I was asked…
Justice and mercy are both fundamental to civilized human life. If we are to continue to live in an ordered and supportive world, both justice and mercy are required. However, if we were forced to choose either justice or mercy, which one do you think would be more essential? Why?”
Mercy, no contest.
Nature has shown that time and again rigidity equals death. Mercy is flexibility. Justice tends to be absolute, and thus ill equipped to deal with novel new situations, or exploit novel opportunity. This type of trait is absolutely required for any species to survive in the long term.
Mercy is an extension of the very idea that justice is supposed to promote; comfort, safety, and joy.
Mercy is a means and an and. If the society in question is populated by unaltered humans, then mercy is a far more effective tool of inclusion than justice. Justice is typically about revenge, where as mercy is about prevention. And an ounce of prevention…
Tolerance for the suffering of others, is the root of all our social problems. Competition is tolerance for the loser’s suffering, rape is tolerance for the victim’s suffering, racism is tolerance for a race’s suffering, environmental destruction is tolerance for the suffering of the as yet unborn, and so on.
Mercy is the capacity to look past flaws, which is required because we all have them, justice is the demand that those who carry flaws be attacked. Attacking ourselves is mindless. Persuasion>punishment. No action occurs in a vacuum.
Crime is either the system failing to address someone, or mental illness, neither of which are appropriately responded to with the intentional infliction of pain. And that’s what justice is. Mercy is an objective. It can be demonstrated, universally, it can be codified safely. Justice, is a subjective, and a boundary.
Mercy is a door, justice is a wall. If it’s just us on this island, we need more doors than walls.
We must be in the long run, as a species, utterly intolerant of the absence of mercy. If we wish our great grand children to have great grand children.
