The pre-requisite to a sense of reason is that it must be completely devoid of emotion. Emotion is the attribute of the uncivilized. Truly blindfolded justice can be delivered only when it is completely devoid of emotion.
Once you have taken out the emotion, all you are left with is reason.
Now reason compels you to think what punishment does a murderer deserve? Or, does he deserve to be punished at all for his crime of killing another human?
Reason says that if we must punish him, then first we must punish those who created him. The murderer was a mere tool that killed. But who made that tool? Let us hunt him down first, before hanging the gun for its crime of firing.
But if we cannot do that, or if we are unwilling to do that, it is not justice. Hanging a murderer is an incomplete act. It is an act without due reason, it is uncivilized and barbaric.
Before indicting a criminal, the civilized men must point fingers at themselves, and hold themselves responsible for his crime.
The basest criminal in a society is the single most conspicuous symptom of what is going wrong in the society.
What will you achieve by chopping off the symptom? Diagnose the internal disease that has caused this malignant lump to appear on the surface.
Those who can see only at the surface, are the uncivilized, thoughtless men that are devoid of reason, and full of emotion.
Introspection is the foundation stone of a civil society. Examining others is the pastime of the jungle.
What is the grand purpose of justice? Is it retribution against the criminal, or is it elimination of crime to establish a civil society?
If the grand purpose of justice is to eliminate anger and violence from the world, and to establish a civil society of sense, reason and intellect, then justice has to be introspective.
So first know your purpose of justice. Do not act merely on your basic instincts, like wild animals, without any scope for sense and reason, for thousands of years mindlessly.
Right now what you are doing is, enforcing law and order, to barely keep the society together by force. It is not a civil society. It is a slave society that presumes men will be animals if left free without law and order.
How to change this presumption? How to bring the next level of man’s spiritual evolution – from a junglee to a civilized being?
This spiritual evolution will take time, no doubt. But it will begin from only one word: “I.”
For every major transformation that takes place in a society, the beginning is first made by the men of reason. And then the masses follow. When India was a British colony, firstly the men of reason recognized that freedom is their birthright. The spark was ignited in selective pockets of the privileged class, and it caught on like wildfire in the rest of India.
The masses are always oppressed under their own burden of ignorance — like mules. They survive on faith. They do not have the luxury of reason. It is upto the privileged class to initiate the change.
But of course, reason is the last and most insurmountable frontier for mankind. Reason is the enemy of faith. Reason begins where fear ends.
The methodology to cultivate your sense of reason is to cultivate a sense of introspection. Think of yourself, for yourself, and above all, by yourself.
And once you have begun with you, you will understand an even bigger truth: If it begins with you, it will also end with you. There is no one else inbetween.
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