Evolving Beyond Retribution
An open letter to activists espousing violence as a form of activism against statism.
A shepherd had a nice flock of sheep but he was endlessly frustrated because his neighbor had more sheep than him. One day he had just birthed a new lamb only to discover that his neighbor had birthed two and was even further ahead of him. He’d had it. That night and every night thereafter, he began to complain about it in his prayers.
“Lord, Manuel now has five more sheep than me. I work just as hard as him and take good care of my sheep and it’s just not fair!”
After many nights of prayers full of whining and complaining about what he perceived as a terrible injustice, he heard a clear voice in his head.
“Alright! Alright! Just stop complaining and I will help you, but only this once. Then you are on your own. I don’t want to hear another word about it!” answered the Lord.
“Oh, thank you Lord! You are truly just! So… you are going to kill five of Manuel’s sheep?”
I believe the story was meant as an analogy about far left politics and what seems like a desire to drag everyone down to an equal level of misery. It may not seem to relate to retribution, but it does address a flaw in our thinking that fuels what I see as a pointless desire for retribution.
We seem to have a barbaric and unquenchable thirst for justice. It’s barbaric because inflicting suffering an another does nothing to heal our own harm. It’s unquenchable because when others suffer, they often experience the same irrational desire for retribution, perhaps horribly misdirected, but they desire to lash out in some way. I think it’s because we feel rather small and insignificant in the big scheme of things, and we naturally don’t like that feeling of helplessness. Lashing out against someone or something gives one a brief rush. It makes you feel powerful for a short while. On some level, we know we’re becoming much like whomever we’re angry at, but we all have our justification systems, sometimes rather elaborate. We’re the good guys and we’re punishing the bad guys! This is what I think is at the core of the idea that violence begets violence. It’s something I believe now more than ever.
Doubtless there are some who take pride in being outright evil, people who commit acts with full awareness that what they’re doing is wrong, but it’s rare. Most act under the belief, often the delusion, that what they’re doing is right. In the end none of those justifications really matter. Every time someone lashes out like that, however justified they feel or even however justified they are, they hurt someone or destroy something. They increase the misery in the world and misery loves company. The relief one feels after obtaining the retribution they crave is fleeting at best. It won’t actually heal any harm that’s been done to that person. It won’t fill the hole inside them. What it will likely do is create a lot more holes in a lot of other people. It’s truly a vicious cycle.
I believe we are ready to evolve past what seems like a sort of evolutionary throwback to our most animalistic instincts. We evolve past that to our own personal benefit. When an individual is unable to let go of that unquenchable thirst for vengeance, he traps himself in his own Hell. There will never be perfect justice in the world. There will always be some people who seem to “get away with it”. You really only have power over yourself and how you decide to deal with this unavoidable imperfection about the world around you. You can either cope with it in a healthy manner in line with reality or you can engage in endless fantasies that will never come true wherein you have tremendous power to right all the wrongs in the world and make all the bad guys pay! Yes, it’s quite a common fantasy. Superhero stories milk this insatiable desire for justice. Watch a few Hollywood action movies and see how creative they get with the violent destruction of the villain whom they’ve carefully painted to be stereotypically evil. That villain is a place-holder for all the people who have ever pissed you off.
I’m done with the idea of trying to fix all the bad people in the world with punishment. I’m an anarchist. I don’t think there is a person on this Earth who has the authority over others to decide the appropriate amount of arbitrary suffering to inflict on a person who has committed some wrong. It’s that fallacy that keeps money funneling into more and bigger prisons, prisons that treat people worse than animals in a zoo and have horrible recidivism rates. I understand the notion of self-defense. If someone is about to harm an innocent person, I understand using violence to stop them. I understand the notion of humanely locking away someone who is extremely likely to continue to hurt people, but the motivation for these things ought to be preventing more harm; not punishment.
Restitution, on the other hand, is a quantifiable thing. The perpetrator and the victim and some reasonably unbiased third party or parties can attempt to come to some agreement about how much harm has been done and what it will take to rectify that harm. Restitution is a path toward getting back in the good graces of whatever community one wants to be a part of. Individuals in a community have the opportunity to decide for themselves whether to forgive, whether restitution has been satisfactorily applied, bearing in mind that a statement on record by the victim would be the most persuasive. Rehabilitation makes sense to me, but based on the psychology I described, I don’t think we’re going to rehabilitate criminals by inflicting arbitrary suffering.
So what does this mean for liberty movements? I know a fair number of liberty activists who are so angry at statists they seem about to pop a vein. They hate all those fucking statists, those politicians, those cops, those bureaucrats, every government worker with an easy job and good benefits that they can never get fired from. Well, you’re right. They’re all rat bastards. Your anger is justified. It’s also completely pointless.
They think you’re a kook because they’ve got their convoluted, inconsistent justification systems that convince them that what they’re doing is right. Maybe some little voice inside them is saying otherwise and they’ve tuned it out. Your anger means shit to them. It isn’t hurting them. And if you attack them, how far do you think you’ll get before your insurrection is crushed and all the people you kill become martyrs? How fast will all the deluded masses run to the state to get protection from “kooks like you”? What will you have accomplished for liberty?
