logicp_writings/new/Agreeable Society.md

Agreeable Society

Point of Departure

The topic of discussion is:

• Bruce Pardy's lecture
• Bruce Pardy's suggestion that we could build an opt-in legal framework wherein we only permit a government to enforce laws that people consent to
• The consent was proposed as being first centered around the following form of consent:
  • I consent to have the state enforce a law which prevents my being subjected to physical force or threat of force

I am paraphrasing that last one a bit which essentially states that those in agreement would be okay with allowing a government to utilize force for the purpose of preventing or punishing actions of physical violence made against others. Yes, everyone would try to find loopholes with this one, but we could at least consider that there are a majority of those who do not want force to be imposed on them by their fellow citizens simply because any arbitrary conflict, such as a dispute of opinions.

If only it could just be a dispute of opinions in a glass chamber with no side effects. It's pretty easy to envision something like that because we can all envision situations where violence is being threatened or enacted upon us and we concede that we'd like some form of assistance - whether be it from a fellow citizen, fellow human from the vicinity, or, barring all that, a government officer whose profession bears specificity towards the task at hand

So we could, for the moment, assume that the law protecting a human's ability to exist and seek its own fulfillment through agreeable means which don't include subjecting fellow citizens to threats and violence - not killing and maiming them - not imprisoning them - not sexually assaulting them - not burning them - and so on. We allow for enforcement of this law which can result in the injury, death, dismemberment and imprisonment of persons who are deemed to have violated it - especially if they disagree with the assertion that this is the case an are worked over to get them to comply - but I think most of us would agree that there needs to be a provisioned means of ensuring or making more probable the widespread, ubiquitous achievement of citizen life which does not include threats and violence.

Limits

The question here is whether, similar to how hate speech and vaccine mandates have demonstrated a means of arguing to the point of convincing legislators and courts to agree that violence can be achieved without any violent act directly causing physical harm, or even without any act at all, definitions of violence or the accepted understanding of an expectation of being free from violence and threats of violence can be made which compel humans to perform acts in order to alleviate the ascription of their having been culpable in an act of violence.

Concerns

The main concern here is not simply that we aren't sure as to the definitions being used, or even if all those involved are able to come to the same definition. We also need to consider other issues:

• Does everyone want to provide a separate definition for a term of interest?
• Are there those who do not want to provide a definition?
• Are there those who do not want for a definition to be formulated and proposed?
• Are there those who would participate in a process of defining in order to plant a seed of deception?
• Are there those who would participate in a process of definition whilst steadfastly holding a position that no definition can be made, or that any definition made will be ill-formed and is, as such, justified in being weaponized, disregarded or utilized in the capacity of deceiving or swindling an interlocutor or fellow citizen

Alternate Departure

Could we imagine, for a moment, some other activity which might serve to calibrate fellow participants towards more agreeable dynamics?