CommentsONE MAN’S OPINION-The universe of laws is bizarre, obtuse, and shifting. As Natalie Wolchover writes in the New Yorker Magazine, “A Different Kind of Theory of Everything,” while physicists work to understand the universe, their endeavor is shadowed by the Rashomon effect.
The Rashomon effect derives from the 1950 film by Akira Kurosawa where the same murder appears different based upon witnesses’ viewpoints. Thus, human society exists in a mass of complexity. Making sense out of the universe becomes more complicated, when reality may actually vary upon our point of view.
We’ve all heard that Einstein’s Theory of Relativity holds that if an astronaut where to travel away from earth at half the speed of light and then by his own wristwatch return 10 years later, everyone on earth would have greatly aged. His children’s children’s children might be having children. So much for the maxim that time and tide wait for no man. Apparently, time waits for astronauts on spaceships.
Why then are there laws which we cannot evade? When we limit ourselves to certain circumstances, Newtonian physics holds true. Apples will not fall upwards from trees. It does not matter how many anti-gravity laws Congress passes, apples will not fall upwards.
The Search for Natural Law
Philosophers have been searching for some Natural Law inherent in the essence of the universe so that then mankind can enact societal rules that reflect Natural Law. Rather than go back to Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics in the original Greek, we could read Natural Right and History by Leo Strauss (© 1950). For Strauss, the crux was the “ultimate goal of wise action.” (p. 35) That formulation, however, presupposed a teleological universe where some consciousness is working towards some goal. It then follows that mankind cannot fashion wise laws without knowing that goal.
The Natural Right approach almost immediately falls into a fatal trap. The goal of the universe is always what the philosopher wants. Many Natural Rights advocates owned slaves. For them, slavery was natural, and it is per se evil to abolish slavery. For Straussian Conservatives, Gays were evil, and the State must suppress Gays. (Run into a Straussian Conservative in a Gay bathhouse and watch him go into mental disintegration pleading not to tell the GOP, for whom he worked, that you saw him.) Ironically, the search for ultimate truth resulted in ultimate bigotry.
Non-teleological Morality
Suppose the universe is not teleological and it is not working towards any goal, but also operates according to immutable laws. Mankind would still want to find out about those laws. Physicists are not the only people trying to find the laws which we better not break. The Torah was obsessed with the fear that disaster happens when God’s laws are broken, e.g. the Babylonian Exile. Then, the Torah’s dealing with this pressing issue became a quagmire of confusion. Although Yehudah Ha-Levi in The Kuzari (1140 C.E.) claimed that the Torah was esoteric and, read as a whole, it set forth the “ultimate goal of wise action,” no one agrees on the goal. Why? Because esoteric writings are written in code and today people cannot even agree which “code” Ha-Levi was using. However, it does not take a scholar to know that the Torah and then the Christian Bible were concerned with finding the basic law for society.
Religions Agree on One Things
Most religions agree that people should not abuse others: “Love thy neighbor as thyself,” “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you,” “Treat the stranger with kindness and justice,” etc. Secularly, we hear, “Honesty is the best policy.” Oops, did personal morality just go out the window? Is this not the chink in the endeavor to find the ultimate goal – personal self-interest? What about “Goodness is its own reward”? Well, Western civilization is pretty much focused on self-interest as the basis for morality.
What Was the Lesson of Sodom and Gomorrah?
Answer: An unjust society dooms itself to destruction. This theme keeps re-appearing in all civilizations. When bad things happened to the Israelites, a prophet would rise to claim that it was God’s punishment for breaking the covenant. Suppose there is no God, but it is an immutable law of a non-teleological universe that injustice brings destruction? Climate Change does not care how many Fundamentalists claim it is a hoax. The polar ice caps are still melting. Abused children often grow up to be abusers.
The laws of state finance may care when courts incarcerate innocent people because the judges want to hobnob with the 1% who control judicial appointments. The diversion of minorities into prison does not evade the immutable law that when you transfer a huge percent of the population into the uneducated prison population, society loses all the extra wealth which their productivity would have created. The law of state finance says that failure to repair streets results in terrible roads is not waived nor is the law that excessive density wrecks the housing market.
Suppose Natural Right’s Central Thesis Is a Ruse?
Suppose somewhere along the way Strauss jettisoned a teleological approach and instead reframed the ultimate goal as inherent in each human being as “the free flowing of individuality.” (p 323) There is no morality but that which flows from individual men. Translated into everyday life that means laws are to promote the Quality of Life, i.e. the Pursuit of Happiness. Yes, society rests on the foundation of individual inalienable rights.
Laws are not to make a few men vastly wealthy while stifling and incarcerating others. No king, no corrupt city council, no petty tyrant orange or otherwise is above the ultimate goal of free-flowing individuality (inalienable rights). The laws of injustice seem to work slowly. Look how long it took for Garcetti’s destruction of the homes of over 60,000 poor people to result in a Biblical-like plague of rats, fleas and typhus inside LA City Hall. Then look at the people Pharaoh Garcetti and his high priest Herb Wesson blame for the plague. They blame the very people that they made homeless and for whom they refused sanitation services.
Before the City Hall rat plague is over, the FBI descends upon Garcetti etc. with subpoenas. Which is worse for City Hall – rats with fleas or the FBI with subpoenas?
The laws of economic corruption were shrieking out as the huge Oceanwide Project ground to a halt with $60 million in unpaid Mechanics Liens – meaning that the developer had been cheating the workers. If the project is so fantastically wonderful and banked by the Chinese government, why in the world could it be unable to pay what is less than chicken feed to move the project ahead? Most likely, bribery bought the right to build the absurdly massive project which the laws of economics opposed. Excessive density always reaches a point where the laws of economics make the walls come crashing down.
(Richard Lee Abrams is a Los Angeles attorney and a CityWatch contributor. He can be reached at: [email protected]. Abrams’ views are his own and do not necessarily reflect the views of CityWatch.) Edited for CityWatch by Linda Abrams.
