What is Law?

What is law? Law is a set of rules that is designed by government for people to follow. But what if the law is unjust? What if we do not believe in law? Must we still obey it by all means necessary?

St. Thomas Aquinas quoted that: “An unjust law is a human law that is not rooted in eternal law and natural law. Any law that uplifts human personality is just. Any law that degrades human personality is unjust. All segregation statutes are unjust because segregation distort the soul and damages the personality. It gives the segregator a false sense of superiority and the segregated a false sense of inferiority.” I personally find what St. Thomas Aquinas said very convincing, more importantly, I find even the law in religion matter can also be unjust. “Law is written by human, regardless of whether the law was supposedly passed by God’s word or government, in the end it is still written by human. Who knows if the law from the Bible is actually based off from God’s word or not, but if the rules are written down by human, then the rules can be bias; considering the fact that everyone holds different opinions, and perspective.

For instance, before the civil right movement, by law, all non-white minorities were considered to be lower class, slavery. African American was not allowed to sit in the area with the white American, and that was the law for many years. Until the civil right movement, people decided to take a stand to that unjustful law, people gathered and acted on the civil disobedience. Even today, we have Occupy Wall Street, or just last week, a group of college students protested in from the Baruch College for the extreme high tuition.

Law is created by human, which means no law is perfect. Since no human is perfect, which is why if there is an unjusted law happen, we must take on the action and try our best to fight against it but in a peaceful matter. 

Mill Vs. Marx

Classical liberalism is concerned with the danger to individual freedom from government interference, as well as the power of majority opinion in areas of culture and lifestyle. In contrast, Marx argues that under the capitalism, people will be trapped economically; since the freedom in economic, the rich will be richer and the poor will be poorer.

I feel that both ideas present a very good conviction for its own opinion; however, I do see flaws in both of them. Such as, Mill believes that people should have the right to decide what is best for them, if the situation is only a self-concern matter, government should not interfere. To certain extend, I do agree with Mill. Marriage for instance, it should be a self-concern matter, even for homosexual, government, religion should never interfere. Everyone has their own belief in religion; just like in our liberty of rights, freedom of religion. Marriage is a form of belief, some believes it is a religion ritual, some sees it as a business transaction, and some feels that it is ceremony between two individuals that are in love with each other. Shouldn’t the homosexual have their own freedom of rights as well?

Nevertheless, under some situation, I do feel that the government should have the right over individual. For example, drunk driving is not only a self-concern matter, in statistics, a lot of car accidents happen due to drunk driving. Or abortion, some may debate that is a self-concern matter, but it is not. If a woman decides to get an abortion, what she is trying to do is to end a human life. In those cases, the government should step in and prevent those actions from individual.

On the other hand, Marx argues that capitalism will lead to dangers in the economic system. Since with the freedom in the economy, the rich will become richer and the poor will remain poor. In a way, Marx is right on that theory. That is why we have the occupy Wall Street today, it is the result from the capitalism. Nonetheless, without the capitalism, our economy in this country would never have grown. Without the works from capitalists our country would more likely to become like most of the Eastern Europe countries, or perhaps North Korea. People are only allowed to have certain wealth that the government allows them to have, or like China, the one child policy, and because in the Chinese tradition, male are favorable, the parents are likely to abort any female infant, which causes China to have such an unbalance gender population.

Mill and Marx’s theory both have their pros and cons, to pick one over the other is hardly reasonable. The keyword for people, the individuals to learn from both perspectives is “balance”. If people have too much freedom, failures are meant to happen. However, without freedom, our living-style will become pet-like. 

Buddhism in America

The goal of life in Buddhism is to find release from our narrow concern with ourselves and our own interests, and the desires and cravings that make us restless, discontented and unhappy.

The lifestyle of a Buddhist, giving up their desires, clashes with that of an American, who we teach to be go-getters. However, although differences between the two ways of cognition exist, it is not impossible for an individual living in America to follow the teachings of Buddha.

In America, we encourage people to achieve their dreams and teach them to think and act in a way that is best for themselves. We instill the thought that nothing is impossible, making people believe that their dreams can come true. Buddhism, on the contrary, is the exact opposite and teaches one to give up their desires to achieve a state of enlightenment. Regardless, both decisions are based on the path that their individuals choose to follow. Considering the fact that the United States was founded on the belief in freedom of religion and expression, following the lifestyle of a Buddhist in America is possible.

Buddhism focuses on detaching oneself from their desires and wishes, but to begin the path toward enlightenment, an individual must first choose, wish, and desire to become enlightened. Since that is a self-made decision with freedom, I find there is a hypocrisy within the theory of Buddhism.