Quis Custodiet ipos custodes? Or the Pros and Cons of Vigilantism

I had an interesting night last night. I say interesting, closer to infuriating.  A friend of mine questioned the judgement of a doorman in our local club. He was in the right, and wasn’t confrontational at all about it, just trying to reason with the gentleman at the door. For this, he was punched in the face. His brother, when trying to break up this fight, was grabbed by the throat, and both thrown out. Cue chaos. A few months before this, another friend of mine was confronted with a similar situation. “He just hit me”, the doorman said with a smile, 5 ft away from my friend. Needless to say, the wrath of Glasgow doormen came upon my friend with the conviction of the righteous.

If you know your comic books – or your Latin – you’ll have translated the above as “Who watches the Watchmen?” A reasonable question, especially when our watchmen operate outwith the rules they are meant to uphold. Studies claim the police force to be institutionally racist. Soldiers torture in the name of peace. Even our bankers, trusted with the finances of the nation, show as much monetary sense as a 5 year old in a sweet shop. A rich 5 year old. Unfortunately, too many of those in positions of responsibility aren’t the equal of what is asked of them. More unfortunate still is that there is often no one to bring them in line. At least not until its too late.

The solution? Vigilantism. MASKED vigilantism. Ok, maybe not masked, but that’d be cool. If people aren’t gong to do their jobs right, and right the wrongs of the world according to myopinions, I’m gonna do it. I know whats right, don’t I? I know not to steal, lie or cheat. I know when someone has wronged me and mine, and I know just how to respond. In fact, I don’t think there’s a person in the land more qualified to dispense justice than I am. But I wont launch a campaign or anything like that, I’ll just keep myself right. I know a criminal? I should just pop him one every now and again. Guy breaks into my house? Well I’ll just break right back into his. And mess stuff up a bit. In fact, I hear there’s a paedophile down the street. I have some friends who would want in on this, good people.  We can sort this out better than the courts did, 4 years is nothing for what he did…

The scary thing about the above paragraph is that you can almost understand it. Why wouldn’t you want to take matters into your own hands if you’re sureyou know what should be done?  Why wouldn’t you make sure justice was done? In his book The Year of Living Biblically, A J Jacobs talks a little about this.  In his quest to live for a year as close to biblical rules as he could, Jacobs must stone an adulterer. Eventually, he finds an idea target for this stoning, and bombards the reprobate with small pebbles and stones. “I cant deny, it felt good to chuck a rock at this nasty old man. It felt primal. It felt like I was getting vengeance on him. This guy wasn’t just an adulterer, he was a bully. And I wanted him to feel the pain he’d inflicted on others, even if that pain was just a tap on the chest”.

Vengance. It looks cool in film titles, but ugly in action. It looks like justice, twisted by anger into something nasty and self replicating. A little mental virus passed on from person to person through a variety of different acts, none of which help anyone. It almostlooks like justice. Sometimes, if you squint. but its not. The bible says “an eye for an eye”, but as Jacobs discovers in his book, not even the old testament meant that literally. The interpretation offered by Jacobs is that when a wrong is committed, something must be done to balance this. An eye doesn’t need to be taken out to pay for an eye, something of equal value will do just fine. How much jail time is an eye worth? How much community service? Who decides?

I’ve heard that if you called a referendum on the death penalty in this country that it would be a landslide victory in favour.  That we’d say its ok to kill people sometimes, if we think they’re bad enough. We’re right, righteous, and they are despicable. Hey, the two most powerful countries in the world do it, why not us?

Because we’re better than that. Better than vengeance, better than fury and better than final judgements. We stand up and say “no, that is wrong”, and we do notpunctuate that by carrying out the same crime. We don’t use death to condemn killing, and we don’t steal what has been stolen. Vengeance isn’t justice, its just vengeance.

Sometimes our rules don’t work, and the people in charge of them don’t work right either. But its better than nothing. Laws that fall down on human error are better than no laws at all. We cant regulate for every aspect of human nature or possibilities therein, but we can do our best. We try to cover our bases, knowing that someone, somewhere, will be treated unfairly because of this, but that someone else is protected by it. We hope for forgiveness for the lives we make harder, and take comfort in the ones we’ve made better. Most of all, we know that we are not perfect, and that we have to try harder. We keep the faith that there is always a better way, and all we have to do is find it.

I will of course enforce this worldview by any means necessary. Because i think I’m right. Might want to keep an eye on me…

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