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Yeah, I understand your point, sleaze. I just wondered how individuals imagine their own behaviour would change if they had a unique get-out-of-jail-free card; To what extend Barbeloids feel that state-enforced legal penalties are the only thing standing between them and criminal behaviour; how much we are constrained by their own conscience, morality, squeamishness, etc.
To an extent I have a feeling that such questions are slightly artificial since they are not being asked in the consequence-free environment a ‘get-out-of-jail-free card’ would create, but in an environment subject to both the rule of law and communal censure. People might well say there are things they wouldn’t do even if they could get away with it, they might even believe it, but I have strong, uncomfortable, suspicions that people would behave very differently if they felt able to act on strong emotions without risk to themselves. I also think that a possessing a limitless supply of ‘get-out-of-jail-free cards’ would merely serve to increase to scope crimes ordinary people would commit.
It could well be that you are assuming a one off act of law-breaking, whereas I am thinking more of environments where law and order has broken down.
Isn't it a little harder to condemn the perpetrators of atrocities in Africa and the Balkans if you claim you'd do the same sorts of things yourself if you could get away with it?
This is one of the problems Governments face when prosecuting war crimes – their own moral rectitude. It’s a bit hard to condemn the morality of bombing Coventry on moral grounds while claiming moral superiority for the bombing of Dresden.
Or, to put it another way – how can you personally condemn murder as immoral when you happily admit that you could quite comfortablely ‘beat [someone] to death’ if you knew you could get away with it? |
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