Radio Free Beszel

Lest We Be Barbarians

Alphonse Season 1 Episode 7

"You must pick up the gun to defend civilization against barbarism. Those who pick up the gun are barbarians." — Kenneth Hite

Justice is not only about punishing the perpetrator: it's about ourselves, and who we become. We are what we do, and though what we do may be just, we may not like who we become.

Spoilers for Seven Samurai, The Godfather, Dune, The Empire Strikes Back.

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Good evening. This is Radio
Free Beszel. I am

0:04
Alphonse. Tonight: justice.
Ask philosophers

0:08
about justice and they
will probably tell you

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about fairness. But ask most
people about justice,

0:13
or look what it is in everyday
life, or go back

0:15
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

0:36
says an eye for an eye
a tooth for a tooth.

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I remember hearing once
that one of the

0:42
reasons for the idea
of crime, in other

0:44
words crime against the
state, not against an

0:47
individual, was to stop
vendettas and vengeance.

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When I was eight or nine
years old though, and

0:53
I learned about slavery
from books in school,

0:56
I was horrified. I thought,
Why don't the black

0:59
people enslave the white
people in retribution?

1:04
When I learned about the
Holocaust and how when

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they opened the gas chamber
doors there would be

1:09
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,

1:16
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

1:30
that brought me to realize
how wrong and why

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was a story about capital
punishment. It was some

1:36
man, a murderer I presume,
who was being executed,

1:39
on death row I think in
Texas, in the wee hours

1:42
of the morning. And outside
the prison where

1:45
he was held, people
had gathered. They

1:47
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

2:00
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

2:19
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

2:38
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,

2:47
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

2:57
you, two-year-olds are tough,
they're probably

2:58
a lot tougher than I am,
probably a lot tougher

3:00
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

3:54
- for The Godfather,
for Seven Samurai,

3:56
and for The Empire Strikes
Back. Kenneth Hite,

4:00
a game designer, wrote
many years ago about

4:03
the logic of the western.
He said that society

4:07
needs to be defended from
barbarians. To defend

4:10
from barbarians one must
take up the gun. But if

4:12
one takes up the gun, one
becomes a barbarian.

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And this is the story in
western after western:

4:20
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,

4:29
and in Seven Samurai. Seven
Samurai tells the

4:32
story of a village of peasants
who grow their

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rice crop. In every fall
they harvest, but when

4:39
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

4:48
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

5:36
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

5:44
and makes them unfit for
civilized company.

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The godfather shows what
happens when the violent

5:50
man, the man who takes up
the gun, does not leave.

5:54
Michael at the beginning
doesn't want anything to

5:57
do with the Mafia. He wants
to lead a decent life,

6:00
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

6:07
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

6:47
similar happens in
Dune, by the way,

6:50
when Paul avenges
the death of his

6:52
father and defeats the
evil Harkonnens.

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He becomes a tyrant.
There's a fantastic

6:57
scene, I think in
the second book,

6:59
when Paul's mother Jessica
is landing on the

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surface of the planet,
and as she comes out

7:04
of her ship everybody bows
down and puts their

7:07
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

7:17
who are tardy they mark and
then they go to those

7:19
people and they arrest them
to interrogate them

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and see whether they are
going to challenge the

7:24
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,

7:46
of all places, what happens
in the Empire Strikes Back

7:51
when Luke is fighting Darth
Vader at the end

7:53
of the film. And the Emperor
is watching and

7:56
egging Luke on, telling
him to embrace his

7:58
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

8:07
become the thing that he
hates. And so he lowers

8:10
his weapon to allow Darth
Vader to strike him.

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

8:17
He kills the emperor and
everything is happily

8:19
ever after. But that is the
alternative solution,

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sometimes is sacrifice
- the point being that

8:27
when violence comes, there
is no good solution.

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

8:33
and we can't establish
fairness,

8:35
but we can decide
who we will be,

8:38
and what kind of world we
want to make, and to

8:41
me that's the most important
aspect of justice.

8:46
This is Alphonse for Radio
Free Beszel. Good night.