Kort Explores conundrums of the human condition

There was a time when it was largely taken for granted that a certain level of reasonable interpretation could be expected within human interactions. A few words or phrases were all that were needed to convey ideas or define the terms of a business deal.

Reaching a reasonable interpretation does require agreement on basic terms and fundamental assumptions. There are some who claim that a reasonable interpretation of basic principles is now impossible because we live in such a pluralistic society. They point to our very different beliefs and cultural practices as if these were the fundamental principles of our society. This focus on superficial differences completely misses the point of what constitutes a society, and the basic functions society provides to its participants.

Our far more numerous differences are the manifestation of the extraordinary degree of individual freedom that is provided to each of us by the essence of our unique society. But it's not our differences that make our society possible, but rather our agreement on a very limited set of basic terms and principles that make up the core of our social contract. Without such agreements our society simply wouldn't exist. If we now abandon the voluntary agreement that has been the basis of our social system for the last two centuries, our society will either disintegrate, or those seeking control over our previously free society will impose the unwilling acceptance of their very different social concepts by force.

The key is that only those terms and fundamental principles that can be reasonably interpreted by all members of our society can be considered basic principles. Those aspects of society that are not interpreted consistently by all participants are by definition not sufficiently basic to be considered fundamental principles. In the past the difference between fundamental principles and superficial variations in a pluralistic society was better understood - as was the need for the reasonable interpretation of those fundamental principles by all members of society.

But things aren't as simple and easy today. Our fundamental principles have been distorted until their original meanings have been largely lost. Business contracts are now thick volumes of fine print legalize beyond the understanding of the participants without the assistance of expensive attorneys. Attempts to discuss ideas often become distracted into minutiae or lost in technicalities and misinterpretations.

The growing complexity of our communications seems on one level to be a function of the complexity of the other aspects of our modern high tech world. But does the complexity of the technology base of our civilization really require the growing complexity in our communications? The complexity of our tools and toys may have increased, but the essence of life hasn't really changed very much.

Somewhere along the way we've allowed ourselves to be tricked into abandoning the concept of reasonable interpretation. Much of the change was wrought by those who sought short term advantage through claiming that obscure technicalities and special circumstances fell outside of the scope of reasonable interpretation. But perhaps the most pervasive change was caused by expediency and its all too seductively attractive companion situational ethics.

The problem with relying on reasonable interpretations of elegantly simple principles is that those doing the interpretation must themselves be reasonable individuals. What is common for men of honor and integrity can become the rare exception among those afflicted with flawed characters, inadequate understanding, or simply misguided intentions.

A growing difficulty with discussing the issues of the day is perhaps one of the more immediate and obvious impacts on our ability to communicate with each other. Society has always suffered from the tendency of citizens to base their positions more on emotion than on the reasoned consideration of principles. The abandonment of reasonableness has substantially favored those motivated by irrational emotion.

The very concept of communications requires that all participants be able to understand what is being communicated. This function has already been lost in many of our forms of communications, and is in danger in many others. Perhaps the more important question is how long will we be able to continue as a functioning free society if this trend continues?

Today the first impulse of many is not to find value by attempting to understand the core concept being advocated by another, but rather to attack any idea that contradicts their pet emotion driven illusions by immediately seeking the most extreme and least applicable example. Instead of seeking a reasonable interpretation, it's become increasingly popular - and effective - to deny any reasonable interpretation through the use of the least reasonable of arguments.

Consider the folk wisdom of "your right to swing your arm ends where my nose begins". At other times the meaning of this simple sentence would have spoken volumes to almost anyone who heard it, and in large part defines the operative philosophy of many of our founding fathers. They would interpret the idea within the framework of reason, knowing that there would likely be limits and exceptions when applied to the extremes of human interactions, but recognizing that the basic idea held broad application within the mainstream of a free society.

Nowadays, the response is quite likely to be protests like "but what if you move your nose into the arc of my fist after I'd already started to swing", or "surely I have the right to defend myself if you're threatening me". In past days, a reasonable interpretation of the core principle would recognize that accident and self-defense are special situations that have little to do with the basic concept that individual freedoms are limited by the need to respect the rights and freedoms of others. These days the most extreme examples are raised as if they in some way invalidate the core of the principle being offered.

The need to avoid leaving any avenue for misinterpretation uncovered is making it increasingly difficult to intelligently discuss unconventional ideas - especially if they in any way appear politically incorrect. And by the time an advocate has expanded and enhanced his arguments in an attempt to pre-empt at least the most obvious misinterpretations, his efforts have likely become so convoluted that the core concept has been lost in the complexity.

