More violence is the single worst solution
The Moral Principle of Human Respect: To promote happiness, harmony, and prosperity, I will neither initiate violence against others, nor diminish the wealth of others through theft, fraud, or destruction of their property.
The Natural Principle of Human Respect: Human Happiness, Harmony, and Prosperity will always decrease as persons experience the initiation of violence or the theft of their property or time through force or fraud.
The Moral Principle is a pledge. The Natural Principle simply states a truth. There are still at least two categories of unknown:
- What do happiness, harmony, and prosperity look like in your own and each individual’s life?
- What should be done in the case that violence is initiated or wealth is diminished by force, fraud, or destruction?
Concerning the first, this is the great and rare opportunity you have as a living human. Your expression of happiness is unique to you. There are infinite non-violent acts each person can undertake to realize happiness, harmony, and prosperity in their own life. Getting busy with answering this for yourself can help ensure you are never the initiator of violence while leading to incredible gains in value for you and others.
Similarly, concerning the second unknown, there is no one proper way to respond to the initiation of violence or diminishing of your wealth by force or fraud. Justice is a sandbox environment where mistakes will be made, but adaptation is necessary to accommodate for changes in human experience, technology, and human needs over time.
Administering justice looks different between individuals who, say, experience conflict because both reach for the last slice of cake, compared to a case of vehicular homicide. In every case of the Principle being violated, there is a variance in scale, severity, number of people involved, and time differentiation, among other factors.
Just accountability requires each person to be held responsible for their own actions. It is improper to hold a person accountable for another person’s violence or diminishing of wealth.
The perpetuation of violence leads to negative results. Compared to any peaceful resolution, violence on the individual level (a swift punch to get the cake) and systemic level (total war to avenge a homicide) is a distantly undesirable last choice.
I am not arguing that violence is never necessary. Still, the goal of retaliatory violence in the name of justice ought to be peace. The only reason for an act of justice to perpetuate violence is if the initiator of violence continues. It is and ought to be a measure of last resort.
This is my opinion, not a topic the Foundation for Harmony and Prosperity tackles on their website. From my conversations with their team, they do not take a stance on what should be done when the Principle is violated – they are focused on spreading awareness of an idea by which these downstream questions matter less or not at all.
This is where decentralization can help. Communities of consent can exist between any number of people who can agree on a shared set of rules.
