Illegal Operations
Over the last 35 months or so, I've become a lot more acquainted with the local penal code than I'd ever thought I would be after I put my dreams of law school away so very long ago. That has relevance to my current research as I look at the motivations and actions of many of the key players. You see, following on from my previous post in which I wrote about the punishment-reward and the altruistic motivations of the human brain, it only remains for me to make the connection between those concepts and the concepts of traditional virtue.
The punishment-reward motivation is dominated by the virtue called justice or fairness; the altruistic motivation is dominated by the virtue called mercy or grace. Each virtue has two faces.
In the former, two manifestations dominate: justice, in which people want everyone to suffer equally as some benchmark, rule or code allows; and fairness, in which people want everyone to suffer proportionally with respect to some other standard or benchmark. These manifestations can result in injustice or unfairness simply because the scale is actually bipolar and extensible in either direction; negative justice (in which not everyone suffers appropriately) is seen as injustice.
The latter also has two manifestations: mercy, in which an appropriate punishment is withheld; and grace, in which an inappropriate reward is given. 'Appropriate' and 'inappropriate' here of course are seen in comparison with the codes or laws implicit in what we have referred to as justice or fairness. In other words, mercy is unjust and grace is unfair, as far as strict legalistic approaches are concerned.
In practice, humans tend to temper one approach with the other. The problem is that as far as humans are concerned, overuse of one approach tends to corrupt the accuracy of the other.
This extends into the realm of explanations which people give for various phenomena. For example, consider the case of a man who has had a narrow escape from death. A justice/fairness explanation would be, "I survived because it would not be just or fair if I died just yet." A mercy/grace explanation would be, "I survived not through any personal virtue and I should be grateful."
In both cases, the man can rightly say that he has in effect a 'second chance'. It would be clear to observers exactly what kind of second chance he thinks he has from the way he behaves. If it is business as usual, then he clearly feels that he has the 'mandate', because of natural justice, to continue in his usual behaviour. If it is a radical change in favour of more qualitative approaches, then he clearly has a bit more of an altruistic approach.
It is of course not as cut and dried as all that. People are a lot more complex, and most of us will not adhere strictly to a code of rules or laws; neither will most of us totally scorn such regulations. Which brings us to the question of what an illegal operation is, given such a human context.
In computer science or mathematics, an illegal operation is one which is either proscribed by definition, or which has no definition at all. In medicine, I suppose an illegal operation would be surgery in which the release papers have not been signed or other conditions have yet to be met. The term 'illegal' can actually mean 'unlawful' as well as 'for which there is no law', unless it is in law, where 'illegal' means 'proscribed by the legal code'. In the more complex human context of occupational interaction, there are comparatively fewer clear-cut cases.
It's interesting though to see that for altruistic institutions, case-by-case illegalities tend to be more common. If the theory is correct, this is because an altruistic institution has to function more on a mercy/grace paradigm than a justice/fairness one. The problem is when the altruistic institution is no longer altruistic, but still retains the counterlegal paradigm. At this point, it become a hotbed of deliberately illegal operations justified by all kinds of wild claims about the greater good.
These last 12 months have been an education in that regard. I've had all kinds of illegal threats and manipulations observed and catalogued, with apparently no end in sight, within my research area. They don't fit into my dissertation, but they might one day fit into some beautiful paper on institutional dynamics.
The punishment-reward motivation is dominated by the virtue called justice or fairness; the altruistic motivation is dominated by the virtue called mercy or grace. Each virtue has two faces.
In the former, two manifestations dominate: justice, in which people want everyone to suffer equally as some benchmark, rule or code allows; and fairness, in which people want everyone to suffer proportionally with respect to some other standard or benchmark. These manifestations can result in injustice or unfairness simply because the scale is actually bipolar and extensible in either direction; negative justice (in which not everyone suffers appropriately) is seen as injustice.
The latter also has two manifestations: mercy, in which an appropriate punishment is withheld; and grace, in which an inappropriate reward is given. 'Appropriate' and 'inappropriate' here of course are seen in comparison with the codes or laws implicit in what we have referred to as justice or fairness. In other words, mercy is unjust and grace is unfair, as far as strict legalistic approaches are concerned.
In practice, humans tend to temper one approach with the other. The problem is that as far as humans are concerned, overuse of one approach tends to corrupt the accuracy of the other.
This extends into the realm of explanations which people give for various phenomena. For example, consider the case of a man who has had a narrow escape from death. A justice/fairness explanation would be, "I survived because it would not be just or fair if I died just yet." A mercy/grace explanation would be, "I survived not through any personal virtue and I should be grateful."
In both cases, the man can rightly say that he has in effect a 'second chance'. It would be clear to observers exactly what kind of second chance he thinks he has from the way he behaves. If it is business as usual, then he clearly feels that he has the 'mandate', because of natural justice, to continue in his usual behaviour. If it is a radical change in favour of more qualitative approaches, then he clearly has a bit more of an altruistic approach.
It is of course not as cut and dried as all that. People are a lot more complex, and most of us will not adhere strictly to a code of rules or laws; neither will most of us totally scorn such regulations. Which brings us to the question of what an illegal operation is, given such a human context.
In computer science or mathematics, an illegal operation is one which is either proscribed by definition, or which has no definition at all. In medicine, I suppose an illegal operation would be surgery in which the release papers have not been signed or other conditions have yet to be met. The term 'illegal' can actually mean 'unlawful' as well as 'for which there is no law', unless it is in law, where 'illegal' means 'proscribed by the legal code'. In the more complex human context of occupational interaction, there are comparatively fewer clear-cut cases.
It's interesting though to see that for altruistic institutions, case-by-case illegalities tend to be more common. If the theory is correct, this is because an altruistic institution has to function more on a mercy/grace paradigm than a justice/fairness one. The problem is when the altruistic institution is no longer altruistic, but still retains the counterlegal paradigm. At this point, it become a hotbed of deliberately illegal operations justified by all kinds of wild claims about the greater good.
These last 12 months have been an education in that regard. I've had all kinds of illegal threats and manipulations observed and catalogued, with apparently no end in sight, within my research area. They don't fit into my dissertation, but they might one day fit into some beautiful paper on institutional dynamics.
Labels: Institutions, Justice, Mercy, Paradigms, Psychology, Social Sciences
etched with acid at 8:12:00 pm
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