Your pain is mine pain

Why no one is guilty

Imagine a situation where you feel someone deserves punishment for some crime. The extent of the sentence is not particularly important. It could be anything from a death penalty to an extended-term in jail, to a literal or figurative wrap on the knuckles.

Think of some scenario where a “guilty” party suffers pain, and you are happy that they suffer that pain.

Whenever I feel such happiness, pain quickly follows that happiness. While the sense of gleeful justice still lingers, it is gradually replaced by a feeling of painful sympathy for the “victim”. Or the “guilty” who, as a result of punishment, has become “victim”.

Why do I feel sympathy? And why does the victim’s pain lead me to forget justice?

The reason is apparent when you contemplate the nature of justice.

Justice is a set of rules and conventions. Necessary for a nation, society or organisation to endure. Without inventions like the “rule of law”, collectives of individuals fall apart into disorder and anarchy. It is so essential that the individuals of the collective consider it not merely a convention, but internalise it as a natural law, religion or universal truth.

But there is nothing absolute or true about justice. It is merely a tool for stability and order. It is not “real”.

Pain, on the other hand, is very “real”. And hence, when I started feeling sympathy for the “guilty” who turned “victim”, it was a case of the world returning to its “real” nature. Where the real replaced the unreal.

No one is guilty in a real sense. But everyone feels pain. Pain is so real, that when someone else is in pain, it will only be a matter of time before that pain becomes your pain.

At first, I wanted to subtitle this article with “Why everyone is innocent”. And then I realised that just as “guilty” is an artefact of justice so is “innocent”. And like justice, they are also imaginary.

But pain is real. The pain of the guilty is the pain of the innocent. And your pain is my pain.