Winning at all cost is not just.
Lets do a thought experiment. Say you are sleeping in your home with your significant other peacefully; and then someone breaks into your house. You don’t know why they are there, you just know they are standing at your door with a ski mask on lookin all scary. Do you have the right to destroy that person? In my opinion yes. Is it just to destroy that person? No!
Yea the bad guy is in the house and yea he is frightening your significant other. It doesn’t make lethal force just and holy. Would I have my nightstand pistol trained on him? Absolutely. I am held down and ready and I should be able to dispatch this enemy easy. But is that my first and only response (cough cough #Israel)? I would rather reason and force him to leave then shoot him dead.
“WHY?” my conservative friends might say. Because there is an opportunity to do great things. It’s always better to defend yourself with minimum necessary force. I win because I don’t have to experience the trauma of killing someone, the bad guy wins because he isn’t getting killed for a bad mistake. My significant other doesn't have to experience me killing someone, and my son isn’t awoken to gunshots in the house. Everybody gains.
Sometimes that option can’t be utilized due to lack of time or love. Fighting fire with fire is amoral. It doesn’t make you moral. Its not the act that is immoral, its the “why”. Why did you play the game with your son? “Cause its fun and its my son!” Why did you annihilate him? “Cause I could?”
So now what? You’re in your undies with a pistol aimed at this guy and your significant other is frightened and upset. Is this man a threat? not now.. How can I solve this without bloodshed and pain?
A worthy adversary is worth more an ally than an enemy. Point out the strong and reason with them. If they are immoral, help them see the negatives of their ways. Keep your mind open to information and perspectives that you do not know. If the bad guy from the previous thought experiment broke down and says “I have no money and my kid is hungry”. The causality of his child’s hunger has driven him to theft. Are you well within the law not to care and have him arrested? absolutely.. But what if you took him to the store, bought him a weeks worth of basic staples and said “Rise.”
It’s not easy. It sure as hell isn’t convenient. But where others take the easy road and think selfishly, we should be better. I would like to help and improve my community. And if that means a late night run to the grocery store so 1 less man doesn't break the law, its well worth it. Instead of hate and death that robber will learn mercy and responsibility to community. If we all did a little to help each-other we would all thrive.
We are alone on this rock that is traveling 67,000 miles per hour around our sun that is itself traveling 490,000 miles per hour around our galaxy. The vastness and the hostility of our universe is great. We live relatively short lives in contrast to the grand scale of our world. We must find a way to make it. Selfishness does not help anybody but the singular person. We need to be better then that. We need to Rise together because only together can we do great things.
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