Man and animals, by nature, are pacifists meaning, generally, they do not want trouble and are typically kind, weak, meek, and submissive…except when provoked. Poisonous snakes only strike people out of fear when provoked. Similarly, alligators usually do not go after people unless provoked, excluding, of course, unless people have fed them and now they see people as food. (By the way, alligators on land can run in a straight line faster than most any man on the planet can run, so the only escape from a ‘gator’ on land is run away in a zig zag pattern because ‘gators’ cannot run fast at all running zig zag.)
Man’s violent acts are too often provoked by passion. Depending on where you live law and order keeps acts of passion relatively under control.
For the most part, people fear consequences and death more than anything else which creates the need for law and order. In America during the early to mid-1900s it was not uncommon at all to see signs on private property that declared, “Trespassers will be shot” and in some cases, “Looters shot on site”. Generally, this type signage would keep many people away since crimes of opportunity usually involve low risk for the criminals suffering injury.
For example, local small business owners often employ ‘locals’ who live in the neighborhoods where small businesses are located, and like today, most often small business owners have their families’ livelihoods and life savings wrapped up in their small businesses; and too many of them too often carry inadequate or no insurance protection to insure their small businesses from the likelihood of civil unrest.
After hurricane Katrina destroyed New Orleans, Louisiana in 2005, the local and state law enforcement officials, including the state governor, publicly stated that they gave authority to law enforcement to shoot looters on-site. During the riots in Memphis, Tennessee in 1968 after Martin Luther King was assassinated, it was common knowledge among the ‘locals’ that there is rarely ever enough police and National Guard presence and protection to guarantee local businesses would not be broken in to, looted and set on fire.
So what did small business owners in Memphis do at the first sign of civil unrest? The ‘locals’, including local business owners, literally painted the outside of the businesses they wanted protected with words like, “Looters will be shot”, then the defenders of the family businesses volunteered to gather up their guns, ammunition and enough food to last for days and immediately went to their beloved businesses and waited until the unrest subsided, hoping they would never have to defend their businesses and livelihoods from predators.
Race riots in America during the 1900s arsonists and looters supposedly targeted mostly white owned businesses and corporate conglomerate businesses and did not loot and torch churches, libraries, minority owned businesses and charitable organizations, but this is not the case with 21st Century anarchists who target anything easy to burn and loot including all businesses, schools, churches and/or charitable organizations.
During the American Civil War during the 1860s, New York City was run by many different ‘gangs’ and President Abraham Lincoln ordered New Yorkers to report for duty and join the U.S. Union army to fight the South. However, the New Yorker gangs refused to fight the South. They revolted in what became known as the New York draft riots and New Yorkers started burning down sections of New York City. President Lincoln’s orders to his U.S. military was, “Put the mob down.” The New York mob did not disperse and continued rioting, looting and burning the city and U.S. army troops were quickly deployed to New York City then proceeded to shoot and kill the mob on-site, which effectively dispersed the mob and Lincoln is credited with saving New York City from the gangs of New York.
Like it or not, before the breakup of the Soviet Union in the 1980s, and even today in Castro’s Cuba, walking the streets safely at night without the threat of getting mugged is routine because when you are caught doing criminal acts in the old Soviet Union or in Castro’s Cuba you will literally disappear. Being able to walk the streets at night should be routine anywhere in the world if we had law and order leadership to rid society of thuggish behavior. The fear of consequences works but like any actions taken against the citizenry for criminal behavior too often innocent people go to jail or are imprisoned. Unfortunately, it’s the seamy underbelly of law and order and inherent in any justice system which is never perfect. Without effective law and order you are left with varying degrees of crime and anarchy leaving the public feeling unsafe so in free societies people end up arming themselves with guns.
This is all part of moral decision-making. So what would you do? For example, you are walking down the street and you see a man assaulting, beating a helpless woman and no one else is around to immediately step in and help.
There are no right or wrong answers in moral decision-making; and what a person ‘says they would do’ in a particularly tough situation they are faced with and what they ‘would actually do’ if faced with a tough situation are two totally different things. Basically, how you act has to do with your character and the situation you are faced with at that moment in time in your life which, we all know, character is constantly evolving, just like your mind is constantly evolving.
