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[Hunter]

<shrug> Who gets to decide whether a use of force was an initiation or a self-defensive reaction?

[Sunni]

Hunter said:

It occurs to me, Sunni, thinking upon some things L Neil has put in his books, and some discussions I've had with him on other subjects, that I *do* have an answer of sorts for your question. Any time you inflict pain, I think there probably IS a moral debt incurred.

Wow ... Even if the pain is unintended and unanticipated? Even if that bit of pain reduces likely future pain?

Think of the debt each parent incurs with his or her children ... and if pain is something for which one must be compensated ... wow.

I just can't see this as workable, Hunter. It practically begs for abuse of the system, and guarantees disputes over whether something actually infliceted pain (and/or to what degree). It's something I've had problems with in some of Neil's books. He hasn't convinced me on this point, but then I've not talked to him about it.

[Hunter]

It's a calculus, Sunni. All the examples you list have counter-vailing points negating all or some of the debt. I've noticed in Neil's books, and asked him about it, that his heroes sometimes do things that are a bit hazy when yuo strictly apply the ZAP. Like, for instance, in "The American Zone", where they knowingly wear firearms onto private property where the owner has explicitly asked them not to. His answer was similar to the more detailed version that came out in the P'Na moral debt assessment session he gave us in detail in "Forge of the Elders".

A moral being is sometimes going to face these real world choices, and have to *knowingly* take on a moral debt. It may turn out to be no big deal - the falling alien owed the curmudgeon a few paltry coins for the unintentional trespass. But the debt still exists, even if it is unknown to the person it is owed to. If you think about it, being forced to kill an aggressor in self-defence is just an extreme case of this idea. "His" attack upon "me" creates a grievous moral obligation to me, but "my" killing him to stop that attack creates a pretty grave debt to "him". The philosophical principle at least most of us here have all agreed to rules that, because he was the aggressor, I'm off the hook. And, at least originally, Anglo-american jurisprudence and common law pretty much agreed with us.

What makes me pretty certain that this principle can be extended further is the "ultimate question" that L Neil poses in the course of explaining what happened when the Elders imported all the beings from alternate realities. Remember, the scientists who started all that were operating from the purest of motives - yet in the end, they decided that morally they owed a debt that could be erased in no other way but ending their existence. You yourself touched on much the same problem in "Where Are The Sons of Boromir". The lesson I at least draw from all of this is that ANY interaction with other free beings has moral implications. The restitution may not be a big deal - a lot of the emotional pain instances you cited have pretty obvious restitution built into the situation - but I tend to believe that if a moral code does not encompass ALL aspects of life, it is incomplete. YMMV, of course, and quite obviously many even among libertarians are not willing to take things quite so far. <grin> Yet another reason I so carefully make it clear that I am an empirical rational anarchist and not a libertarian of any upper-case placement.    

[Daniel Boone]

L Neil Smith realized a while back that "ZAP" sounds better than "NAP" when you are talking to people who have never heard of either. So he advocated changing the name, and a lot of us liked his point.

Except, of course, for those of us who didn't.  I maintain that the "coolness" factor of the "zero" in ZAP is borrowed, probably unconsciously, from the repugnant "zero tolerance" meme that's got the statist bastards trembling with delight all over the place.  And I won't piggyback on their repressive memetic engineering, so I still call it the NAP.

We now return you to the much more interesting topic actually under discussion, with due apologies for the interruption.  ;-)

[Sunni]

It's a calculus, Sunni.

I understand that ... Perhaps I was taking your questions too literally, but it appeared to me that you were trying to reduce that calculus to something more simple. I'm sorry if I was misnaken.

"His" attack upon "me" creates a grievous moral obligation to me, but "my" killing him to stop that attack creates a pretty grave debt to "him".

I don't see it that way. His choice of actions that led me to no other course of action save allowing his aggression upon me or my attempt to stop the threat does not create a debt in me. I didn't initiate the action that led to his death.

You yourself touched on much the same problem in "Where Are The Sons of Boromir".

I did?   I don't recall using the terms "moral" or "morality" in that piece. For those not familiar with that essay, it's on my personal web site, at http://www.sunnimaravillosa.com/gen/boromir.html. In fact, I've been thinking about this and related issues a lot, and am not sure I see the value in tying the freedom philosophy to morals any more. I can't articulate my thoughts much beyond that point at present, and am behind in other work anyway, so unfortunately I must leave it at that for now. Perhaps someone else here will grok what my brain is still working on and enlighten us all.  

Dan'l, good to "see" you again! <Snake hugs DB warmly> I, too, have problems with the ZAP and prefer NAP still. No apology needed for the "interruption", either.  

[Daniel Boone]

Dan'l, good to "see" you again! <Snake hugs DB warmly>

And same to you, O warm and slithery one!  You would not believe how I'm giggling over "perhaps I was misnaken."  I didn't even see it the first time my eyes went past....

[Sunni]

Daniel said:

And same to you, O warm and slithery one!

For that nice reply you get more huggsssss ...  

You would not believe how I'm giggling over "perhaps I was misnaken."

You've not heard me say that, or seen me type it, before now? Oh, dear ...   Glad you got a smile out of it, at any rate.

[Daniel Boone]

For that nice reply you get more huggsssss ...

Mmmm, better than poundcake!

Re: "misnaken":

You've not heard me say that, or seen me type it, before now? Oh, dear ...

