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May 18, 2004

The Impossible Superhero

I've been playing a lot of City of Heroes lately, and have come to the obvious conclusion that fighting crime and injustice is an impossibility. To do so, one would first have to establish a definition of crime to fight. Then one would have to adjust said definition for international law. Follow up by apprehending the multitudinous amount of criminals, and finally have enough faith in the truth and fairness of the justice system to properly prosecute the offenders. Let's break that down a bit.

Defining crime and injustice is impossible because it's an endless array of splitting hairs and line drawing. What it comes down to is scale. Let's look at stealing as an example. Assuming a superhero could tell, just by looking at you, whether you were a thief. Do they take you in for prosecution for using company resources to print out a personal email? How about for stealing company payroll by using work hours and a work phone for making a local personal call? If that hero brought every one of those petty thiefs in, the justice system would overflow more than it already is. And if they didn't, isn't that essentially saying "I know you're a thief, but there are bigger fish to fry, so I'll let you off to do it again." And what about "injustice?" How many people would be prosecuted for wrongly warring against another nation? Is the soldier following orders to be prosecuted? The "hands" are only doing the evil act the "brain" has instructed, but the evil act couldn't be done without the "hands," so are the "hands" responsible as well? Sadly, common sense rings a resounding YES.

Now take this impossible definition and modify it to support international law. Laws conflict--so which is the correct (aka prosecutable) law? Do women have the right to vote, or not? Is it legal to strike someone or not? Is your own death to be celebrated if you kill people who don't believe in the same gods/saviors/etc. as you or not? Who is "right?"

Following our roadmap to crime prevention, we now assume we have some sort of international definition of crime. I'd have to venture that of the 6+ billion people on this earth, there would be more criminals than people to process and prosecute them. And you can't support the hypocracy that already exists of criminals prosecuting criminals. That would be a prosecutable injustice and would not follow in our final step of utilizing a fair and truthful prosecution system.

So how does all of this fit together? It doesn't. How do we establish a justice system to fight crime? We can't. What, then, are the police of the world doing? Living the impossible dream. What, if anything can we do to solve this dilemna? Not nothing.

There is one mandatory step in bringing justice to the human race: abolish religion. Without religion, many laws would be pointless nods for fictional characters. Without religion, there would be no injustices committed under the fog of war known as "morality." Without religion, ambiguity would be based on syntax rather than belief. Without religion, people would be forced to believe in themselves and could understand that change, justice, truth and right all start from within. Without religion, the number of acts considered criminal would be shattered.

Without religion, this world would be a lot less fucked up.

Posted at May 18, 2004 02:44 PM | Rants and Opinions

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