What is the Purpose of Justice?
How does Justice differ from Vengeance, and what is the role of the state?
What is Justice?
It’s a tricky quandary for the modern post-industrial neoliberal society of the early twenty first century. While woke progressives love to appeal to “justice” in the abstract, what is it really? That’s a question few people have been able to accurately answer.
The Question
Let’s begin with an examination of the criminal justice system. Specifically manslaughter. As a crime, it is punished quite harshly. In the case where an individual is found partially negligent in the death of another person, the punishment is generally in the range of 10 years in prison. Even in cases where the offender is unlikely to offend again, committed an honest mistake and had no intent to harm any one and is not in any way a danger to society at large.
Why is it punished so harshly?
I would ask the reader to consider the question in detail before continuing. Reread the question; think about it.
The Discussion
The truth is that this question does not fit the neoliberal worldview. Most people haven’t considered the question and, when pressed, cannot formulate an acceptable answer to it. The neoliberal interpretation of justice is founded on the principle that imprisonment and punishment occur for the purposes of rehabilitation.
In the stated question, the offender does not need to be rehabilitated, nor is the offender a danger to the public. Thus the most common answer encountered is “well, I don’t think they should be punished harshly.”
That’s an odd statement given that the offender is punished harshly. The reasoning for doing so does not fit. This means that either one can argue that a harsh punishment is a fundamental moral wrong unneeded for societal stability or one requires a different interpretation of the purpose of justice. Were a harsh punishment a moral wrong, then why have we acted in this way for hundreds of years? Why do nearly all functional states practice severe punishment of accidental manslaughter? (Specifically among ordinary people, we all know that laws do not apply to the elites).
The other option is that neoliberal humanism fundamentally misunderstands human society and human nature. Rather than making no sense, the true answer to why manslaughter is harshly punished in all cases requires an understanding of humanity in the psycho-social context rather than through liberal individualism.
The state does not exact punishment to protect the society from the perpetrator of the crime. Not in this case. Not in most cases. Rather, the state takes on the mantle of “Justice” to protect the society from the family of the victim. That is, the state is absorbing the onus of vengeance on behalf of the victims family, rather than permitting the victims family to do it themselves.
Without the state enacting vengeance, the onus is on the victims family; resulting in long-term societal instability, the formation of extra-legal clan justice and intergenerational blood-feuds. Thus, neoliberalism and humanism cannot be the dominating force in a stable society. Neoliberal moral relativism and liberal humanism is not equipped to orchestrate stability within the body politic.
Breakdown occurs when the rule of law shifts from existing for the purposes of societal stability and becomes a force for the edification of the elites; a mechanism for economic profitability, or the forceful application of a disjointed decadent culture.
When a societal moral mandate becomes disconnected from human nature, it is no longer possible to articulate the need for Justice; cultural breakdown becomes inevitable. When justice breaks down, individuals outside the midwit spectrum attempt to form clans. That system becomes self-reinforcing and larger social stability inevitably declines until state Justice is reasserted or total breakdown occurs.
You see this in the wide appearance of underground drug-trades, militant nationalist groups, Islamic no-go-zones in Europe, etc. The state has lost the mandate of Justice, thus clans form for mutual defense.
The “justice system” is now a weapon to be wielded against whichever group is isn’t in a position of authority. It is leveled first against political dissidents, second as a method to enforce supplication of those who would rather be left alone, and only as a distant third does the justice system attempt to maintain societal stability.
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Across the West, the “justice system”s no longer maintain the stability of society:
It is used as tool to engage in war against political dissidents
It ignores the violence perpetrated against the majority by violent politically motivated extremists
The reasons for this self-righteously destructive decadence are myriad. From corrupt district attorneys to lazy bureaucrats. The results are that society at large can no longer trust institutions to provide safety. Some people are organizing and adapting their culture to meet the coming challenges.
What comes next?
High levels of anxiety regardless of age or demographic are common, and that was before the 2024 presidential election concluded. Social media, economic uncertainty, and of course the fact that ones lifelong work could be ripped away because some faceless bureaucrat got a thorn up their ass. The culture now thinks of the ‘rule of law’ as an abstract force of nature. Mere bad luck is why your business was shut down for not filing paperwork correctly, it wasn’t incompetence, it wasn’t criminal, it was because the city attorney decided arbitrarily to ruin your day. Crackheads are let out of jail after getting arrested for assault only to reoffended literal hours later while business owners are sentenced to years in prison over bureaucratic redefinitions of words. From an outside perspective it is very difficult to determine where the law will strike, how it will strike, and what is actually defined as criminal activity.
With the failure of the justice system at the macroscale, one of its functions seems to be acting as an arbitrary secret police for local government. It’s unsurprising people are looking for alternatives. Clans are forming around political ideology, they’ll form around spirituality, they’ll form around a common watering hole at a bar.
Clans are forming because, in lieu of an effective macroscale culture, the best defense groups of individuals have is the formation of strong microscale in-groups and cliques. Like most in my cultural age bracket, I do not see this as an indictment of the broader cultural ideology, merely of a statement about the way things are.
The better armed, trained, invested, and larger, the more difficult of a nut it will be for the powers that be to crack. Thus, the safer its members. The governing body politic is becoming glacially aware of the risk. In the last few years there was a serious push against homeschooling children. The reason is not for the good of the children (as if Mr. Epstein’s shinanigans weren’t clear enough on that), the reason is because the state fears the formation of extralegal social consciousness…
Ten strong families with three or more well educated children each is enough to take over a small town in one generation, and (if lucky and driven) an entire state in two generations. Two generations of cultural decay at the macroscale place well integrated and educated groupings of individuals into powerful positions. Positions strong enough to exploit the cultural decay to the point where territory and wealth can simply be annexed.
A society of midwit bureaucrats fears that which cannot be controlled. Yet by attempting to legislate every minute aspect of human life, they have created an environment where the people at large simply cannot function within the bounds of state authority. Large well-connected clans are pseudo-independent… and without a functional justice system, clan-justice will be making a come-back. The nature of the modern justice systems’ breakdown is evidenced by the growth in extralegal organization.
This is a time where we have the opportunity to change our mindset regarding society at large, or be ruled by those who did.