In order to defeat evil, a society must sometimes become an even
greater evil. Eventually we find that every thing comes at a price, especially
justice. Ironically, becoming unjust is the price that haunts societies quest
for justice. It is a vicious cycle that has left every society to date in
complete corruption. Consequently, the problem lies in society’s need for a
guilty man. So, inevitably society must make a choice. Does it protect the
innocent man, does it insure that the guilty man pays? Of course the answer is
not so simple. The perfect recipe lands somewhere in the infinite shades of
gray between the two. The true question is “where?”
In Kafka’s novel The Trial, we find that our
main character is wrongly accused of a crime, which he has not committed.
However, the government finds him to be guilty and in the end condemns him to
death. In order to insure that no guilty men go free, sadly many innocent men
will be condemned (this is an unavoidable fact). On the other hand, in order to
insure that no innocent men are condemned many guilty men will go free (this
too is an unavoidable fact).
Unlike the current United States of America’s legal system’s
principle “innocent until proven guilty”, the justice system in The Trial works
on a principle of “guilty until proven innocent”. In this sense, these justice
systems are polar opposites.
Kafka put this type of legal system in The Trial in
order to show how it fails the individual (in his case Joseph
K.). Unfortunately Kafka fails to present a better option. The other
type of system often fails to insure justice, and in an extreme scenario
creates chaos. In Kafka’s damnation of the current society, he offers nothing
better. Maybe the legal system we have sucks, but is there anything better?
Inevitably we have to ask, where is the perfect balance of a legal system? Or
is there even a perfect balance (is anarchy the most just system)?
In The
Trial we have a legal system that insures that the guilty man pays
(literally there is no way of getting a verdict of “not guilty/ or innocent”.
If we look at this type of system, we see that it deters criminals from
committing crimes. In fact, if we look into the statistics, we find that
countries with a legal system that insures that the guilty man pays have a
significantly lower crime rate. So we must unavoidably accept that this system
helps keep order in society. Truly the goal of society is to protect the
masses, so by keeping order the strict legal system accomplishes the goal.
However, in The Trial this system failed the individual. And
in the real world this is also true. In fact, we find that on top of having
significantly lower crime rates, countries with strict legal systems also have
more innocent men (proven innocent after put to death) wrongly put to death
(Just like Joseph K.). So Kafka was right, a system like this would inevitably
fail the individual, but it would also protect the masses. But a problem like
this raises another question. What is the price of justice? How many guilty men
must be convicted in order to justify wrongly accusing one man or is it ever
justifiable to accuse one innocent man?
There are also positives and negatives of a society that purely protects the
innocent man. It is impossible for a society to have a perfectly protective
system because that would mean that no one would ever be punished (which
defeats the title of a justice system). But, we find that in a protective
society, guilty men get away. This does not insure that justice in society is
served; therefore, it fails the basic goal of a justice system. However, it
protects the individual. The United States of America is a good example of a
protective justice system. The United States of America is not a perfectly
protective society (some innocent men are still convicted), but it is based off
of “innocent until proven guilty”. But we often have guilty men walking
away free. For example, O. J. Simpson, Zimmerman, Ernesto Miranda, and many
more. With a good enough lawyer anyone can go free, meaning that justice is not
served (especially to those with money). But, a system like this protects
people like Joseph K. from The Trial. As a citizen of the United
States of America, I do not have to worry about being arrested tomorrow morning
for almost no reason. This means that I feel safe, so society is doing
something correct there. But, should people like Zimmerman and O. J. and
Miranda go free? No! They should have paid for their crimes. But I believe it
is safe to say, that if the “The Trial” too place in The United States
of Joseph K. would not have been condemned to death, in fact I am quite sure he
would have been declared not guilty.
Some people (like
myself) believe that an innocent man that pays the price is just collateral
damage, which is necessary in order to sustain a better society for the masses.
Some would ask, can wrongfully accusing someone and killing him or her be
justified? I would argue that, there is a ration of justification. But where is
that ratios? Is it justifiable, to convict one innocent man for every twenty
guilty men (this is what would be referred to as an alpha=.05 in statistics).
It comes down to where we value to life of an innocent man vs. “highly needed
justice” to be served.
In a purely
Darwinian society, the alpha value would be quite high. This means that if we
were trying to be the most efficient society (what is best for survival and
keeping order), a justice system like the one in The Trial would work
very well. This goes with saying
that, without the morality installed by religious institutions like the
Catholic Church, the value of life would be much less. For society to be
most efficient it should ignore morality or emotions. Once morality and
emotions have been removed from the calculation, it is easy to say yes get rid
of anyone who even appears to be a virus to society (this would be an alpha of
.5).
Unfortunately, it
will never be that easy, society will never be able to let go of morality and
emotions. Without morality and emotions, the structure of society would fall apart.
So morality and emotions cannot be ignored. Consequently, human emotions and
moralities are one of the hardest things to calculate for. This is because they
are clearly un-quantifiable unless we go into the organic chemistry/biology of
human emotion or we go into endless amounts of discussion about human morality.
In the end, what we
find is that the only way to judge what the best legal system is, is to look at
past legal systems. Now let us avoid turning this into a research paper. Let us
talk about what we know about societies and human condition. The human is
fundamental building block of society, so let us start there. As an individual,
the most important person in the room is “your self”. So from that, we can
derive that what benefits “your self” the most is what is most important.
Extrapolating this assumption directly to society, we get the conclusion that
what benefits the individual the most is what is best for society. So with this
“view(so to say)” society should protect the individual; therefore, a protective
society would be the best. This is what Kafka would most likely agree with. Sorry
to say, that there are inescapable errors when doing such a large
extrapolation. In this case, society is not just a large group of individuals. When
calculating for society what is best for the masses (collective individual) must
also be calculated. So unfortunately again we are stuck somewhere between the
infinite shades of gray.
In the end, In
order to defeat evil, a society must sometimes become an even greater evil.
Evil is unavoidable, given the human condition. Therefore, in order to create a
justice system that defeats evil it must commit evil. Sadly, this evil that
society must commit can corrupt society. But, we search with anticipation for
the perfect balance that will deem a perfect justice system. Unfortunately it
is in vain. In order to protect the individual we must screw over the masses,
and vice versa. So society could never please every one. That is the
unfortunate reality of socity.
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