As a consequence, we seem to be increasingly losing the ability to deal with issues and even basic concepts. Where once grand principles could be expressed in a few elegantly simple and straight forward sentences, we now require reams of complex verbiage that still fails to completely define every possible nuance.

Having abandoned the idea that reasonable men can apply elegantly simply ideas to diverse situations in reasonable ways, we now attempt to pre-emptively define every possible technicality in dense complex verbiage. The Constitution and bill of rights that were drafted to define the very essence of our nation only required a few pages of elegant prose. In the days when reasonableness was the norm, these few pages spoke volumes all by themselves.

Governments have always seen their primary business as being the passing and enforcement of laws, and ours has been no different. In an effort to refine and quantify the elegantly simple principles of the founding documents, our legislatures began passing laws - a time honored practice which at the time no doubt seemed like a good idea. And at first it seemed to work pretty well.

There was a time when all of the laws of the land could be contained in a single book, and a reasonable individual could know them all and understand how they fit together to define a workable society. Today the federal government alone staggers under the load of over 5 million laws written in small print on at least tens of millions of pages. Many of these laws have through litigation spawned additional masses of judicial opinions and legal precedents that must be considered in order to interpret just what the law might actually mean. In our efforts to address every possible unreasonable interpretation of what is so elegantly defined in the Constitution and Bill of Rights, we've generated such a huge mass of dense overly complex verbiage that is has become humanly impossible for anyone to comprehend how it all fits together to define our current society.

Perhaps the greatest danger is that complexity too often conceals contradiction, and in uncertainty hide the potentials for manipulation and even subversion of the original concept. By trying to deny misinterpretation, we all too often assist in denying the essence of our basic principles as well.

Consider the effect all this complexity has had on the application of the law in the everyday world. Today most experts admit that any trial is more of a gamble than a predictable exercise of justice. The huge mass of legal precedents, officially accumulated in an attempt to interpret the principles of law, in reality too often provide the grounds on which to base positions that are entirely contradictory to how a reasonable citizen might interpret the same laws.

With the law itself open to such contradictory interpretations, the outcome of a trial becomes more a measure of the sometimes arbitrary restrictions placed on the process by the judge, followed by the advocacy skills of the lawyers and their ability to manipulate the jury. A multiple murderer with the resources to hire the best legal team, who in turn are able to manipulate the jury selection process, can buy a not guilty verdict in spite of overwhelming evidence of guilt. Poor defendants charged with the same victimless activities that were common practice among the founding fathers now too often face long jail terms.

Any semblance of what would have been recognized as justice in the early years of our nation would be hard to find in a modern courtroom. In our well intentioned attempts to define and quantify the concept of justice we have created a paradox. In an effort to perfect justice we've created a level of complexity that has largely eliminated anything even remotely resembling a traditional reasonable interpretation of justice.

The logical extrapolation of this trend would result in all but our most basic communications - anything that can't be managed with a grunt or a scream - becoming too complex for most of us to comprehend without the assistance of a paid specialist. Our traditional accommodations to complexity have been to develop human specialists or new technologies. Lawyers and computers are two examples of these approaches. But these approaches have serious limitations and adverse side effects when imposed on our basic need to communicate.

Computers do make it easier to generate complexity, but it's proving far more difficult to create the artificial intelligence needed to distill complexity back into an elegant simplicity that is compatible with the human mind. Lawyers of course see the expanding need for legal interpretations as being in their best interests. But do we really want to hire a lawyer to check for legal liabilities every time we write a letter to a friend? Do we really want to turn the process of stopping at a fast food joint into a nightmare of contracts, liability releases, and regulations that eliminate the very essence of what we thought we wanted in a burger or cup of coffee?

We've already allowed the complexity and contradictions of judicial interpretations to obscure the elegant simplicity of the basic principles that have served our nation so well for most of its history. As the trend continues, those basic principles will be increasingly replaced by the very flaws in human nature they were intended to restrain, and our grand experiment in freedom will come to an end.

Wouldn't it be far easier to simply restore the practice of reasonable interpretation? The current trend will continue as long as we allow it to continue. The solution must start with the ways we choose to communicate with each other. Only then can we effectively demand a return to respect for reasonable interpretations of the Constitution and Bill of Rights in our laws and government. We will only be able to restore our lost freedoms when we restore our understanding of just what the concept of freedom means to ourselves and our society.