Lest We Be Barbarians

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Good evening. This is Radio
Free Beszel. I am

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Alphonse. Tonight: justice.
Ask philosophers

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about justice and they
will probably tell you

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about fairness. But ask most
people about justice,

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or look what it is in everyday
life, or go back

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in history and it's mostly
about punishment.

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That's what courts do
after all. They hand

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out sentences more than
anything else.

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If you go back to the code
of Hammurabi 3,700 years ago,

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it says that if you build
a house and it falls

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on a man's son and kills
him, then that man has

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the right to kill your
son. The Old Testament

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says an eye for an eye
a tooth for a tooth.

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I remember hearing once
that one of the

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reasons for the idea
of crime, in other

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words crime against the
state, not against an

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individual, was to stop
vendettas and vengeance.

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When I was eight or nine
years old though, and

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I learned about slavery
from books in school,

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I was horrified. I thought,
Why don't the black

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people enslave the white
people in retribution?

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When I learned about the
Holocaust and how when

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they opened the gas chamber
doors there would be

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a pile of bodies, that people
had climbed on top

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of one another to try to
get the last bit of air,

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I thought, Why does the
German language exist?

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You can't kill the German
people, but you can

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extinguish the culture
that did this thing.

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At least that's what they
thought at the time.

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But I was wrong. And I think
one of the things

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that brought me to realize
how wrong and why

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was a story about capital
punishment. It was some

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man, a murderer I presume,
who was being executed,

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on death row I think in
Texas, in the wee hours

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of the morning. And outside
the prison where

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he was held, people
had gathered. They

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were waiting for word
that he was dead

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because they wanted to
celebrate. And I realized,

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this is the worst thing
of all in a way:

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to let the criminal
who degrades his

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humanity have us bring
down our humanity too.

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And I thought that's terrible.
Do I want to

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live in a society where people
are bloodthirsty?

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Bloodthirstiness is what
leads to murder. It's

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what leads to violence.
We can have justice,

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but if we have too much
justice maybe we'll

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need more because more bad
things will happen.

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The conclusion I have
come to is that

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the most important
thing in justice,

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the most important matter,
is to protect

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yourself - to protect
your own humanity,

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to not allow the desire for
revenge, as just and

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as fair as it may be, to
get in the way of who we

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are. Because we are what
we do: not what we say,

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but what we do. And this affects
other people too.

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This is why we are told not
to spank our children:

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not because it's going to
hurt them - I'll tell

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you, two-year-olds are tough,
they're probably

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a lot tougher than I am,
probably a lot tougher

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than you are, they can handle
the physical pain

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- they may have trouble with
the emotional pain,

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but the thing that
we teach when we

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spank is not the thing
we wish to teach.

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If a boy hits another boy
and we spank him for

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it, the lesson we teach
him is not "don't hit":

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it's "violence solves
problems." And

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that's exactly the wrong
thing to teach.

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So just as with justice,
if we have justice in

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society that exacts vengeance
through violence,

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that iteaches all of us
the same lesson that we

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teach if we punish our children
with violence.

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Which isn't to say there
aren't times when

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violence is needed, but we
must be very careful,

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because that violence
corrupts us. Our

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culture and our traditions
know this.

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I'm going to have spoilers
for a few movies

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- for The Godfather,
for Seven Samurai,

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and for The Empire Strikes
Back. Kenneth Hite,

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a game designer, wrote
many years ago about

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the logic of the western.
He said that society

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needs to be defended from
barbarians. To defend

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from barbarians one must
take up the gun. But if

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one takes up the gun, one
becomes a barbarian.

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And this is the story in
western after western:

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that the gunfighter fights,
but then he's not

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fit to be in society anymore.
That's the story in

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Forgiven. That's the story
in High Noon, in Shane,

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and in Seven Samurai. Seven
Samurai tells the

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story of a village of peasants
who grow their

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rice crop. In every fall
they harvest, but when

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they harvest bandits come
and steal the rice

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and leave them with just enough
to survive. And so

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the villagers get together.
They scrape together

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all the little bits of wealth
they have and they

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hire a few wandering samurai
to help them out.

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And the samurai come
and they prepare the

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town's defenses, and one
of them, a young man,

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falls in love with a village
girl, and she with

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him. And then the bandits
come, and the samurai

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defeat them, although
some of them fall and

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are buried on the hillside
above the town.

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And then at the end
of it, when the

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young man turns to
the young woman,

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she won't face him. She
goes with her people

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to the rice paddies to
look after the crop.

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The villagers don't want
the samurai anymore.

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They don't want men of violence
in their society.

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These men who sacrificed so
much, who have so little,

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who lost their friends and
are now lonely, are

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cast out. Because that's
the logic of what i

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would call the outlaw hero.
That's the logic that

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Ken Hite describes. These
men are barbarians. The

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violence that they do corrupts
them in a sense

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and makes them unfit for
civilized company.

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The godfather shows what
happens when the violent

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man, the man who takes up
the gun, does not leave.

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Michael at the beginning
doesn't want anything to

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do with the Mafia. He wants
to lead a decent life,

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a family life with his
fiancee Kate. But

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when his father's life
is threatened,

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he goes to protect him
and then to exact

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revenge against the men
who tried to kill him.

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In order to achieve justice
he takes up the gun.

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And the result by the end
of the movie is that

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he has replaced his father.
He has become the new

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godfather, and a more terrible
one than the old.

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And in the final scene
he is in a room with

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his top lieutenants, and
the door is closed and

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Kate is shut out. And we
see this from Kate's

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point of view, that she
is excluded from this

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men's world of violence.
But on the other hand

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Michael himself has sacrificed
everything that

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he had hoped for at the
beginning of the movie,

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and i don't think that
he will ever be happy.

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The same thing,
or something

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similar happens in
Dune, by the way,

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when Paul avenges
the death of his

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father and defeats the
evil Harkonnens.

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He becomes a tyrant.
There's a fantastic

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scene, I think in
the second book,

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when Paul's mother Jessica
is landing on the

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surface of the planet,
and as she comes out

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of her ship everybody bows
down and puts their

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faces to the ground to honor
her. And her guards,

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the heroes we've read about
through the books,

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watch the crowd to see
who is slow. And those

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who are tardy they mark and
then they go to those

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people and they arrest them
to interrogate them

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and see whether they are
going to challenge the

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regime. And anyone who runs
is shot on the spot.

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So that's what happens when Paul
is the hero who doesn't leave,

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who stays part of the
society instead of

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recognizing that his violence
has disfigured him.

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There is another solution
to this dilemma, and

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that solution is sacrifice.
And that's actually,

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of all places, what happens
in the Empire Strikes Back

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when Luke is fighting Darth
Vader at the end

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of the film. And the Emperor
is watching and

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egging Luke on, telling
him to embrace his

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hate so that he can strike
down his father.

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Luke realizes that if
he does that he will

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become the thing that
he fights. He will

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become the thing that he
hates. And so he lowers

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his weapon to allow Darth
Vader to strike him.

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And of course, it being
Hollywood, Vader doesn't.

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He kills the emperor and
everything is happily

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ever after. But that is the
alternative solution,

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sometimes is sacrifice
- the point being that

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when violence comes, there
is no good solution.

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All we can decide is not
how the world will be,

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and we can't establish
fairness,

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but we can decide
who we will be,

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and what kind of world we
want to make, and to

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me that's the most important
aspect of justice.

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This is Alphonse for Radio
Free Beszel. Good night.