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Buddhist View of Justice

At a Dharma talk many moons ago the Dharma teacher made this interesting point:

If people truly understood that their actions inevitably bring consequences "for every action there is a reaction", those of sound mind would act responsibly, not out of fear of punishment but out of wisdom. A society guided by this awareness might have little need for police, armies, or courts. Ethical behaviour would come from inner awareness rather than external enforcement.

However because human beings are still imperfect and often unaware, social structures like laws and institutions remain necessary.

Understanding karma can be seen as a path toward a more peaceful society.

A peaceful journey of 1000 kilometers begins with the first wholesome karmic step.

I don't know about such. I know genital mutilation can be culturally / religiously motivated and I can imagine sexual abuse being more rampant in some cultural circumstances, but never heard of the specific example, nor seen any data about it. I have very specific ideas about all the factors that come into play from the nurture side of the story when people engage in abusive behavior like such. I can point fingers to society all day long and write several pages on how all our monsters are just products of their environment and I guarantee that even if some of you are hell-bent on seeing this issue in black and white, it'd all make sense. But at the end of the day, there is agency, there is personal responsibility and everyone is very much responsible for their own behavior. There is a collective fault for pushing people to the edge, after all, we are all conditioned to be pleasure-oriented, from a young age to measure one's worth in success in romantic relationships and libido among other things. But choices are still made and those choices have consequences.

It's a shame wealth and power shields people from consequence, because it only adds to this blind outrage, yet it fails to be constructive. I believe Epstein himself ended up on the registry a while back, yet it didn't stop him from building a network of abuse further. While others like that sometimes got murdered by their neighbours (hailed as heroes), he was still shaking hands with the elite and doing his operations from his private resorts. People are rightfully upset, that politicians and authorities choose to make exceptions when it comes to the privileged, but then again, people think they can take everything that's wrong with these things and pack it into the word "pedophile" (a clinical term) while refuse to acknowledge that the reason for abuse, any kind of abuse is much more universal: ignorance. Ignorance of privacy, of bodily integrity, of boundaries, of agency, of healthy developmental needs. Anyone who learns to avoid these and how to: can be kind to others and anyone who fails to avoid these can do great harm, even if they believe their motivations are pure as snow and they have the support of society behind them.

I am not a Buddhist, as in I've yet to commit to the Dharma, but few things upset me as much as the way society, generally reacts to the suffering of those who they deem deserve it. I often encounter footage of people, sometimes teenagers given life sentences, breaking down in tears and the most average people I walk past the street are cheering and celebrating. Now more and more states are loud about extending the death penalty for this and that and I can tell, after all the damage they do, people still yearn for more, like live tv entertainment executions. It is rather traumatic for me and such intense hatred often makes me lose my will to live.

A life behind bars is wasted. A life taken is wasted. Any family that person had is broken, torn apart. Any family they could've had is lost. If I die because of someone else's fault, how could such devastation honor my memory? They shouldn't remain a danger to others, of course, they should be properly rehabilitated, but I recognize no justice in making people suffer. If they come to regret what they did, they should be able to try and make up for it in some way. And if they don't come to regret it the justice system fails a purpose that is core to its existence as far as I'm concerned.

RobinH I think you make a very good point. Most people’s sense of outrage is more developed than their actual sense of justice, and that outrage spills over into anger and violent retribution. It is well known that people individually can be kind, sensitive, good-hearted, but as a mob can be much more volatile.

I think it’s very interesting with all the information coming to light from the Epstein files, that there has been a lot of outrage but very little actual consequence. It seems that in the structure of society today it is a lot more difficult for action to manifest than in the past. Reputational damage is about as far as it seems to go — I don’t think Deepak Chopra will be selling as many books.