After the murder, after the violence, after the blood & senseless destruction .... "What would justice mean to you, in my shoes?"
Well...the Justice we want; the Justice we believe we deserve....the Justice which requires a cosmic rebalancing of time itself, and the resurrection of the Dead.. THAT kind of Justice is beyond us.
“I see no justice in that plan." (said Peter Lake, in Helprin's work, "A Winter's Tale"_
"Who said," lashed out Isaac Penn, "that you, a man, can always perceive justice? Who said that justice is what you imagine? Can you be sure that you know it when you see it, that you will live long enough to recognize the decisive thunder of its occurrence, that it can be manifest within a generation, within ten generations, within the entire span of human existence? What you are talking about is common sense, not justice. Justice is higher and not as easy to understand -- until it presents itself in unmistakable splendor. The design of which I speak is far above our understanding. But we can sometimes feel its presence.... "
So the short answer to the question, 'what is justice to you in my shoes' would be that the immortal, golden, infinite impossibility described by Helprin as Justice with a capital 'J' is not for us...not in this place, not at this time.
The real answer, however.... the immediate answer, the secular, temporal answer , appropriate to the here & now is that justice as measured by the Law, requires the arrest & conviction, and punishment of the perpetrator. That's it.
As to the question of 'mitigating factors'....the so-called 'madness' of the 2022 American Zeitgeist and the pollution of the media and the effect of all that on the Perp's 'fragile, eggshell mind'? Forget it. All that is nothing.
In the penultimate moment, when confronted with the choice to commit murder or walk away, the young man pulled the trigger, twice, and chose death. He chose sin. He chose obviation. He chose, indeed, what he absolutely -- in his heart, in his gut -- knew was terribly & horribly wrong. And there is no excuse, no mitigation, no 'justifying' circumstances which would allow Justice of either kind to somehow pass him by.
Viktor Frankl, when confronted with the homicidal horrors of Auschwitz ... the madness of the Nazi Zeitgeist... put it this way: "The one thing you can’t take away from me is the way I choose to respond to what you do to me... Between stimulus and response there is a space. In that space is our power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and our freedom.” Or not, as the case may be.
So it doesn't matter how mad the world. What matters is what we choose to do in the midst of that madness.
After the murder, after the violence, after the blood & senseless destruction .... "What would justice mean to you, in my shoes?"
Well...the Justice we want; the Justice we believe we deserve....the Justice which requires a cosmic rebalancing of time itself, and the resurrection of the Dead.. THAT kind of Justice is beyond us.
“I see no justice in that plan." (said Peter Lake, in Helprin's work, "A Winter's Tale"_
"Who said," lashed out Isaac Penn, "that you, a man, can always perceive justice? Who said that justice is what you imagine? Can you be sure that you know it when you see it, that you will live long enough to recognize the decisive thunder of its occurrence, that it can be manifest within a generation, within ten generations, within the entire span of human existence? What you are talking about is common sense, not justice. Justice is higher and not as easy to understand -- until it presents itself in unmistakable splendor. The design of which I speak is far above our understanding. But we can sometimes feel its presence.... "
So the short answer to the question, 'what is justice to you in my shoes' would be that the immortal, golden, infinite impossibility described by Helprin as Justice with a capital 'J' is not for us...not in this place, not at this time.
The real answer, however.... the immediate answer, the secular, temporal answer , appropriate to the here & now is that justice as measured by the Law, requires the arrest & conviction, and punishment of the perpetrator. That's it.
As to the question of 'mitigating factors'....the so-called 'madness' of the 2022 American Zeitgeist and the pollution of the media and the effect of all that on the Perp's 'fragile, eggshell mind'? Forget it. All that is nothing.
In the penultimate moment, when confronted with the choice to commit murder or walk away, the young man pulled the trigger, twice, and chose death. He chose sin. He chose obviation. He chose, indeed, what he absolutely -- in his heart, in his gut -- knew was terribly & horribly wrong. And there is no excuse, no mitigation, no 'justifying' circumstances which would allow Justice of either kind to somehow pass him by.
Viktor Frankl, when confronted with the homicidal horrors of Auschwitz ... the madness of the Nazi Zeitgeist... put it this way: "The one thing you can’t take away from me is the way I choose to respond to what you do to me... Between stimulus and response there is a space. In that space is our power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and our freedom.” Or not, as the case may be.
So it doesn't matter how mad the world. What matters is what we choose to do in the midst of that madness.