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Chapter Six: Justice and Injustice—From Lollipops to Hitler
Donald (slowly, carefully starting to put together many pieces of new information and think about them in a more understandable way): Yes, let’s do that. Justice is what? Treating men according to how they act? Rewarding good people—and punishing the bad ones.
Donna: And making the reward or punishment fit how good that man is, or how bad his actions were.
Donald: Yes, and injustice is refusing to treat people according to how they act—failing to reward the good and/or punish the evil. Or worse: punishing the good and rewarding the evil.
Neville: OK, I’ll accept that as a rough working definition. And I continue to maintain that there are many cases where treating others unjustly benefits a person, while treating them justly harms him.
Donald (smiling sadly): Don’t you see the principle yet?
Donna (starting to see where her husband is going): Oh, right. Of course.
Neville: What principle?
Donald: That morality, not immorality, serves a man’s long-term self-interest. So that justice—just like productivity and honesty—benefits an individual. And injustice, just like being unproductive and dishonest—harms him. Let’s start with a few very extreme examples of injustice, and then move to your example. Then I think we’ll have a better context to reach the broader principle. OK?
Neville: Sure.
Donald: Perhaps the most evil man of human history was Adolf Hitler. His regime brutally conquered large portions of the world, rained destruction on numerous nations, and murdered tens of millions of innocent victims. His rule represented injustice on a vast, global scale. What was the result in his own life? Briefly, he held life and death power over hundreds of millions—every dictator’s ultimate dream. But then the free countries finally stood up to him in defense of their own liberty, and the situation quickly became desperate. His last days were spent cowering in an underground bunker while his worst enemies closed the noose around his hideout and, in effect, his neck. In a few short years, his power shriveled from encompassing virtually the entire European continent to a few square yards of a dingy rat-hole. He had just turned fifty-six when he died—by suicide…In the aftermath, and for any foreseeable future, his name is reviled and cursed by all good men.
There is silence as everyone contemplates the horror of such an end.
Donna: I suppose there is a grim justice in such a fate. (She pauses for several moments and then continues quietly.) I also recall reading that, in his last years, his conscience was so troubled that he had to be heavily sedated even to snatch a few hours of sleep. Given the mass persecution and murder that he perpetrated, we can only imagine the personal demons that tormented him in those final months and moments.
Donald: You’re right: it is certainly justice that he ended his life suffering from such screaming inner agonies.
Donna: I’ve always been morbidly fascinated by such monsters and the factors that motivate them to perpetrate their atrocities. And, I suppose, by the inner consequences for the monsters themselves.
Donald: You have examples of other villains in addition to Hitler?
Donna: I do. The other mass murderer of the era—Soviet dictator, Josef Stalin. Like Hitler, he also murdered tens of millions of innocent victims. Also like Hitler, he paid a heavy price for his crimes.
Donald: Meaning what?
Donna: From the sources I’ve read, he was consumed with paranoid fear that others sought his power, his life, or both. He subsisted in this chronic dread and put to death hundreds of thousands of Communists who were, in fact, loyal, or perhaps faking loyalty to his regime. His own morbid terror was so immense that, near the end, word got out to his followers that he planned another Party purge. Nobody in the West is certain of his cause of death—but there are published reports speculating that he suffered a stroke, and that members of the Politburo, rather than getting him medical attention, actually smothered him to save their own skins. (She shakes her head.) Many people are aware of the ghastly injustices perpetrated by such monsters. But I often think we are largely unaware of the consequences for the villain himself—in both his outer and his inner life.
Donald (nodding in horrified agreement): “Heavy lies the crown”…Especially for a tyrant, who must chronically fear assassination and/or insurrection—who realizes that an agonizing death at the hands of the people he has so terribly wronged is his deserved fate—and who is compulsively driven by his inescapable, incurable terror to endless acts of brutal murder. (He shudders.) What an existence.
Neville (dropping his characteristic off-putting attitude, and responding in utter earnestness): I can’t conceive of arguing that injustice on such a scale is in the self-interest of any human being…(He stops as if by a sudden realization.) That’s it, isn’t it? “Human being.” You surrender the most valuable thing of all: you stop being a human being in any sense but the biological.
Silence meets Neville’s statement. Nobody cares to brag that they were right regarding this issue. For several moments, there is nothing but open horror as the three stare squarely at the reality of the choices made by some men—and at the inevitable consequences of such choices. Eventually, the silence is broken.
Donald: Maybe it wasn’t such a good idea to discuss these guys…
Relieved laughter breaks the spell.
Neville: You have a different example? Perhaps a bit less dreadful? How about a six-year-old kid swipes his little sister’s lollipop? What are the consequences of that?
More laughter, increasingly light-hearted.
Donna (laughing): Funny you should say that. I remember my older brother doing exactly that. Except it wasn’t a lollipop, it was a chocolate bar.
Neville: Even worse. What happened?
Donna: I told my parents—and they punished him. And gave me another candy bar.
Neville (wryly): Justice prevails.
Donald (seriously): Today her brother, Joseph, is a hugely successful lawyer. He’s known as the most incorruptibly honest attorney in his town.
Donna nods.
Donald: But let’s take a serious hypothetical point. Suppose Donna’s parents preferred Joseph to his sister and, worse, played favorites. Suppose they let him get away with being unfair to both his little sister and to the neighbors’ kids. What happens then?
Neville: Well, one thing’s for sure: the kid sister’s not going to grow up to be a happy camper.
Donna: Right—and what does that do to her relationship with her parents?
Donald: She will have to be angry at the injustices perpetrated on her—and rightfully so. She realizes that her mother and father have wronged her. She’ll feel diminished love and respect for them—and will distance herself from them. There will be an undeniable rift between her and her parents.
