From: Kathryn Aegis (k_aegis@mindspring.com)
Date: Thu Sep 16 1999 - 17:09:20 MDT
At 11:13 AM 9/16/99 -0700, Robert Bradbury wrote:
>Now, this of course raises an interesting issue. Since extropians
>would like to operate in a highly free society, exactly *when*
>is it permissible for a society to force/coerce/punish an individual
>who violates the generally accepted norms for "personal responsibility".
I would first ask who would establish the generally accepted norms, due to
the seemimgly wide range of opinion among extropians. But, moving on:
This question relates to one of the 'tough' questions that I proposed and
Greg Burch tackled to some degree. I am genuinely curious as to whether an
extropian polity, enclave or other type of community might involve in any
degree what we currently know as 'the rule of law' which derives its
origins from the Napoleonic Code and the Code of Hammurabi. (Both
autocratic rulers, and yet they delegated some responsibility for rule to
the people in the form of courts and juries.) If an individual exhibits a
lack of self-control or a lack of personal responsibility that harms
another individual in some way, what mechanisms would exist to reduce the
harm or prevent further harm?
We can see this very question at work in the present-day American judicial
system, in the realm of mediation within the court system. As cases get
moved into the mediatio process first, prior to ever going to trial, the
opportunity is provided for the persons involved to take responsibility for
the outcome, to craft their own solution to the problem. The actual court
trial is the fallback for a failure of the parties to come to agreement,
but in many cases the issues are more clearly understood by all involved.
Many codes of mediator ethics, however, restrict mediators from taking on
any case in which the power imbalance between the parties is severe,
generally child abuse, spousal abuse, and physical assault cases. Sexual
harassment cases are riding a fine line in this arena, because in some
cases the parties respond quite well to mediation and in other cases the
abuse level is simply too high. Victim-offender mediation is a new area of
mediation practice in which someone who has inflicted harm on another meets
with them to formulate ways of paying some sort of reparation.
Kathryn Aegis
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