Wednesday 4 September 2013

Eschewing Violence

Modern Suggestive Conceptions of Law

We live in a world beset by squeamishness.  How this came about, we are not sure.  Some would say that it is due to the increasing feminisation of the culture.  Others would finger a philosophy of false optimism that assumes progress and civilization mean less violence.  Maybe it is due to a general ignorance courtesy of irrelevant and impotent state education systems.  No doubt the causes and provenance of general societal squeamishness are likely complex.

But the phenomenon is real enough.  In New Zealand, hundreds of thousands of Kiwis fish.  This brings death up close and personal.  More--it links food and diet to violence.  Fish in order to be eaten and enjoyed have first to be caught and killed--unless, like Gollum you prefer them wriggling and raw.  That cultural past-time helps keep the population conscious of the need for violence if a civilisation is to survive.  But imagine how it might change if the only fish Kiwis ever ate was what could be bought at the supermarket.  The link between violence and survival would be more removed from the food chain.  It wold present a fertile ground for the miasmic fog of squeamishness to begin forming in the valleys.
 

We well remember being confronted with shock, outrage and even horror when work colleagues found out we hunted for meat.  Adjectives like "bloodthirsty" and "cruel" were appended to nouns like "killer" and "murderer".  When we mildly inquired how these outraged moderns understood chicken got on to supermarket shelves it became apparent that our persecutors had never before considered the question.  Their squeamishness was not just emotive; it was born of ignorance and naivety.

Another manifestation of the general squeamishness which afflicts us is a lack of understanding about the law being inextricably linked to violence and force.  As Jonah Goldberg has pointed out,
Certain breeds of libertarian and anarchist are fond of observing that the state is ultimately about force, by which they mean violence.  They'll point out that if you refuse to pay your taxes or even mow your lawn long enough, eventually after much paperwork, men with guns will come to your make and make you do--or pay-what is required of you.  The problem with this observation is not that it is wrong, but that those who espouse it think it is an indictment.  Law without the possibility of force is not law.  Or, as Hobbes noted, "covenants without the sword, are but words, and of no strength to secure a man at all."  [Jonah Goldberg, The Tyranny of Cliches: How Liberals Cheat in the War of Ideas (New York: Sentinel/Penguin, 2012), p.181f.]  
Without the sanction of violence behind it, the law is not law at all: it is a mere suggestion, an encouragement.  The Ten Commandments, without the Divine sanction of God's final and ultimate judgement and vengeance behind them, would be idealistic nostrums only.  On the other hand, the fact that behind them stands the One who will punish everlastingly every breach of the Ten makes them most certain law. 

Maybe it is at this point that we have a more comprehensive and profound explanation for our general societal squeamishness.  As our culture has progressively denied the very existence of God, it has also denied the realities of judgement for breaking His holy laws.  Implicitly, this has meant there are no bloody sanctions at all--which all self-assessed civilised and advanced peoples would find not just primitive but distasteful and unseemly. 

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