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 or does it insure that the guilty man pays? Of course
the answer is not so black and white. The right answer 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 best possible system)?
In The
Trial we have a legal system that insures that the guilty man pays
(literally there is no way to get 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” took place in The United States
of America, 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, could wrongfully
accusing someone and killing him or her be justified? I would argue that, there
is a ratio of justification. But where is that ratio? 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 result an alpha of .5 (meaning that any
suspicion would lead to conviction)).
Unfortunately (or fortunately), 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 (and
we begin to question if whether or not choice is a thing).
As we proceed, what we find is that there is no way of
judging what the best society is clearly. But, what we can do are
extrapolations from theoretical situations. Now let us avoid turning this into
a research paper. Let us talk about what we know about societies and the human
condition. The human is fundamental building block of society, so let us start
there. As an individual, the most important person in the world 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 what is best for the
masses? Well that is a hard question to answer, but we can go try to approach
this from the view of Maslow’s hierarchy of needs. The most important human
need in Maslow’s hierarchy is physiological needs. This means that man needs
water, food, and shelter. Once the government has covered this for the mass it
can focus on the next human need, which is safety. Safety is the need that
concerns us. The masses need to feel safe. So then, a strict justice system
would give them the most amount of safety. But trying to approach the solution with
human psychology brings us to the same problem as before. We again find that
the answer is not clear. There are simply too many factors to take into
consideration. Human choice is the achilles heal of our attempts to calculate
for what is best for society.
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 society.
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