In some parts of America when someone sees another person being assaulted on the street, with or without other people around to help, they do nothing to interfere or intervene to stop the violence, which is self-preservation moral decision-making and this action selfishly preserves their own life, limb and fortune.
In the same situation, other people may take it upon themselves not to intervene and risk their own life, and instead choose to yell at the person committing the assault while calling the police to come help. Whether or not this would stop a criminal from assaulting your innocent child, wife, mother or loved one is debatable. If it is a crime of opportunity or passion being committed, odds are, simply yelling at someone would not stop the violence and, we all know, by the time the ‘cops’ ever show up your loved one could be dead or dying.
Basically doing nothing and simply calling the police is consensus moral decision-making. A consensus is what the majority of people think or would do. Doing what the majority would do may not save the life of your loved one being assaulted or from being seriously injured and possibly maimed for life, but it in all likelihood would possibly make the person calling the police feel good like they at least did something while simultaneously selfishly preserving their own life, limb and fortune.
However, in risky situations some people may, consciously or unconsciously, choose to intervene and quickly try to help the person being assaulted, risking their own life, limb and fortune to save others. This is self-chosen principled moral decision-making meaning you do ‘not’ care how the majority of people would respond to life-threatening situations because you will do what you think is the best thing to do at that moment.
Making a decision to intervene to try and save someone you do not know from a physical assault may not succeed, so why even try and risk your own life at the same time would be the response from someone operating at a consensus and/or self-preservation level of moral decision-making. The person choosing to intervene to try and help may say, conceivably, intervention may get the criminal to stop, or stop and run away, or stop and re-think the violent action being committed, or slow down the assault possibly saving the life of the victim. This would be the reasoning from someone operating at a level of moral decision-making based on self-chosen principles. Obviously there is no way to ever know what would happen or what anyone would actually do when faced with a moral decision-making situation until it happens.
Making decisions using self-chosen principles is the purported highest level of moral decision-making. However, making potential life changing, life threatening moral decisions is up to the individuals involved so there are no right or wrong decisions to make. Each person has to live with the decisions of their own actions and nobody can easily predict what someone else will do in certain situations at any given moment in time.
A more appropriate situation today could be, some thugs are outside your home and tell you they will invade your home RIGHT NOW and they tell you they will not harm you or your family, but they are going to take all your possessions and on their way out they will torch your home. And if you do not give them an answer RIGHT NOW and/or if you call the police on them they will not hold up their end of the ‘bargain’ and they will kill you and your family before the ‘cops’ ever get there. The group of thugs assume you, the head of the household, are not armed, but what they do not know is you are armed with enough firepower to take out the whole gang all by yourself. What would you do?
Since the beginning of mankind, when we think about or ponder something, we tend to be more adaptive to this moment in time and/or are more emotional, and we are not always rational or reasonable. To reason ‘why’ is ‘secondary’ in our thought processes because making sense out of the world minute by minute is of ‘primary’ importance in order for us to survive the world we live in.
We REASON that our mind or self is in control, however, we have as many ‘selves’ or ‘minds’ as we do thoughts and, like thoughts, our ‘multi-minds’ are constantly changing. From minute to minute we are not the same person or “self” or of the same mind at all. That which we just adapted to is already gone. Every moment that goes by we are actually adapting anew.
Instead of possessing a single intellectual entity that judges different things equally, the mind is more complex than this and is ever-changing, and our mind consists of many differing, smaller minds made up of fixed reactions and flexible thinking habits. Therefore, our multi-mindedness, so to speak, constantly adapts, accommodates and assimilates to survive.
We may only put our multi-mindedness into action temporarily for a complex task at hand. Our multi-mind is NOT some almighty controlling force but is more like a semi-organized group of lower forces possessing a ‘knack’ for things. This is why mankind, by nature, is so inconsistent, moody and emotional. We cannot help but see the world through jaundiced (prejudiced) eyes. This is in our very nature and no amount of good intention, rational thoughts can change these basic instincts.
SUPPLEMENTAL SOURCES: KOHLBERG’S THEORY OF MORAL DEVELOPMENT AND DECISION-MAKING, 1958 and QUANTUM DECOHERENCE BY H. DIETER ZEH, 1970 and MANY-MINDS INTERPRETATIONS BY DAVID ALBERT AND BARRY LOEWER, 1988