I'm now wondering how many dozens of times my ears and eyes have slid past it, all unnoticing.  No matter, it's still funny!

[Sunni]

Daniel wrote:

Mmmm, better than poundcake!

Shall I start another sunni-ism and call it pouncecake?  

[Hunter]

<chuckle> Say, I kinda like that.  

[Sunni]

 Glad someone approves.

[Herself]

Hey, now, if irresistable pound cake is to be descrobe, receipes would be aw'fly handy!

     It is highly unlikely that every infliction of pain -- even the most observable sorts of plain physical pain -- incurs a "moral" debt.  Case in pont: very recently, I underwent some medical procedures that while not especially invasive are quite painful and take a considerable length of time.  The doc's office, sensible folks, offer topical anesthesia: subcutaneous lidocaine.  The needle delivering that stuff hurts like the very dickens, and it takes several shots.  Hurts so bad I was quivering, eyes watering, et whiney cetera.  But that 30 - 60 seconds of pain spared me hours of misery; I was happy to pay for anesthesia and ouch my way though the delivery of it.  Was a moral debt incurred?  C'mon!  ...The nurse did apologize, there are thankfully few sadists in that profession, but I thanked her: she was preventing far worse!   You have to consider the transaction.

     In circumstances where getting elsewhere rapidly is not an option, shunning is my preferred mode of defense against mashers.  I just treat 'em like furniture.  All but the densest get the message, and it's kinder than taking them apart verbally (a skill I learned, and well, at the very hearthfires -- which may have incurred a debt on the part of those who taught me by example, but I chose to skip out rather than try to collect).

     Most of the "emotional pain" situations, while real enough to the poor wight that feels the sting, are utterly non-quantifiable and can never really be put right.  Trying to ajudicate them merely debases the search for equity or justice.  It's an imperfect world, and can't be made any better by weighing hearts against feathers or any other sort of thought-policing.  Sometimes situations and interactions are just screwed up, and the best option is to not attempt repairs but to move on with the least damage all 'round.

     Politicians, most of them anyway, would hardly notice shunning.  The majority of them aren't even all that sure there is a world beyond their fantasies.  But ignoring them makes me feel all warm inside, so I highly recommend it on that basis!

     --Herself

[Hunter]

Not the same thing at all, you're describing something that both parties enter into knowingly for a preset purpose, a voluntary contract with definite and obvious benefits for both parties. As for your other point, it is a perilous path indeed to start claiming that anything which can't be quantified can be safely ignored. There are an awful lot of desireable things in life that you can't measure in any meaningful way.

[Herself]

All right, Hunter;  we've thrown out the obvious exceptions (and saved devtotees of consensual rough sex simply hours of fretting), but we're left with your comment:
     

...it is a perilous path indeed to start claiming that anything which can't be quantified can be safely ignored.

But I never said that.  I said "emotional distress" was not very easy to put right through legal action.  Not only is it well-nigh impossible to quantify ("how much"), it's not usually susceptible to objective verification ("if any").  Would you have the courts take a leaf from the Egyptian Book Of The Dead?  ('Twas Mut -- her very name a root of "magistrate" -- who would weigh your heart against her feather.  Enter her court with a heavy heart, and nasty critters would devour your very soul!)  The trouble is, we're a bit lacking in Mut, her scales, and the feather from her cap; all our courts share with hers is the sword, a poor remedy for an aching heart.

     The rotters of this world, we shall never civilize even at swordpoint.  The civil will, usually, recognize when they have trod uninvited upon the feelings of others, and seek to make amends.  We can teach civility to our own young; but to attempt to civilize oafs like the one I sat next to on a recent flight is try teaching pigs to sing.  Pointless.

     We ignore emotional distress at our peril -- and we imperil ourselves even more when we seek to parcel it out in neat units and balance them up as we would our checkbooks.


     As you point out,

There are an awful lot of desireable things in life that you can't measure in any meaningful way.

If you cannot measure them, how shall a court bring them about?  When will the law know enough has been done?  Shall victims rule without limit?  Shall offenders set their own terms?  Ideals are nice but they must be achievable.

     Politeness is only achieved by individual action, and should be our first line of defense against "emotional injury."*  Flight, shunning, carefully-directed rudeness and a show of force can all do much when intelligently applied.  But the courts?  Perish the courts!  They're no fix at all in such matters!

     --Herself
______________________________________________
     *Amusingly, I have been taken to task for my formal, near-Victorian style in memoranda and e-mails exchanged with a supervisior who dislikes having a female tech on his staff.  "It's so distancing," says my department head.  Yeah, maybe; but it beats opening notes with "You sexist, halfwitted pig...."  I'll stick with politeness, and eschew both naked honesty and false bonhomie.

[Hunter]

Uh, lady, where precisely did ANYONE say anything about courts? The original subject was shunning. People have become somewhat distracted from that by my observation that I was a bit troubled by some of the implications of using shunning on people. The whole discussion of the moral dimension of inflicting emotional pain on someone is one that I can't believe somebody in the liberTarian movement hasn't already explored in 3 part harmony with circles and arrows and lines and pictures with a paragraph on the back.

Some of the implications that people have already pointed out have made me realize just how big a notion it might be, but as I already said somewhere up above in all this, I had never thought about it in these terms before. Still mulling what it all may mean myself, though I have come to realize that this belief or opinion that the NAP/ZAP may apply in matters beyond the physical has been behind my reaction to some things in life for a long time without ever consciously realizing it.