/lit/ - Literature

>>11010445
>He could have said "it's not mine but i'll do it anyway because it doesn't matter if it's mine or not."

that is what he said, except he says it in the form of a question that is more than just a response. if he had said it, people might have thought he was somehow happy or fulfilled by this choice, or comfortably bitter. by not saying this, something else happens. it actually does matter whether or not the child is his own, but it also matters how he responds to this encounter.

>If everyone followed this parable as a maxim, the legal system would stop working because you'd have everyone claiming to be the actual perpetrators. And no one would resist injustice.

the injustice proceeds from the deception. without a deception there is no injustice. by accepting the injustice for what it is - injustice - the truth eventually reveals itself.

>everyone would claim to be the actual perpetrators

even if that were the case, if you lived in a land where when an infraction was created people immediately owned up to it, how would that be such a bad thing? you wouldn't need a legal system at all if people immediately confessed to crimes they had committed or lies they had told.
this is the taoist ideal, basically.

sometimes i think that in a taoist sense laws can be understood to be like standing armies. after the war is over the army disbands and everybody goes back to the farms, since the army has served its purpose. it might be the same thing for laws in a sort of taoist-inspired commune. everything is basically ad hoc and provisional.