Force in the Mind and Analytical Justice

 

The argument in current use in the US legal system of “not guilty by reason of insanity” is not valid simply because everyone, at the moment of committing a crime is insane. Insanity, like sanity, is just a function of past experience. Experience results in, on the negative side, non-volitional forces or impulses that may impinge on or push the analytical mind in a certain direction, and on the positive side, greater ability to face up to, communicate, control and participate in a given area of life.  Since an individual is responsible for his past experiences he is then responsible for any insanity that results. It is true that he can get into a state of too much mental force or impingement plus too little ability to face up to life, which results in a low level of responsibility and adds up to being a danger to himself and his environment. At a certain level this can be called insanity. It can be recovered from, though not always easily.  Yes, it can be necessary to take action to protect others from an individual in this condition, but the individual in question is still responsible for putting himself in this state.

Anyone who has committed a murder and is later judged to be competent to stand trial is evidence of this. A murder is so wrong that one must have been insane at the moment of commission. At that moment mental forces pushing in a criminal direction were strong enough and the will plus ethical knowledge were weak enough that the crime was committed.  It was not an analytical moment. The fact that he is later judged as having  competency in understanding right and wrong in the given area shows that the analytical mind has made somewhat of a recovery from a temporary insanity.

Whatever the particular reasons for it, the general reason for an individual acting criminally or unethically is too much of an impingement of mental force or impulse plus too little of ability or desire to face up to the present situation, and/or too little knowledge of how to deal with it in a positive way. In this situation it may become evident that the individual is beyond being able to cope on his own. Two solutions are available in this case to those in his environment:

1.       Remove him (or her) from the environment. End of story—at least for this environment, though it may be the beginning of another story for another environment.

2.       The second option is when at least some of those in the environment deem  the future potential worth of the applied self-determination of the individual to justify the effort to apply what can be called a system of Analytical Justice. The theory is simple:

·         The desired end result of Analytical Justice is the subject making progress in the area under question in a pro-life direction of his own volition. His volition in the area has been too weak to oppose the contra-life mental forces, so care must be taken in recovering it. Though force will be applied in the pro-life direction, too much force should be avoided, so as not to overwhelm such volition. The individual won’t be of much use in the future unless he can be brought back to a condition in which he operates competently from his own self-determination.

·         A  basic assumption is that there is something to recover-- the individual at some point in the past was applying his self-determination competently in the current area.

·         Make up a set of progressive steps or actions which may be applied to the individual in question and which result in a steadily increasing mental force in a pro-life direction, and therefore in opposition to whatever force is impinging upon him in the contra-life direction.

·         Make this set of steps known publicly, or at least known to whomever may be subjected to them at some point in the future. Hopefully this will have been done beforehand, since any such set of steps, if properly formulated, are generally applicable and will apply a pro-life force on any individual. Make particularly certain that the subject individual is well informed of them.

·         Do not have a large jump from one step to the next.

·         Beginning at the bottom, apply each step to the individual. Allow enough time between steps to observe whether a desired result has been reached. At some point the increasing pro-life force will be greater than the contra-life force impinging from the mind. The individual will find it less painful at this point to discontinue the unethical activity than continue with it. Yes, there will be mental anguish either way, but less in the direction of the ethical direction.

·         Do not continue with the steps beyond this point (so as not to overwhelm his self-determination), but instead stabilize the individuals application of his self-determination in the pro-life direction by:

1.       Making sure he has knowledge and competency in operating in his area.

2.       Helping him to face up to and take responsibility for mistakes or crimes in the area in which he is operating that make it difficult for him to continue.

3.       Monitoring his progress to ensure he continues in the pro-life direction in this area.

Let’s call this Analytical Justice to differentiate it from George Bush’s style of Justice, which is really punishment, and which has an entirely different purpose.