It doesn’t matter how justified that violence may be. It’s not going to fix things. Given that, how then are you going to deal with that reality? Will you let your anger and your frustration at your own helplessness eat you up inside? Will you continue to enjoy pointless fantasies about having more power than the State to right all the wrongs? The only way you’re going to truly feel empowered is when you can evolve enough to control your own thinking, the thinking that is destroying you and not your enemies. It’s not an easy thing. A lot of it is conditioned into you from your immersion in such a violent world. It’s a process. It will take time. I suggest getting started as soon as possible.
I’m not going to yield to the enemy. I’m not surrendering, not by any far stretch of the imagination. I’m not attacking anyone but I’m not going quietly either. Their system requires near 100% compliance. We can disobey. We can peacefully resist and burden their so-called justice system. We can make their tyranny cumbersome to maintain. Our power for positive change will come from open confrontation and defiance against their irrational justification systems for violence. It will come from shining a light on the cockroaches, from new media accessible to the masses, from the rapid sharing of images of their fascism all over the Internet like the recent incidents in Pittsburgh and the G20 protests. It’s happening like it never could before even 10 years ago. There is plenty of hope, but that hope isn’t coming from the point of a gun. The State is quite well prepared for a straight-up violent confrontation. My weapons of choice are the ones they feel most powerless against– a pen, a camera, and the truth.
Everybody in the liberty movement should read this. You cannot achieve liberty through violence.
Restitution isn’t always quantifiable. What is a life worth? A rape victim’s virginity? A lifetime of worry after one has been deceptively exposed to an STD?
(That last one involves personal responsibility, just to complicate the issue.)
I don’t have the answers to these questions. Thanks for stimulating the thought process.
I think we’ve been thinking about a lot of the same things, and along the same lines, recently.
Excellent essay.
To Kevin’s point about restitution, I don’t think Dale was claiming such an “objective” value could be determined for a crime. The restitution he seemed to describe was one that is voluntarily arrived upon when an aggressor wants to get back in the good graces of a community. In that sense it is quantifiable in the same way the value of anything you buy is quantifiable when you make voluntary transactions.
People coming from the libertarian perspective (including myself) are used to thinking of restitution as something that is judged and coercively enforced upon an aggressor. I like Dale’s version better.
Though I’ll agree with you intellectually, if a scum pig were to treat me or somebody I cared about as they did the G20 protesters, the “liberty movement” would cease to have any meaning for me. Only the tyrant’s slow death would satisfy my blood-lust. Knowing that I will not remain non-violent if provoked, I avoid most protests, and the airport sekurity theater.
I absolutely agree that open violence will do nothing against the current state machine. However, what I struggle with now is defensive violence. I’m completely peaceful. I’m non-violent. But when I’m attacked by the police and the government, what is my response? If they are punching and beating me for committing the serious crime of standing on a sidewalk where I’m not supposed to be, what then?
Sadly, I’m afraid that this country’s government only understands violence and will not respond to anything else in any way. How do you talk to someone who only understands one language and refuses to be taught another?
Ogre, the best hope isn’t in converting agents of the government themselves but rather reaching regular people, those whose compliance they require to maintain their power. By convincing others to stop cooperating so readily, we are stripping them of their power and making their tyranny increasingly burdensome to maintain. It’s definitely possible. I’m watching it happen in Keene at 4:20 pm every day.
Thank you for this important, timely post. Well-said!
KBCraig, restitution is by definition imperfect, because no one can turn back time, but I would say a life is worth a life, so if you murder someone, you’ll be giving all your assets to their loved ones and working for them for the rest of your life. Rape perhaps the same, or at least not much less.
[...] Different Kind of War Dale Everett wrote an important post today in the form of an open letter to our fellow libertarian bloggers who have been espousing [...]
we are stripping them of their power and making their tyranny increasingly burdensome to maintain. It’s definitely possible. I’m watching it happen in Keene at 4:20 pm every day.
How true. I have been watching it in Downtown Keene, everyday for the past week, and Monday they didn’t even bother to send the gendarmes through the crowds, or even bother to show up on the square from what I could tell.
Their police radio chatter from scant days before had even them admitting to themselves that THEY were what agitated the peaceful goings on in Central Square. Liberty has blossomed, it appears and it is indeed beautiful to view up close when it does so.
My experience is the people who talk about their violent response the most are the one’s least likely to fight.
Sitting around talking about some fantasy future chance to use “defensive force”. Is just that a fantasy. Nonviolent resistance is something you can do today, and inspire others to be involved with.
It cracks me up to hear the threats from people that won’t chance getting arrested for a nonviolent misdemeanor or even anonymously hold a sign. Kind of hard to imagine them commiting an act that leads to death or life imprisonment. LOL
Thanks for articulating your point so well Dale.
So, let me get this straight– you all think the State will simply “wither away”?
“A pen, a camera and the truth.”
