Poemander

In this world the only objective law is the law of balance. It works its way through causes and effects. This law doesn't require justification by reason and is, after all, a 'law in itself' or a 'natural law'. Each cause has a corresponding effect already in existence, there is no waiting, no delay. However, the outcome, despite already in control, is rarely visible to human's eye and may not be felt or realised in it's entirety for a long time if at all. The inability to feel the effects or distinguish the causes does not discount their existence, but only highlights the limitation of the subject. The effect is not necessary targeting solely the same individual, definitely not in isolation. Existence doesn't 'pick and choose', it only knows joint liability, anyone can be responsible for everyone; there is no proportional liability. Several liability is strictly humans' undertaking.

Existence appears discriminate or unjust to a certain individual as the effects are distributed asymmetrically on any separate entity; however, they are a zero sum in it's totality. Therefore, 'fairness' is always restored through balance where the parts are still equal one whole.

The 'fairness' of existence has no concern for the people's concept of fairness. Any individual entity can be rightfully taking full credit as well as full responsibility for everyone's actions combined, no matter what each entity thinks, conceptualises or however allocates this credit among themselves.

Each molecule that forms a clay pot can rightful claim to be this clay pot, no matter whether it is located on the inside or on the outside, at the bottom or the the top of the pot. Should a clay pot cracks, even the molecule not immediately affected by the crack looses its utility together with the molecules along the crack. But does this mean that someone is at fault? Shall they blame those molecules along the crack since they couldn't 'hold' the pot together for it has lost it's utility because they were of inferior quality, different kind, perhaps, or indeed wicked? Shall they otherwise blame the potter, for the imperfection, for not mixing the clay properly or maybe for subjecting it to excess heat?

In the first instance, they will never have a full understanding of what has caused the crack and will always attribute it to the nearest and the most obvious cause, i.e. find a reason. But this will not necessary be the real cause, because the reason is only a justification of the cause and not the cause itself. Now, it is impossible to say whether this crack has an adverse or a beneficial effect on them collectively, unless only subjectively, by interpreting the meaning of an associated reaction (in response or in anticipation) and extending it into a concept of morality. This kind of law is a 'subjective law' or a 'customary law' always requiring justification as it is concerned with the hypothetical utility and thus with the morality. This law is an extrapolation of a common sense.

Secondly, what if there is no utility or it is deemed that there has never been any utility? To begin with, they would have never known their utility, unless only hypothetically. The notion of utility here will be purely dogmatic, primarily required to justify the law. In the world with no utility, at least the obvious one, the most authoritative dogma becomes the source of law. We'll call it in this example the 'dogmatic law'.

Holding potter responsible only means shifting the responsibility and rarely credit even further to the periphery. This is an example of an individual and the societal abstraction packaged in the concept of democratic liberties; however illogical this may sound, institutionalized religions are a living prove of it's existence. The extrapolated result of such society is a “hive mind”.

Unfortunately, this may have sounded somewhat convoluted, but the message should be sufficiently clear and hardly surprising to anyone; whether we call it a 'subjective' or a 'dogmatic' law, it is exclusively nonobjective. If we assume that the link between the causes and the effects is never completely obvious, the issue of justice and fairness becomes a matter of interpretation. It is open to interpretation and thus reliant on some kind of assigned to it purpose. Imagine blind leading the blind – that is our law, people's law. It has no concrete source other than the interpretation of purpose. So, what is utility? Utility is purpose.

What maybe less obvious, though, is that justice has no relationship to utility or purpose; justice is purposeless. Justice doesn't need purpose because it is a 'thing in itself', it needs not to be served because every act or omission to act is paired with an immediate response or effect. This pairing is itself a justice or an objective law propagated by the natural balance. The response is immediate because existence already has all the needed components, or one can say that it is efficient enough to give an immediate answer and immediate justice. It would probably make more sense if you think of it in terms of the entangled particles: a stimuli to one gives an instant effect on the other. But, are we not returning back to the same 'potter' theory, shifting the responsibility away from the individual, only this time to some indistinct 'universal law' or 'natural balance'? I say no, instead, I endlessly expand the scope of individual's footprint, except that it is not some intricate and convoluted web of consequences that the individual is responsible for, but the original intentions. Intentions, “mens rea”, not the acts or the consequences are the measure of justice, and these are the best we have, no matter how obscure.

Do I thus negate the need of people's law as unnecessary, blind, in the light of universal justice? No, the reason being is that people's law too builds into the elaborate web of causes and effects, while not the justice itself, but certainly a part of it in a bigger sense. It is a mistake to think that the rule of law is to establish justice: justice has already been established by the very same act causing the injustice. The rule of people's law is there to provide the emotional convenience and to establish the perceived environment of control.