Category: justice

CULTURAL DECLINE

Americans need to come to grips with their history, mend its fences, and use its cultural diversity as a means for acceptance of difference and rebirth of its founder’s principles. Empathy is a relatively minor part of America’s institutional, economic, and moral decline.

Books of Interest
 Website: chetyarbrough.blog

Suicidal Empathy (Dying to Be Kind) 

Author: Gad Saad

Narration by: Gad Saad

Gad Saad (Author, Canadian professor of marketing and evolutionary behavioral scientist.)

Gad Saad has written an interesting book about human empathy. He describes empathy as a biological, socially beneficial, and important characteristic of human cooperation. However, he notes empathy has the potential for societal harm that can be destructive with long-term negative consequences. He suggests empathy can distort the harm done by criminals against victims and compound ethnic differences that are a detriment to society. He argues empathy is an emotion that can lead to harmful decisions, and poor social policies that create moral distortion and confusion. His examples carry some weight.

A definition of empathy.

Criminal defenders sometimes frame an argument that violent offenders are products of their life circumstances and should be empathized with, rather than punished, for their actions. However, with empathy as a treatment, victims of personal crimes become victimized twice. Once by the actions of the criminal and a second time by leniency toward a criminals’ actions. An argument is made by a criminal defender that poverty and systemic faults of a legal system or society are the fault of others, including the victims of the perpetrators’ crime. Empathy for the defender gets in the way of justice for society and the individual is victimized twice in the guise of empathy. Violent offenders are released or given reduced sentences that offer opportunity for a repeat of violent crimes. Saad extends this argument to society that empathizes with terrorists, radicalized individuals, and ideologically driven attackers.

Robert Wright suggests every human action in life is determined by evolution.

Saad suggests too much empathy creates an atmosphere of moral relativism, and identity-based hate groups that reinforces an “us-them” mentality that diminishes social difference. One can easily agree with Saad’s observation, but history shows difference of one’s group identity is both good and bad. The contributions of Jewish group identity have been a great boon to society. Jewish identity is a prime example of the value of group difference. The educational and identity-based tenants of Judaism have made immense contributions to science and industry. Of course, at the other extreme, moral relativism and identity-based hate led to the holocaust by the Nazis.

As an American moral philosopher and cultural commentator who lives in Germany, Neiman offers an analysis of race and evil.

The troubling part of Saad’s argument is his selective focus on empathy as a cause of cultural decline. Corruption, politicization, self-dealing elitism, and societies’ failure to deliver justice, safety, and education to the public are the fundamental causes of cultural decline. Whether Jew, Gentile, or other, it is not empathy that has caused the widening wealth gap, loss of group identity, labor displacement, collapse of local industries, and/or the erosion of intergenerational opportunity.

Cultural decline cannot be reduced to a single cause as inferred by Gad Saad.

Cultural decline cannot be reduced to a single cause as inferred by Gad Saad. It is cultural destruction of group differences beginning with the diminishment of native Americans, through America’s history of slavery, and today’s loss of civic trust in government that is harming America. Americans need to come to grips with their history, mend its fences, and use its cultural diversity as a means for acceptance of difference and rebirth of its founder’s principles. Empathy is a relatively minor part of America’s institutional, economic, and moral decline.

VALUE OF JUSTICE

“Judge Stone” is a story about the conflicts accompanying personal trauma, public discontent, social violence, discrimination, individual integrity, and public responsibility. The ending is a surprise and makes the reading journey a pleasure.

Books of Interest
 Website: chetyarbrough.blog

Judge Stone (A Novel)

Author: Viola Davis & James Patterson

Narration by: Viola Davis

Viola Davis
James Patterson

“Judge Stone” is a legal thriller written by both its narrator, Viola Davis, and the famous and highly successful author, James Patterson. It is not a diatribe for or against abortion but a primer on the tension between those who agree or disagree with a woman’s or doctor’s right to end life in utero. It is about the morality, human conflict, and drama of addressing the right of the State of Alabama, or any government body, to make abortion a crime.

The story is made more troubling because of America’s history of discrimination.

It is a complicated story because it involves a young Black girl, born in the south where Black discrimination is a part of America’s history of slavery. It is further complicated by a girl being 13 years old who is raped by two white boys. Because of a pregnancy complication, she is taken to a local doctor because of abnormal vaginal bleeding. This is a view of abortion driven by drama rather than a polemic about right or wrong, legal history, or women’s rights. Davis and Patterson show how abortion is a source of bias while demonstrating the reality of gender and racial discrimination engendered by social inequality and how private rights often conflict with laws of the land.

“Republic of Lies” is a deeply troubling book that explains much about why lies and the law are often ignored.

The character of Judge Stone is one of stern moral seriousness who is emotionally offended by discrimination while showing herself to be a professionally formidable judge, elected by a majority of Alabamans in her district. She strives to be judicially neutral, disciplined, and intellectually sharp. Her goal is to be fair while being deeply constrained by the letter of the law. Like many Black and like-minded Americans, she struggles with race, ethnicity, and gender as something that affects success in life. She strives to be impartial and uphold the law even when it conflicts with her personal life and beliefs. Like all judges who wish to do the right thing, being neutral in the interpretation of the law is an inward journey with outward affects. She is a symbol of the best of what justice is intended to be, i.e., a system that attempts to channel human power into fairness.

Blind justice is a fiction.

The main characters are Mary Stone, the judge, Dr. Bria Gaines, the doctor, who performs an illegal abortion on Nova Jones, a pregnant 13-year-old who is treated for abnormal bleeding from her pregnancy. Starla Jones, the 13-year old’s mother, and Cocheta Bass, the nurse who led Nova to the doctor; both of which are witnesses to the doctor’s ministrations. Cocheta explains the desperation Nova has over her condition. The out-of-town attorney that represents Dr. Gaines is an important character but only to show Gaines is represented by a competent, unbiased attorney.

“Judge Stone” is a well written drama that is unlikely to change people’s minds about the morality of abortion. The story is an emotional journey, not a balanced opinion about abortion. “Judge Stone” is about judicial ethics, American discrimination, and social dysfunction. It is a story about the conflicts accompanying personal trauma, public discontent, social violence, discrimination, individual integrity, and public responsibility. The ending is a surprise and makes the reading/listening journey a pleasure.