Donna: Without a doubt, and between her and her brother—the favored child—as well. If the parents love their children, as most parents do, it will hurt them to experience such a rift between them and their daughter—and between their son and their daughter.
Donald: True, and somewhere deep inside they will know that it was their own favoritism that precipitated such breaches within the family. Such guilt will only make their pain worse.
Neville (pondering): All right, I see that. And if the brother is not disciplined by his parents, if he’s not taught right from wrong but is allowed to get away with various misdeeds, then what’s his life going to be like? He’ll grow up thinking he can get away with all kinds of misbehavior. He’ll probably get in trouble at school—and maybe worse later on.
Donna: The favorite child’s behavior will end up hurting the parents enormously.
Neville: I see your point. At least with respect to the way parents treat their children. But still, in corporate America, where managers and workers strive for as much profit or pay as possible, don’t you think the kind of injustice I mentioned before is often in the best interest of the wrongdoer?
Donna (shaking her head.) No, I do not.
Neville: You don’t think a worker can do as little work as possible yet strike for higher wages? Or a manager can get away with stealing one of his subordinate’s original ideas and pawning it off as his own? Not even once?
Donald: Do you think a dishonest person limits himself to one act of fraud or deception? If his character is such that he finds his actions successful, then what prevents him from committing similar injustices over and again? Especially if, as you suggest, he could get away with it the first time? No, that person suffers from a lack of principles, has no moral backbone, and will inevitably act on any underhanded desire that he believes serves his immediate interest. Just as inevitably, he is eventually caught.
Neville: All right, I agree that someone who continuously exploits others will, in time, be exposed and punished for his acts. And maybe you’re right that such a person suffers from serious moral delinquency and will repetitively commit similar acts of injustice. But if some slick operator in either the political or the corporate world did limit himself to a single such instance, why do you think he would not benefit from it?
Donald: For one thing, any victim whose ideas were stolen presumably knows that and knows who victimized them. What prevents him from going to senior management and pointing out the wrongdoing? Also, has he mentioned it to any of his colleagues, who might then support his claim in discussion with higher ups? Does it fit a pattern of dishonest behavior on the part of the manager? Similarly, does the employee have a history of honesty and innovative ideas? The manager could well find himself in a lot of trouble.
Donna: True. And even if the perpetrator dodges the bullet this one time, his employee—and probably some of the victim’s colleagues, as well—will not trust him again. They will be loath to reveal any new ideas to him. They will either keep their thinking to themselves or take their innovations directly to senior executives, bypassing the corrupt manager altogether. The crook’s level of productivity declines when deprived of the thinking of the best minds reporting to him. Suddenly, “Mr. Idea Man” doesn’t appear so productive anymore.
Donald: He’s back to trying to live a lie—and we’ve already discussed the impossibility of this. In reality, he is not the innovative thinker he is perceived to be. He cannot and will not live up to senior management’s expectations. Without the thinking of his creative employee to support him, he will be a huge disappointment to his employers.
Donna: I agree. And we haven’t even yet taken into consideration the sore conscience he will experience and the negative effect on his self-image. After all, he knows himself to be a duplicitous fraud. In contrast, an honest person who takes moral issues seriously knows that he is a good person—and at a day-to-day emotional level experiences a legitimate type of pride, a strong and positive sense of self. To put it simply: he esteems himself. But the crooked double dealer we’ve been discussing undermines all of these valuable qualities. The way he experiences himself every day in his own emotional life will be much more negative. When you do bad things, you can’t escape the realization that you’re a bad person. You pay a heavy price for that.
Donald (shaking his head): And it’s all so stupid and unnecessary. Because if you treat people justly—if you give them what they deserve, rewarding the good and punishing the evil—then your own life also benefits immensely. For example, the manager we discussed—if he gives full credit to his employee for the new idea, he wins the respect of both his workers and his bosses. They all recognize that he is an honest man—his workers realize that they can trust him with their original ideas—he is recognized as a person who can effectively manage men of originality—and if, in fact, he is not himself an innovative thinker, he does not raise his bosses’ expectations to a level at which he cannot deliver. Additionally, if he carries through such just dealings in every arena of his life, then his conscience is free, he sleeps well at night, and his inner life is good. In this way, all the problems that unjust people bring on themselves could be avoided.
Neville: I suppose you’re right. (Sighs.) There goes my future career as the corrupt mayor of my town, making millions by handing out contracts to the highest bidder.
Donald and Donna (in unison): What?!
Neville (laughing): Just kidding, folks. (Turning serious, clearly thinking carefully about the points that have been made.) There may or may not be some psychopaths who suffer no sore conscience for their misdeeds—but I’m not one of them. I couldn’t live with myself if I did those things.
Donald and Donna both nod.
Donald: I understand. And, although I’m hardly any kind of expert on psychology, I suspect that the psychopaths you mentioned pay a terrible price for their crimes: their sanity. Instead of seeking treatment to cure their deep-seated problems, they evade any attempt to gain mental health and sink deeper into depression.
Neville: Yeah, I understand. Better to be an honest worker than a vicious crook raking in millions in ill-gotten gains.
Donna (surprised): Do you mean that?
Neville (nodding): I don’t have other crooks trying to kill me and pilfer my loot—I don’t have the police trying to incarcerate me—and my conscience is clean. I can only imagine the chronic fear that a criminal lives in. The police are hunting him—and, worse, more often than not other bad guys are trying to put him six feet in the ground. I agree with you that an honest man has a better life.
Donald and Donna are silent, clearly pleased with their friend’s insights.
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