Boom! Nice one Dale, thanks.
This evolving beyond violence meme is silly and Is out of touch with reality. Violence is a legitamate form of resistance to the state. The only question is of it’s strategic and tatical use and value. Your form of “resistance” means that your ready to lay down and die to make tyrany more “cumbersome”. The Jewish holocaust will give you 6 million examples of how sucessfull that strategy is.
“The only question is of it’s strategic and tatical use and value.”
That’s exactly what I’m addressing. I call anger against the state both “justified” and “pointless”. How did you manage to miss that? And I’m not laying my life down for anyone. That’s your own embellishment. The violent insurgents, on the other hand, almost certainly will and it won’t accomplish anything. Who’s silly and out of touch with reality?
@ AnarchoJesse, I think the state will wither away and die, when enough people stop obeying the government. If enough people stop obeying, then the government is left with two choices. Either imprison the disobedient, and go broke, or ignore them, and everyone else will stop obeying.
The Velvet Revolution was won by music and smile-ins… things they can’t just be crush.
Great essay , thanks .
I think it’s a tough situation , as a persons “education” with what real liberty means … and as we sit and watch the tyranny grow the anger builds in some of us more than others . When I see the videos on youtube of a 72 year old women getting tasered or a paramedic getting choked for doing his job . and just hundreds and hundreds of other examples of unnecessary and unreasonable violence heaped on citizens by the state …. I have to wonder how far it will go before people start seeking some type of revenge against violence being doled out .
So I can understand someone drawing a deep line in the sand but I also see the futility in that . We will never win a gang fight against the government , no matter how righteous one may be … fighting back will always end badly . The state has an endless supply of thugs willing to hurt for it … an endless supply of lawyers to defend its thugs from justice … and no matter how over the top and horrible their actions may be … no matter how many may end up dying as a result of the states actions … the media and those elected to office never seems to bring enough shame on the state to cause it to change its ways . So what good can one man responding to violence with violence achieve ?
One persons words can and has done real damage to groups .. and in my opinion , and no I did not make the move yet …. those that have need to put real space between themselves and those that continually espouse hurting and now even killing in the name of liberty.
Pretty sure I learned the lesson about ‘violence begetting violence’ from Naruto.
http://www.onemanga.com/Naruto/436/06/
No joke.
Our tools are education and persuasion, not coercion and violence. And we should revel in that. Fuck aggression.
The only appropriate response to dealing with the issue is to utilize all available tools at ones disposal. Some of the tools have long term goals. Others have medium range goals, and yet others are meant to remedy short term problems.
Education is a long term goal. As Thoreau wrote in his most famous essay when referring to society absent government, “”That government is best which governs not at all”; and when men are prepared for it, that will be the kind of government which they will have.” The emphasis there is on…. “when men are prepared for it.” In the here and now, some men may be ready for it…. but we cannot apply the same tools to them men who are not ready for it, as they will not respond to it.
Counter economics is both a short term and a medium range tool. It is an effective way for people to gain some liberty right now, but also a good way to deprive the government of some revenue. Even if not many do it, it stills deprives the state of at least some revenue, and it still gives immediate liberty to the actors who have the boldness to ignore unjust laws and carry on market exchanges, though they be technically illegal.
Some opt to utilize civil disobedience in an attempt to remedy unjust legislative initiatives, or to make something so common as a social norm (”normalization”) that the enforces simply choose not to put much effort into enforcing it, and so the law becomes impotent de facto, if not via de jure means. This also is a mid range goal. It is almost never effective in any immediate sense, but through repeated application by many different people, it can influence those in government to finally adrdress some wrongs.
Unfortunately, none of the above tools are appropriate for clear and present danger threats. This is something every person must decide for themselves, as a situation arises, but defense should not be viewed as futile. Nothing is off the table when your life or liberty is in dire jeapordy. If they are coming for you for something trivial, perhaps the little utilitarian devil in you may decide that it is not worth escalating the situation, when you can just fight it in court and maybe take your little slap on the wrist. However, if they intend to come for you and throw you in jail for ten or twenty years for something you know to be unjust, then the little utilitarian devil may just tell you that in this case, fighting back may outweigh twenty long years in jail. And of course, the “principle of the matter” shall always remain that no matter how trivial, self defense is always justifiable to a non strict pacifist.
A nice lil think, Dale, and well-presented. Thanks!
Are we to assume that the actions of the oppressors will remain nonlethal? If we observe action that allowed to continue will result in the death or permanent injury of an innocent, would not the violent interruption of this be warranted? I struggle with this question. I desperately wish never to seriously harm or kill another human but at what cost. I believe I will take the consequences of such action but would still be troubled. I have asked this question here before and not one of you responded. Please do not shrink from this serious concern.
Thank you
I think when groups of us choose to stop state violence as it occurs, that moment, that is when the state will have failed. The monopolistic application of coercion to achieve control over otherwise free people will cease to continue. It will not be from anger or retribution but a group effort to interfere with those state criminals doing state crimes. I do think that time will come.