G02 Law Principle

Which do you think is more likely?

Laws literally govern us and hold us accountable, so we don’t slip into chaotic anarchy.

OR

Laws do not literally govern but guide us by incentivizing how we respond to each other’s needs.

Anankelogy

Anankelogyilluminates how “law” serves as a metaphor for need. When declaring something as against the law, you’re really saying that it goes against some need. Theft is against the law, for example, because you need exclusive access to your property. Citing a law typically compels more respect for that need than directly expressing your need.

“Please don’t take my things without asking” carries less of a punch than declaring, “You broke the law when you stole my things!” If the law is on your side, you can stay guarded and not expose your vulnerabilities. You let the law speak for your needs.

This reinforces alienation. We let laws impersonally convey our needs to avoid the vulnerability of our emotions personally conveying our needs. It’s easier to defend a “rationally” produced law than our seeming irrational needs.

Our inflexible needs control our actions far more than our flexible laws. Laws guide our actions to respect each other’s inflexible needs. It’s simply easier to say we are governed by rational laws than admit we are actually governed by irrational needs.

The more we believe we are literally governed or controlled by laws, instead of merely guided by laws, the further we slip into toxic legalism. The more we force our inflexible needs to fit flexible laws, the less well we become. Anxiety and depression overrule our coerced conformities. Your inflexible needs cannot be ignored for the sake of any law.

Need-response

The further we drift from the needs our laws exist to serve, the easier we slide into toxic legalism. We slip into overgeneralizing. We remain alienated from each other. We easily become more hostile toward each other.

On the surface, we trust laws to keep our interactions dispassionate. Under that veneer, we often usurp the pro-social purpose of law for selfish gain. When they desperately react to our legally privileged self-interest, which negatively affects their inflexible needs, we can smear them as lawbreakers, as criminals, as terrorists. As if our legally-privileged reactions matter more than their violated needs.

“Why don’t they remain rational,” you could ask, “and use nonviolent means like the ballot and judiciary to file any complaint?” In other words, let the laws suit their needs so you don’t have to personally relate to them. You can then overlook how the “law” of runaway legalism repeatedly denies their needs.

Need-response fills the many gaping holes of toxic legalism. Replacing selfish exaggerations with relevant specifics, alienation with engagement, and adversarial attitudes with mutual understanding and respect. Because the more you can resolve your personal needs, the less you’re driven by impersonal laws.

Reactive Problem

The more you force yourself—or become coerced—to comply with any law going against your inflexible needs, the more your body will rebel. Depression likely results. Anxiety often sets in. Pain abounds. Addictions to somehow cope with it all likely follows.

The less your needs resolve because your forced to comply with some antagonistic law, the more pain you will suffer. The more you suffer in agony, the more compelled to desperately seek relief. This may include some illegal actions.

Law enforcement may step in to punish your lawbreaking behavior. It goads you to comply with norms that violate your integrity. But is not equipped to care. Its impersonal approach typically remains blind to how it contributes to your lawless behavior. Especially if benefiting from your noncompliance. They vicious cycle repeats.

When any impersonal law enforcement benefits from the need-violating conditions it helps create, anankelogy identifies this as empirical evil. How they benefit and your level of harm can both be measured, along with a correlation between the two.

Responsive Solution

Need-response counters this tendency toward toxic legalism with empirical uprightness. Which replaces toxic incentives discouraging wellness to now improving wellness. Instead of blindly trusting cited laws to fix a situation, need-response adds the discipline to address the specifics overlooked by generalized laws.

That discipline includes empirically measuring the level of actual harm from coerced compliance. And empirically measuring how enforcers benefit from such depersonalizing coercion. Even if they see themselves being completely professional and doing a good job.

The more enforcers benefit from impeding your ability to honor the needs of others, the more they can rationalize their coercive pressures as the trusted sole solution. Perverse incentives reinforce their ill treatment of rule breakers, while lacking incentives to encourage thriving.

Need-response incentivizes flourishing over mindless compliance. It puts inflexible needs over flexible laws with what it calls citationization, or more simply “law-fit”. This reconnects us all to the original purpose of our laws, and that is to encourage mutually honoring each other’s needs. But instead of relying solely or heavily on laws or their enforcement to respect each other’s needs, loveincentivizes us to honor the needs of others as our own.

Responding to your needs

How does this principle speak to your experience of needs? Post in our Engagement forum your thoughtful response to one of these:

• How can a society exist without laws?

• How can our needs govern us into doing stupid, harmful things to others?

• Will need-response try to replace law enforcement?

• What would happen if need-response itself becomes too impersonal to be effective?

Instead of selecting one of these, post your own engagement feedback about your experience with the subject of this principle. Remember the aim is to improve our responsiveness to each other’s needs, toward their full resolution. If you’re new at posting here, first check the guide below.