Before Moses ordered “Thou shalt not kill” was murder okay? Did not human reason already intuit that it was bad to take a life in virtue of the instinct of self-preservation in the other as well as the self? — doubtless. Nevertheless, there were those of the “others” who did not go beyond the perception of self-survival, thus failing to take into account the other guy’s rights. As a matter of fact, this type, was all too aware of self-preservation as a powerful tool in getting others to follow orders of the stronger who would unquestionably take their lives if they did not. Moses, therefore, knew that barbarism was inherent in man and formal commandments had to be announced.
Our founding fathers felt the same need in announcing it was self-evident that all men are created equal and endowed with inalienable rights to justice and a protected life. Before the feminist objects, the implication of by “men” was also their families. Obviously there was no such implication for the blacks. Still, it was a boon to rudimentary justice at the time, and once it was out there, modifications would transpire. Still, implicit in “equal” was also variables of equality and consequently the acknowledgment of unfortunate inequality. Just as there are those who are born with good lucks, there are those born with deeper intelligence or into wealth, which may be transvalued into cunning or power, blocking the transition to respect of the other’s inferior intelligence, or misfortune.
It may have taken Darwin for the world to note “survival of the fittest,” but surely the human race was all too familiar with its practice from the dawn of time because of the overwhelming power of the self within itself, even though it continually ganged up with like-others to add insurance to self-preservation and — sizing up its superiority — hopefully gain by craft and dominance. This is the nature of not only the tyrant, the godfather of state, but those in the sphere of commerce, culture, crime, love, and labor.
This nature presupposes conflicts in the realm of humanity no different from competition among animals. As Hume would say: man is in “competition for scarce goods” and because of the scarcity of benevolence competition is fierce. This in part, is justified by utilitarian thinking that the good that is generated might well outweigh the bad. Because of competitive slavery throughout the world, the slaveholders in this nation justified their existence, particularly with the perverse belief that blacks were not considered totally human and therefore equally unequal.
This slave mentality still exists round the globe and explains not only the primitive cultures but the ostensibly advanced societies under authoritarian rule — equals over unequals. Had the Germans in the early 30s understood that a super-race meant enslavement of the rest of the world, and rather opted to use its culturally endowed supra intelligence in defending its painfully slow, but progressive democratization, subsequent horror would not have materialized. If the Russians were capable of bloody sacrifice in overthrowing the Czar how could they not risk overthrowing Stalin? — predominantly peasantry, it still had a strong culture, though not equal to that of Germany. How could not the Iraqis overthrow Saddam? Would storming the palaces even come close to the untold deaths executed by the regime? And what kind of mind-set in Palestine would take them to the streets to “mourn” the arrest of Saddam Hussein, but that of an unthinking brute slave held captive by Arafat?
Apparently and ironically, a sense of justice springs from a state already conscious of injustices but tempered by reason. It is apple and oranges in comparing the harm Britain wreaked on the thirteen colonies to Saddam’s devastation of Iraq. Of course, it is heart-rending that our founding fathers ignored the growing pressure from Britain’s abolitionists — sadly, in fact, it could have been one of the subliminal factors in declaring independence. That said, the over-riding factor, in spite of its faults, was British Enlightenment, eroding slave mentality and stirring the juices of an independent democracy in which flowered the administration of justice.
Copyright © 2003 Richard R. Kennedy All rights reserved. Revised: December 16, 2003