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Justice for the narration, not for Yatim

Posted: February 9th, 2022, 6:51 pm
by Empiricist-Bruno
Yatim was a young man when he got shot and killed by some police years ago in a Toronto streetcar. Some people weren't happy with that and sought justice for Yatim and as a result, the triggerman got convicted.

So, did Yatim get justice? Personally, I don't think so. Once you're dead, you can't get anything. I guess thaty opinion stems from my empiricist views. To get something, you have to be able to feel receiving it with your senses and Yatim's senses don't pick up anything anymore.

I was somewhat tormented by that question today as I sat in the student dentist chair. That's when the "Eureka!" moment came to me. Justice is for the narration, and not for anyone past away.

Here I need to share with you what I mean when I say "the narration." My views suggest the possibility of a divinity and that's why I thought to post in this forum. How can you have a story without a narrator to grasp it? And if you don't have a story, how can you have history or understanding or meaning? I am suggesting that if there is a universe that has a history then you necessarily must have a universal narrator to go along with it. The narrator may or may not speak to you voluntarily. For instance, if you see fossils, you realize there was a story there long time ago and the narrator informing you of this by providing you with the fossils does not do so in a voluntary way. The story that the person construct upon finding the fossils comes with a more voluntary form of the narrator because the person constructs the story using a narration voluntarily.

I've clarified here what I mean by narration to try to illustrate its importance. Not all narrations do justice to the truth. Some way to observe phenomenon for instance, say the laws of nature of Newton, will be superseeded by a better narration or the laws of nature, say Einstein theories, and my point here is that quality in narrating what is going on does matter to people who care or need to know about what is going on around them.

So, although the narration will never feel grateful to you if you restore or improve it, all of us who need it to understand a meaningful part of our lives will want to reject dealing with unhinged narrations unless it is to give away to one's adversaries.

So when Yatim got shot, all kinds of lawyers tried to narrate that story so as to justify either the killer or the prosecution. A just narrative will deliver the right way forward. If there are no courts given the task of assessing the various narrations then it suggests that the correct narration is that nothing wrong or worthy of examination happened there. Doing justice for Yatim is doing justice to the narration of an important worldly event.

From the public's perspective, I think that doing justice for the narration of Yatim's death is much more critical than simply doing justice for Yatim although I am sure many people would say that one and the other are the same thing. That's certainly a reasonable point of view, but it's poor narration in my opinion, and hopefully what I am providing here is better.

When you just do justice for Yatim, you look for a scapegoat, for someone to pay the price. On the other hand, when you want justice for the narration of Yatim's death, you are more likely to find out what really happened and then you determine what's the fair way from there. So from now on whenever you hear about doing justice for this or that person, how will you be more keen in assessing what it is that the justice seekers soliciting you are really looking for?

Re: Justice for the narration, not for Yatim

Posted: March 24th, 2022, 2:15 pm
by thrasymachus
Empiricist-Bruno wrote
Yatim was a young man when he got shot and killed by some police years ago in a Toronto streetcar. Some people weren't happy with that and sought justice for Yatim and as a result, the triggerman got convicted.

So, did Yatim get justice? Personally, I don't think so. Once you're dead, you can't get anything. I guess thaty opinion stems from my empiricist views. To get something, you have to be able to feel receiving it with your senses and Yatim's senses don't pick up anything anymore.

I was somewhat tormented by that question today as I sat in the student dentist chair. That's when the "Eureka!" moment came to me. Justice is for the narration, and not for anyone past away.

Here I need to share with you what I mean when I say "the narration." My views suggest the possibility of a divinity and that's why I thought to post in this forum. How can you have a story without a narrator to grasp it? And if you don't have a story, how can you have history or understanding or meaning? I am suggesting that if there is a universe that has a history then you necessarily must have a universal narrator to go along with it. The narrator may or may not speak to you voluntarily. For instance, if you see fossils, you realize there was a story there long time ago and the narrator informing you of this by providing you with the fossils does not do so in a voluntary way. The story that the person construct upon finding the fossils comes with a more voluntary form of the narrator because the person constructs the story using a narration voluntarily.

I've clarified here what I mean by narration to try to illustrate its importance. Not all narrations do justice to the truth. Some way to observe phenomenon for instance, say the laws of nature of Newton, will be superseeded by a better narration or the laws of nature, say Einstein theories, and my point here is that quality in narrating what is going on does matter to people who care or need to know about what is going on around them.

So, although the narration will never feel grateful to you if you restore or improve it, all of us who need it to understand a meaningful part of our lives will want to reject dealing with unhinged narrations unless it is to give away to one's adversaries.

So when Yatim got shot, all kinds of lawyers tried to narrate that story so as to justify either the killer or the prosecution. A just narrative will deliver the right way forward. If there are no courts given the task of assessing the various narrations then it suggests that the correct narration is that nothing wrong or worthy of examination happened there. Doing justice for Yatim is doing justice to the narration of an important worldly event.

From the public's perspective, I think that doing justice for the narration of Yatim's death is much more critical than simply doing justice for Yatim although I am sure many people would say that one and the other are the same thing. That's certainly a reasonable point of view, but it's poor narration in my opinion, and hopefully what I am providing here is better.

When you just do justice for Yatim, you look for a scapegoat, for someone to pay the price. On the other hand, when you want justice for the narration of Yatim's death, you are more likely to find out what really happened and then you determine what's the fair way from there. So from now on whenever you hear about doing justice for this or that person, how will you be more keen in assessing what it is that the justice seekers soliciting you are really looking for?
You know, I like this because it makes us think about the way we are as moral agencies in the world. Courtrooms are extraordinary settings for narratives to play out regarding complex issues. But here is the rub: First, narratives can recontextualize essential situations beyond their moral content. Overzealous lawyers, the kind thinking that brings exaggerations to bear, rationalizations that "work" to support a thesis, lies masked as their opposites, and so on. I mean, it is easy to elaborate and rationalize and this may thicken the plot of the narrative, but it does an injustice in the end.
Further, the narrative? Narratives count most where guilt or innocence rests with communicative matters and interpretation come into play. Or, w2hen context is the explanatory bottom line. This latter is really a problem. He is guilty, say, but why did he do it? Now you have contextualized the motivation, and we all know where this leads: guilt and innocence lose their meaning because all contexts are determinative settings, and the freedom requisite for guilt disappears.
Narratives are what we live by, or, live IN. They are living itself, for what am I if not a living narrative? But ethics steps beyond this narrative, and here things get pretty dicey for our rules and laws and principles for behavior.