Category: Natural Law and Reciprocity

GREAT QUESTION
–“Q: Curt: Is understanding or agreeing with the law a pre-requisite?”–

1) NATURAL LAW: Well, you must understand nothing more than rights, and that you have none other than those over those demonstrated interests you have produced by your own burdens of cost. (cost in the widest sense).

2) CRIMINAL LAW: You do not need to know criminal law but if you have the vaguest sense of Natural Law it should be obvious that one does not deprive, steal, harm, or destroy the demonstrated interests of others regardless of reason. Criminal laws license the insurer of last resort (usually the government) on behalf of the people, to use organized force if necessary to pursue, cease, detain, prosecute, perform restitution, punishment, and prevention of repetition or imitation.

3) CIVIL LAW You do not need to know of or understand a violation of that (natural) criteria, nor intend to do it (civil tort). You need only impose a cost upon that which is not your demonstrated interest. Ignorance is no defense, although we do compensate for children, the aged, the diseased, invalids and sometimes even women for whom responsibility (restitution) exists but not always blame (punishment).

4) ADMINISTRATIVE LAW: You do not need to know of or understand man made laws (legislation, regulation, and findings of the court). Most derive from 1, and 2, but those that constrain us from externalizing risks onto others whether intentionally or by accident (recklessness, speeding, drunk driving etc) may not be intuitive. So we are likely to receive administrative fines or punishment as ‘training’ so that we are incentivized not do so again, and so that others learn from our ‘ignorance, incompetence, or disregard’.

5) COMMON CAPITAL LAW: You may not know and may have trouble learning or understanding the vast variety of commons that you presume are there for your use in one way or another, whether physical (material), informal(behavioral), or institutional(Organizations, Processes, and Procedures).

6) “SACRED” LAW: Without membership in a polity with sufficient experience with the myths, traditions, rituals, festivals, then you may not know, likely will not understand, and may question ‘sacred’ laws even if you do. The “Sacred”, while of religious association, literally means ‘that which you have no right to and every obligation to defend, and are never alienated from respecting or defending. In other words violations of the sacred are the criteria by which others in the polity consider you a risk to the polity, and as such must be p punished, shunned, ostracized, or killed. Most of these sacred laws are categorically common across cultures from traditions, to moral codes, symbols and icons, taboos, spaces and objects, certain texts and rituals. All of these ‘laws’ generate demand for reciprocal altruism, and violating extreme limits on that behavior is generally unforgivable, unrestitutable, and severely punishable.

7) NORMATIVE BEHAVIOR LAW: You may not know, may have trouble learning, and may disagree with many informal rules, because you, as most people do, confuse the moral terms by which you consent to self regulation of your behavior, with the tolerance from variation from moral norms (terms of cooperation) which have evolved in the polity – but it doesn’t matter what you think. That’s just your strategy for you with others, and your strategy has nothing to do with your strategy’s impact on the commons – as such you may be not only responsible, but blamed and punished for behaviors you believe should be tolerated but are not. Your only solution then is ‘exit’.

That should cover the vast majority of questions about the categories of law.

Affections
CD

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