Related Link » Daughter Calls Pilot in Texas Plane Crash a HeroIf we accept the premise that civilization is preferable to the law of the jungle, it behooves us to understand that civilization comprises a set of laws, too. Moreover, if civilized law is intended to improve humanity's condition in a way that is generally accepted to be preferable to that which governs life in the wild, we need to understand how it is structured. In particular, we need to know whence it flows.
“AUSTIN, Texas — The daughter of a man who crashed his small plane into an Internal Revenue Service building called her father a hero for his anti-government views but said his actions, which killed a tax service employee, were "inappropriate". Joe Stack's adult daughter, Samantha Bell, spoke to ABC's "Good Morning America" from her home in Norway. Asked during a phone interview broadcast Monday if she considered her father a hero, she said: "Yes. Because now maybe people will listen." Authorities say Stack, 53, targeted the IRS office building in Austin last week, killing employee Vernon Hunter and himself, after posting a ranting manifesto against the agency and the government.”
— ‘February 22, 2010 (AP)’
In the beginning, before the concept of law was even articulated by our ancestors, there evolved human cognition. But that seems to be an unnecessarily primitive starting point for our quest. Lets advance our evolutionary trek by several thousand millennia, to the point at which a non-negligible fraction of the population extant had the capacity to reason. I submit that a useful starting point for civilized behavior begins with humanity's ability to reason with each other.
Despite the very human inclination for deception, the ability to reason can, and does, lead to the establishment of codify-able legal structures. It is, therefore, not surprising that a fundamental underpinning of our own American system of justice has a very special place reserved for the concept of "beyond reasonable doubt".
How widespread is the understanding that acceptable rules of civilized engagement derive from the ability to reason? Sadly, the anecdotal evidence is disheartening. What should be intuitively obvious, even to adults currently living in Scandinavia, appears to be as ephemeral as the elements of moral relativism.
Accordingly, the adult daughter, of a deranged man bent on publicizing his personal grievance by an act of terrorism, considers his action "inappropriate", albeit excusable, even "heroic", in the furtherance of his personal agenda.
This, I submit, is a perversion of reason.
Post #1,140 The Quest for Civilization's Headwaters — A Status Report
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