Dear Pellius,
Might you agree that comparing the job of a defense attorney is a far cry from a Nazi concentration camp soldier walking people into an oven as per his "orders"?
When I look at myself in the mirror, I see a wretched physical being, a partially defeated dreamer and a terribly flawed human being who aspired to live a better moral standard
and not let his "id" get so much the better of him.
But I also see someone who hasn't hurt another with malice, unless deserved. I see someone who has actually helped a few people in his day and most of them, without any
publicity. I see someone who stood up to bullies, be it in the courtroom, the gym, the street or anywhere else where the weak and disadvantaged were preyed upon by
"the more fortunate" and "the pretty people."
I don't believe in God so I need only answer to myself, those whom I love and those whom I respect.
My job is just that. A job that this government has condoned and permitted and has actually been shown to help more persons than it hurts. The guy tearing down trees in order
for us to have more Starbucks or The Pope going to Africa and telling them not to practice birth control seem to me to do much more damage than me perhaps getting more lenient
deals for those who transgress the law.
I can live with myself and the internal struggles I face each and every day have nothing to do with some client who may or may not become a recidivist after I am done with my job.
I don't control the free will of others. Let the State do their job correctly and we will have much less to worry about.
Harley
I was hoping you weren't going to imply that I was making a moral equivalence with Nazis to what you do. That's why I left out the qualification since I though it was obvious that nobody would do that. I was making the point that just because something is your job and/or you are under orders it doesn't relieve one of the personal responsibilities of that act.
And that is one of the main difference between one who believes they have to answer to a value system outside of themselves with one who only answers and is accountable only to themselves. When a person only has to answer to himself they can always do a little hand waving and justifying as to why they are the exception. I don't trust human nature. And why I don't want people to make their own rules for themselves. One's value system simply becomes situational ethics with a lot of exceptions so that one can feel good about one's self. One may not trust other's nature but they themselves are different. We are always the exception to the rule.
Should that be the goal in one's life? To feel good about yourself? What if you ask did I do a good thing? Did I make the world a better place? Was justice done? If you get a person off for a crime that you just know in your heart he did. If you kill an innocent person because it was your job. Did you do a good thing? Is the world just a little bit better because of it?
It doesn't matter whether or not there is any "malice" in hurting or not hurting anyone. Bertrand Russell remarked in his book, "
Unpopular Essays, “Most of the greatest evils that man has inflicted upon man have come through people feeling quite certain about something which, in fact, was false.”
I truly doubt that Pol Pot or Stalin got up every morning and said to themselves, "OK, so how can I make the world an even more miserable place? How can I increase the suffering of people throughout the world?" (And I'm not...sigh, comparing you to Pol Pot or Stalin).
How one feels about what they do is less important than the results and consequences of what they do.
I don't mean to imply in any way that you don't do good in this world. We've all experience injustice and, at least for me, it drives me nuts and I don't want to stand for it, I never forget it and stews in me constantly. I just want to know that when one is called upon to defend the indefensible does one put their humanity on the shelf or compartmentalize. I don't doubt you are at peace with what you do. When one essentially makes their own moral rules and answers only to themselves it's practically inevitable. But is that necessarily a good thing? To always be sure that when all is said and done and the smoke clears that one is positive in their righteousness. Does a bodybuilder after winning the Mr. O look at himself and say that it's done. He's the best. He's perfect. There is nothing more to do. Does a fighter, once he wins the belt; now can stop learning, refining, polishing, advancing? Is one, or should one, ever really be completely at peace?
This is not an attack on your character. It's just an opportunity for me, and all of us, to get a perspective from one who has to live with these moral dilemmas in real life with real life and death consequences, if in fact they are even dilemmas at this point.
Correcting an injustice is a great, great thing you do. A great thing. The injustice and unfairness in this world is the number one thing that gnaws and eats away at me about this world. Why I think God, if he truly is omnipotent, did a bad job and makes me question if he truly is good. Even as a kid I remember the phrase I used most often, "It's not fair!" And the reply was always, "Life isn't fair."
But why?
“In the little world in which children have their existence, whosoever brings them up, there is nothing so finely perceived and so finely felt as injustice.”
― Charles Dickens, Great Expectations
