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MonkeySphere is stupid law is a good thing that allows for justice ODANU 04/25/2011 All Humans are People;

or Othering, Justice, and the Monkeysphere


http://www.amnottheonlyone.com/all-humans-are-people-or-othering-justice-and-the-monkeysphere/ You wouldn't think that the basic tautology in this title, 'all humans are people', would be controversial, but when you start breaking it down, a lot of people will start quibbling. There was a fairly long thread in Alas, A Blog this week, discussing Sheri Tepper's Strange Horizons, that dealt seriously with the question of incorrigibles. You know, people who don't deserve the same rights as other people. Let me tell you a bit about incorrigibles. For starters, there are none. Human beings are human beings, and some human beings commit acts that other human beings rightly condemn. That doesn't, as much as we much sometimes want it to, put those people outside the realm of human. The word incorrigibles serves as a marker to imply that some people are not as human as others. This concept is known as othering, and it is a powerful tool in the hands of politicians, religious leaders, business leaders, and other who make and report the news. It does not, however, serve the rank and file members of society, though our leaders might want us to believe this. The meta purpose of othering human beings is to allow some humans to gain power at the expense of other human beings. In other words, if you are in the business of trying to convince some human beings that other human beings are not human, you are selling something, and that something isn't good for the humans you're selling it to.It never serves the larger human good to deny rule of law and the process of justice to any human being, no matter what that human is accused of. We learned that lesson once, and it produced the Nuremberg trials. We have since forgotten that all humans are people, and process injustice occurs with the complicity of the highest levels of the United States government. Once define a person as other, it is far easier to then pose a solution to the problem that is not a solution that honors human beings. We find ourselves (as humans do) not caring about justice once an incorrigible has been defined, whether that definition is sex offender or terrorist or gang member (bonus racial subtext!) or felon. Many people never run up against their own othering until one of those solutions is applied to someone they care about. All of a sudden they find themselves running to the authorities, in the awkward position of saying or thinking that the law in question is fine for those other folks, but that the person I know is different. Special. Those rules don't apply. The primary rule of justice is that laws apply to all human beings equally (because all humans are people). By that standard, of course, there has never been a truly just society, and probably there never will be. Human nature stands in the way of justice just as it does any other utopian ideal. Dunbar's number, or the Monkeysphere speaks to why we fail at this. We know, truly know, at most about 150 people in our lifetimes. Those 150 people get under our skin in a way strangers cannot. We know why they do things, we know how they do them, we understand for whom they do them, and even how. We understand the context of their lives. And because of this intimacy, we fail both those inside and outside the Monkeysphere when it comes to justice. Everything is inflated inside the Monkeysphere. When someone does right, we reward and praise it in a way we rarely do for those outside our circle. When they do us wrong, even if it is something we can shrug off in a stranger, we engage that wrongness in a far more personal way. A person in my Monkeysphere who hits me is likely to incur long term dislike or even hatred, and wishes for vengeance instead of justice. If someone within my Monkeysphere is accused of something heineous, but I have no personal knowledge of it, I am more likely to give her the benefit of the doubt, than I would a stranger. Our personal connection to the accused could greatly taint our opinion of the truth, and more importantly, could taint our idea of what justice is for the crime. As human beings began to gather together in groups larger than 150, some thousands of years ago, some bright person came up with the idea of codifying law, such that the same processes of justice as well as the same outcomes affected all people, or at least all of various classes of people. What a nifty idea! If we know

that all people accused of a crime are (for instance) given representation, kept from committing the same crime again while the truth is determined, and tried by a jury of people drawn from the population, we know that in most cases (most meaning more than half) the correct person will be convicted of the crime and innocent people will be turned loose. Because we acknowledge that our justice system isn't perfect, and that those who have been convicted of crimes are nonetheless human (and dwell in someone's Monkeysphere, if not ours), the next step is to define right action after conviction. Human societies have devised many systems for handling people convicted of crimes, ranging from death, to lifelong enslavement, to short term, defined involuntary servitude, to imprisonment, to shunning. Each of these has been effective in various ways, and problematic on others. The next conversation on justice, after the one about process, can involve what to do with those who have been convicted of crimes. But only after we all agree that they are still human. And all humans are people.

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