As if Nothing Ever Happened

Love, retribution and redemption makes most of the interesting part of sinful history of mankind. Even today, even in our most modern societies, these three evils exists and are the sources of most serious crimes. But they aren't as obvious as they used to be. As the World gets bigger and bigger, misdemeanors of a common man start to loose their importance at the World's front stage. There might be many people being wronged in some behind the curtain kind of way and most of the time these acts go unnoticed because oppressed choose to remain silent or they seek revenge hyper-cautiously. Unlike the old times when hatred mostly acted out as normal animal instincts, now we are more cultured, we act deliberately, we plan and think through. Now this is where we make mistakes, our physical instincts are shared with other mammals and were evolved in millions of years but our minds don't have such a long history and didn't had that much time to practice to be perfect. When we plan bit by bit and expect things to fall within the expectation but they don't and whole vendetta plan goes awry then we wish whole chain of events shouldn’t have ever happened.

Even the most shameless person introspects upon his/her action and realize what the hell he/she has done. And then the dilemma of morality and regret takes over.

Before our society got all modernized, vengeance among individuals made very insignificant events turn into long term clashes of individuals and clans. Then there were family feuds which never resolved, there were wars which took lives of billions of men just because someone’s ego was at stake. Interesting thing is, it never ended with the accomplishment of revenge. It left its marks on generations. At least that’s what happened up till 19th century. Nowadays story is a little different. Rule of law is stronger now, that’s why people takes more calculated actions. In old days, criminals used to run far away after committing homicide and were never seen again. Now, there is no place to run and hide. A criminal has to always be on the watch in the modern world. Question of the century is, how to take revenge without any consequences and live life as if nothing ever happened?

Krzysztof Kieślowski, a famous polish writer, wrote a trilogy; Heavens, Hell, and purgatory inspired by Dante's The Divine Comedy in which a character named Philippa is under such circumstances of injustice and moral complexity. A loving school teacher, devastated by her husband's death from a drug overdose she tries to bring justice to the biggest drug dealer but the local police ignores her. Blinded with rage she plans to kill the drug dealer herself. But her plan fails miserably and four innocent people get killed by a bomb she planted to kill the drug dealer. She runs away from the town (with a policeman) and tries to forget that she killed four innocent people but it doesn’t work well due to her inner conflict of morality and regrets. But for a little while there, she finds herself feeling happy, content and in love. She lives as if she has found a heaven in the aftermath of her failed attempt of retribution. In fiction, it seems to work for her. For a while, at least.

If such illusion is possible to enjoy in fiction, is it possible in reality? May be not. There is an alternative solution according to physics. Instead of feeling contempt, we can even convince ourselves and others that it didn’t even happened provided that we have gun which fires bullets with speed more than speed of light. Ofcouse, such gun doesn’t exist but there is possibility that someday someone might invent such a thing. Richard Muller, a renowned physicist explained a case of ‘Tachyon Murder’ in his book “Now-the Physics of Time”. I will summarize the case here: Imagine a woman named ‘Mary’ shoots a man named ‘John’ with a tachyon gun (which fires bullets with speed of 4 times the speed of light). Bullet hits John, he dies.

Seems like a perfect plan but the only problem is it’s just not possible unless some genius invents such a thing because we are still bounded by limited laws of physics. But don’t worry, such tricks aren’t the specialty of physics only.

Our modern judiciary system is also based on limited black and white laws. And it expects a man to act in black and white. But unlike these man-made black and white laws, universe have a spectrum of black to white events, which makes it harder for man-made judiciary to make a clear black and white judgement. There is an interesting case of a man who was there according to laws of universe but he wasn’t there according to the laws of constitution.

It’s a story of a corporate company which just like any other corporate company kept a log of everything. There was man who used to work at a factory of that company. Once he had a dispute with another man... and wanted to kill the that man... He had a perfect plan... One morning, he started his day just like another day, went to his job, entered the factory using his thumbprints to enter and also marking his attendance and started his work routine. During that day, for a little while, he skipped his job, came out, killed the other man and went back to factory. This time not using the thumbprint entrance but a backdoor. After few days, he was brought to trial before judge. He exhibited his thumbprint records and proved he was INSIDE the factory, hence proving he didn’t kill the other man who was OUT of that factory, thus the man was not charged guilty and he lived his life as if nothing ever happened.

This case is only one example of how our judicial system only see things in black and white. Even though judges, lawyers, spectators and public knows by instinct that alleged man is guilty but they can't prove it unless proofs are provided in black and white to convince the rule book readers. This requirement of concrete proofs saves many from misjudgment but it also misjudges a few. Another famous example would be the case of People vs O.J. Simpson.

Avoiding Type 1 errors, i.e., susceptibility of false positives will remain a flaw in the modern human cultures as long as we will keep using the rigid rule books. But the rule books (and scientific method) are the best thing we have yet for the relatively smooth functioning of our society by over-inhibiting Type-1 errors.

So, it means if eyes of law weren't there to see it, then it's as if nothing ever happened. That brings us to the eyes of social communal moral system(usually based on culture and religion) that installs an internal self-judging system within a man to make sure a man knows whats wrong and whats right. Good thing about it is, it also comes in gray color. Bad thing about it is, it often causes a man to stuck in a loop of moral dilemma.

When you decide to rob a man to feed your own kids, when you decide to carpet-b a whole city to save your own motherland, when you decide to steal a car to save someone's life, when you kill a man for the sake of love. That's when you are living a life in gray shaded region, where legal systems seem to loose their importance, only the inner morality holds it's ground, which later causes a man to feel remorse, which a man can't escape, unless it's fiction.

The purpose of this article is not to bash the judicial system or to inspire any crimes, but to highlight the limits of human judgement and to inspire solutions.