to create and to accumulate surplus goods on a relatively large scale. There's fairly convincing evidence that almost as soon as this happened inequalities arose (or at least greatly intensified) between the sexes, and that a ruling elite first appeared.

Since one of the functions of a ruling class is to perpetuate itself - and because the early ruling classes consisted of royal families - female sexual exclusivity soon became mandatory. The ruler wanted to know that his children were, in fact, his. A similar thing happened in the lower classes with the advent of private property. Men who accumulated even small amounts of wealth wanted to pass it on to their heirs. So, the patriarchal family was born.