Two Forms of Justice / Progressive Failure, Unitive Justice, Support 19 in Poetry

The following are my continued notes from Beyond Vengeance, Beyond Duality by Sylvia Clute

The Rule of Law does not solve conflict

Two forms of Justice

We are told that justice is found in proportional revenge: the old law of an eye for an eye. The other is aligned with the ancient teaching we often call the Golden Rule: do unto others as you would have them do unto you.

These conflicting moral codes reflect the two distinct forms of justice.

Unitive Justice

Inclusiveness
Healing
Restoration
Reconciliation
Harmonious
Equitable
Peaceful

Unitive Justice involves the participation of all who are affected in assessing the harm done and forging both a remedy and preventive measures, thus avoiding the separation that the us-versus-them system creates.

We cannot love others while we hate ourselves. We cannot hate others while loving ourselves.

Only Unitive Justice has the power to restore balance and harmony among the victim, offender, and community, goals the punitive system does not address.

Punitive justice is grounded in the belief in separation. We are fearful of those whom we see as separate from ourselves, and we believe our safety lies in controlling or defeating those whom we fear. Punitive justice fails to address how the infliction of further harm or the deprivation of liberty translates into taking responsibility or how it rights the wrong it seeks to address, beyond getting even.

Believing in separation gives rise to the notion of good versus evil. Punitive justice relies on a double moral standard tied to this divide that permits us to see the harm we cause as moral because we see ourselves as good, while the harm done by our enemies is immoral because we have deemed them evil. This dual morality permits us to project blame for our killing. When both sides view the other as evil, the killing becomes endless, while all claim self-righteous innocence. We fail to note that having two standards of morality–one for us and one for them–provides a flawed moral compass, even when the matters of simple justice are at stake!

Justice should be the solution to discord, not the cause of more problems.

Ancient Judaism had a concept of justice called hesod or lovingkindness. This is unitive justice. In the Book of Hosea, God responds to the people, “For I desire hesod and not sacrifice.

The loss of local autonomy began in the 12th and 13th centuries when authorization or writs issued by the king became widely used to restrict the jurisdiction of the local authorities. The writs let to common law–law that was common to all of England, and justice became the domain of the king.

In essence, when you broke the law or committed a crime the victim became the king, or today, the victim is the state. This is why court documents are title The commonwealth of Virginia v. John Doe. The name of the victim may be mentioned to be more specific, but the victims’ needs and community reconciliation have been rendered largely irrelevant. The King took control, local communities lost their capacity to deal with conflict themselves.

Because this system pits the state’s burden of proving guilt against the accused’s right to thwart such proof, the victim’s role is reduced to that of a mere witness for the state. This means defense counsel must try to make the victim appear as untruthful as possible. Caught in the middle of the attorney’s battle to win and make their adversary lose, the victim often feels revictimized.

The voices of forgiveness and remorse that underpin unitive justice are silenced, making all of us–collectively and as a culture–victims of this punitive process.

What do the court system rules really mean?

The punitive justice model is forced to devise rules to guess at the truth and to inflict punishment even when the truth is unknown.

There is a confusion between duality and polarity and this causes us to misunderstand the nature of good and evil. We tend to think that good and evil are like night and day, but they are judgments; one person’s judgment about who or what is evil may be widely disputed by others. Good versus evil is an example of duality, not polarity.

When duality is activated, a pervasive belief in separation is inevitable, and fear is the overriding emotion. The perception of fear causes the body’s cells, including brain cells, to shift into survival mode, focused only on the perceived threat. Everything but this narrow band of perception is blocked out. As the cells are locked down in survival mode, they cannot grow or regenerate, making our persistent fear a slow march toward disease and death.

Attack–mental, emotional, and physical–is the reaction to fear and the modus operandi for dealing with the so-called enemy. The need to attack is not questioned, only whether to do it now or later. These attacks are considered moral because the enemy provokes them and is blamed for what we do. This leads to thinking that harming others is a win, necessary to keep oneself from being harmed, which would be a loss. Thus, even killing others can be called a victory.

In duality consciousness, individuals see themselves as better or lesser than others, resulting in a hierarchy that mirrors the layers of fear. There is no common source that unites everyone within this system. Only fear is shared by all, but this commonality produces no bonds because its sources are as numerous as those who experience it.

The win-lose mind-set keeps us from grasping the mind’s potential for wholeness and harmony.

Duality seems to be real because its fragmented construction restricts awareness to only that which conforms to its distorted view of reality.

The left is very weak if one person caused them so much misery.

In Oneness, everything is understood to be unified, like a giant container for all that is, including the pain and misery of duality.

Oneness is the path of peace, for those who comprehend the organizing principle of Oneness understand that to harm another is to harm themselves.

If I hate another person, I will be harmed, but whether the person I hate is harmed by how I feel depends on whether that person joins in my projection and makes it their truth.

Oneness understands that no one wins until everyone does.

What appears to be different is more like a mirror reflecting one’s own weaknesses.

Equality implies an inclusiveness that allows no exceptions. Equality cannot exist in duality, for the separation, hierarchies, and judgment of duality are intend to exclude.

Everyone possesses free will, and everyone must choose to act as agents of creation or miscreation.

Evidence of the all-encompassing nature of Oneness is found in the fact that in every negative event lie the seeds of transformation and rebirth.

Welcome to the REBIRTH

I will not accept Biden’s and the Democrat’s call for unity when they didn’t accept mine.

The peaceful transition of military power went smoothly in America and no one really noticed.

Progressive Failure, Unitive Justice, Support 19 [Video]