NYPD (New York Pizza Depot) always brings out the best in conversation. Get a pizza, get some buds, eat and talk. I did that yesterday with Mohammad and Scott, two of my labmates and close friends, and we ended up talking for four hours. Scott is a fan of Bill Maher, and in a recent discussion, Maher asked his guests whether or not the US Constitution should be torn up and rewritten. One of the panelists, a conservative, said that he would have reservations with doing so, especially because of the prized Second Amendment, which, for those of you who aren't from the US, gives citizens the right to bear arms. The Second Amendment is still hotly debated, and rightly so. Times have changed since the 1770s and 1780s.
Talk of the Second Amendment brought up the possibilities of uprising against the government, and how and if changes in regime can be peaceful, or if peace is just a dying ideal. The issues of peaceful protests and movements are particularly apt right now, given the very peaceful Occupy movement, as well as the peaceful uprising in Yemen. (I am so fortunate to have been in the presence of Tawakkul Karman, Nobel Peace Prize winner of 2011, just this past Monday.)
I have written about the issues of peace and violence several times, although I have not written about them in contexts of environmental action. Indeed, there are many that do advocate for using violent means, such as the Earth Liberation Front, not against people, but against infrastructure that confines us to this ecologically degrading and oppressive culture. Derrick Jensen, the philosopher, writer, and activist is well known for voicing his belief that things like dams must be taken out through forceful means. He says, "Every morning when I awake I ask myself whether I should write or blow up a dam. I tell myself I should keep writing, though I'm not sure that's right."
When I saw Jensen, an amazing speaker, last winter, I asked him about such sentiments, particularly since violent force is something oppressors use, and this makes me nervous. I can see his point, but it is impossible to deny that once a culture of violence is overthrown with violence, you still have violent means present as an option in the end--an option in debate, an option in action. Violence breeds violence, and arming breeds arming. Just take the example of the most horrific Cold War. Violence is a deep manifestation of our insecurities. Because violence is overtly forceful, it gives us a sense of domination, and of power. We can bulldoze lands, blow the tops off of mountains, frack rocks for natural gas, or electrocute someone for a crime with no remorse. All of these actions in no way preserve the sanctity of life (which many death-penalty-loving, gun-toting people love to talk about), or speak highly of us as ethical and moral agents. Violence for peace makes no sense. Peace, on the other hand, is decidedly peaceful. There can be no violence in peace. Peace may be forceful, steadfast, determined, resolute, and intentional, but in no way can it be violent.
To my mind right now, violent force as a means to a sustainable world sounds eerily similar to the US military's perpetual war for perpetual peace. If we want to live in a world in which something does not exist, do we accept its existence now?
Showing posts with label Second Amendment. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Second Amendment. Show all posts
Wednesday, November 16, 2011
Sunday, February 6, 2011
On the deficiencies of the law
I continue to seek to motivate individual action. Yesterday, I came across the notion of proactive law, which is a growing school of thought, particularly in the European Union. Proactive law is "a future-oriented approach where the goal is to promote what is desirable and ex ante maximise opportunities while minimising problems and risks." This philosophy of law has, it seems, primarily been applied to creating a better business environment for people, such that "an optimal mix of regulatory means...best promote(s) societal objectives..." But it may not be terribly difficult to think about proactive law in the context of environmental law - given that we know there are environmental problems created by the way society functions, we may be able to pass enforceable legislation such that environmental harm is minimised through future societal actions. (There are of course issues with developing a dialogue with nature itself, unless people try to represent the views of nature.) Most environmental laws have been retrospective, setting legal boundaries of action because of past environmental harm. However, these laws do potentially grant authority to regulate future behaviour of people and businesses, just like the Clean Air Act (first adopted in 1970) was judged to be applicable to regulate greenhouse gas emissions a couple of years ago.
There seems to be an inherent contradiction between future-oriented law and the way humans have been behaving so far, because humans will likely continue to behave in the same way in the future. But with our behaviour, we have created over the past few hundred years a society whose understanding of its actions cannot be fully comprehended right now, and may never be. For example, what does it mean for our human relationships that we now have new forms communication that inherently limit time with other people? Such a question is hard to wrap our minds around, and we will not know the full consequences of such a change in momentum until many years have gone by. So how might we be able to create laws that bind us to a desired future outcome? Furthermore, the interesting thing about law is that it is made in the context of its time, given our sensibility of the issues facing us - the US Constitution was drafted in the late 18th century, and many of us know that there are significant issues surrounding the interpretation and validity of the Second Amendment today, which was adopted in 1791.
I write about this, because as I mentioned previously, the sentiments behind the law come out of the weaving of our collective moralities - in the end, the law may lose the force that a few of us might want it to have. But it is clear that personal actions now, in the present, can guarantee that at least our individual exoneration from the behaviour that may degrade the environment or trample on social justice now and in the future. We may never understand the outcomes of our actions given the complex web of interconnectedness today, but choosing not to participate in such behaviour guarantees that at least for us, such proactive law is superfluous and unnecessary.
There seems to be an inherent contradiction between future-oriented law and the way humans have been behaving so far, because humans will likely continue to behave in the same way in the future. But with our behaviour, we have created over the past few hundred years a society whose understanding of its actions cannot be fully comprehended right now, and may never be. For example, what does it mean for our human relationships that we now have new forms communication that inherently limit time with other people? Such a question is hard to wrap our minds around, and we will not know the full consequences of such a change in momentum until many years have gone by. So how might we be able to create laws that bind us to a desired future outcome? Furthermore, the interesting thing about law is that it is made in the context of its time, given our sensibility of the issues facing us - the US Constitution was drafted in the late 18th century, and many of us know that there are significant issues surrounding the interpretation and validity of the Second Amendment today, which was adopted in 1791.
I write about this, because as I mentioned previously, the sentiments behind the law come out of the weaving of our collective moralities - in the end, the law may lose the force that a few of us might want it to have. But it is clear that personal actions now, in the present, can guarantee that at least our individual exoneration from the behaviour that may degrade the environment or trample on social justice now and in the future. We may never understand the outcomes of our actions given the complex web of interconnectedness today, but choosing not to participate in such behaviour guarantees that at least for us, such proactive law is superfluous and unnecessary.
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