Pervading the country today is a throw-back to the daybreak of time when man's only companionship was a crude weapon to preserve what his animal stimulus forebode was a confused identity. Citizens of these "united" states devolve to primitive foundations by yielding to radical assertions that the enemy is government and welfare. They have lost all sight of their state of grace handed down by the founding father's contract with progeny. They are destructive secessionists and imperil the commonwealth.

Before humane consciousness began to seep into the collective skulls of developing civilizations there could not have been right or wrong beyond that of the decree of nature's might. Territorial right, no doubt, was established early, but if a more powerful clan wanted another's turf it was there for the taking. If the more powerful savage wanted another's mate, she too was there for the picking. Surely, possessions of any kind were wrenched over one's dead body. The right to life in general — but for instinctive preservation, and perhaps an instinctive love of the immediate family — could not have been more than a glimmer. From mankind's early dawn to now there has been this struggle between self and other, clan and community, nation and globe.

Not until a clearer understanding of martial commandments designed for collective preservation in order to rid the early world of self-destruction was a system of stern discipline and variable punishment ambivalently introduced. Martial commands grew proportionately with the perception of value in property and life. It was not until advancing civilization developed a social contract among men, the precursor to constitutional law, rather than between God and Man, did questions and decision-making of a primitive charitable nature enter the stage of justice to lighten somewhat the mean spirit. The chopping block was not as bloody; stealing grain did not warrant cutting off a hand. The hangman was not kept as busy; stealing a pig was not worth a human life.

Further advances of law introduced postulations on the quality and goals of life laying the groundwork for debate, and subsequently, proportionate to the growing complexity of social transactions, a keener sense of justice was brought into play. Christian doctrine democratizing the soul brought on a more serious level of altruism and forgiveness, however grossly ignored, to lodge in the recesses of conscience among the more enlightened of the powerful and gradually some value was placed on the less fortunate — the weak, the disabled, the poor — entitling them to minimal givens, if not rights.

When it became evident that gray-line causes and motives for transgressions, conflicts, and shortcomings in the human complex, the relatively innate maxim of altruism-forgiveness in relationship to loved ones was adapted to play a minimal rôle in rendering public justice. Loving one's enemies went too far; but it was possible to sweeten justice with respect to a lame or hungry child who stole a walking stick or bread, by perceiving, with minimal emotion, the child and perhaps with reluctant modification, as the judge or sheriff's own.

Why history's complicated thought-process of tempering justice with mercy? Surely, there still prevails enough barbarians and terrorists to justify sterner justice. Obviously, the quality of mercy did not initially grow out of benevolence, but out of the concept of preserving the species for its potential value. Some wise ancient observed the animal kingdom and wondered why as a whole virtually all species dwelled in relative harmony within their kind, but also noted that, at least from his standpoint, there was little individuality among other species in contrast to the many aggressive selves of his own species that led to continual conflict for domination. The ancient tempered his own aggressiveness from observing the mother's benevolence toward her young. Thus, might gave way to right with the gradual concession and acknowledgment of the species generic frailty that perhaps required some attention not unlike a mother to a child. Humankind thus crawled from the jungle with its antennae fixed to the beam of coöperation for more widespread preservation and thereby weaken the relentless chain of survival of the fittest.

To achieve this end, the altruistic-forgiveness principle of the self deeply imbedded in the alter ego had to be transmuted to the other. When one violates another, his primitive self-love dictates that it is his right to might. When and if it occurs to him that self-love is a contradiction in that it precludes the very same narcissistic leaning of the other, either he denies the transgression out of shame, or immediately appeals to God or a super identity for mercy or forgiveness to redeem his soul. So, too, he carries the generosity unto himself to the gratification of the other when his consciousness of self-gratification broadens to include its fruits to a loved one. Awakened thus by the shame of shortcoming and the haste to forgive the self for human weakness evolves a sense of inherent value — if not a given good, within the self — that all of the civilized domain must of necessity possess, then it must logically follow that it exists in others regardless of apparent misdemeanor. When caught publicly in a shameful act, he cries out for mercy in order to restore his dignity. At least for an instant the cry is joined with a genuine willingness to sin no more. There is no difficulty within the narrow matrix of narcissism for the individual in trouble himself to see clearly the natural impulse to forgive and to forget. Similarly when the individual is crushed by sudden misfortune, he clearly perceives the value of altruistic assistance from the other.  

Still, there is great resistance within the self to carry this over to the other who transgresses or cries for help because the range of forgiveness or altruism is illogically shortened in applying it to the natural right of others, just as the self, prone to forget its own transgression, closes its mind in order to build a cocoon of self-righteousness. Even Jesus was not driven to forgive the money-changers because he could not rid his psyche of the haunting belief when one does that of Caesar he is Caesar — just as there can never be forgiveness by the Jews for the old generation of Germans who did indeed do that of Hitler. In the latter case, however, it is ironic that the Jews blinded by their own self-righteous indignation do not hold themselves accountable too for their cowardice and lack of leadership in facing up to the handwriting on the wall long before Hitler shocked the world. Nor does the outside world hold itself accountable for this monstrous atrocity that could have been avoided or at least minimized. Yet one could go on in this vein forever: where were the rest of the self-righteous Russians and Iraqis when Stalin and Saddam unleashed their terror; why didn't the Somalians themselves stand up like men and revolt to insure food for their children; where were the early Americans when the Founding Fathers declared independence and "overlooked" the blacks; where was the American conscience during the systematic annihilation of the Indian? The "quality of mercy" can indeed be "strained" when applied to the alien other.

With rampant crime and abuses stealing the headlines today, it is wise to take a look into the peripheral implications of crime, punishment and mercy, which befuddle the mind and cause eruptive reactions, such as build more prisons, throw away the key, capital punishment, or the other side of the coin — bleeding heart judges and parole-bent liberals. These attitudes in themselves are not the problem, but their tail-chasing implications are. There are judges who indeed possess the wisdom of Andy Hardy's father and render light sentences with caution, but there are too many who are just politicians who render sentences in conjunction with the bed count in prisons. Parole is a good when granted to the deserving and not, again, to free space in prisons. Capital punishment is for the obvious incorrigible and those whose verdicts are based on patent evidence beyond all doubt, along with those who profess their right to die.

Whatever, these would be irrelevant except that implicit and ironic in these heated arguments is the proclivity not to face up to the causal relationships of all problems in the imperfect state of a nation, such as the symptomatic assertions of the '94 election, such as welfare mothers are the mantra for problems, or the contact for America the wherewithal. The visceral impulse of the mean spirit applies not only to crime but other transgressions and aberrations of the body politic that sway from a dictated norm of circumstance and state of being, such as mandates in behalf of the disabled, the meek and the poor. For it is in the flawed makeup of civilization to demonize anything that disrupts the fine-tuning of the norm, whether it be natural phenomenon, welfare, war or bad health and therefore tertiary to this is the ancestral impulse to resist tweaking the dial to enhance the signal of justice in behalf of the other, unable to match the skills of those who sit in judgment.

Copyright © 2004 Richard R. Kennedy All rights reserved. Revised: February 22, 2004.