Just Before Breaking the Law—The Voice of Ethics Stopped Me

※This article is 2000 characters long.

Prologue | Isn't That Someone Else's Property?

Impulse moves the body faster than thought.

That was an event from over 20 years ago.

My younger self was "about to destroy a certain object."

I was angry about something.

I no longer remember what I was angry about or who I was angry at.

However, when I tried to give a place to the "something" that had accumulated inside me, the “it” in front of me became a convenient target.

I was just young.

Before I could think, my arms were about to move.

At that moment, an old man called out to me.

“Isn't that someone else's property?”

In an instant, the “external” had intruded into my interior.

With those words, I froze, and my past memories came back vividly.

The memory of my father destroying the walls of our house

The memory of being stopped at a public bath when I tried to use shampoo that belonged to someone else

The memory of destroying a friend's Hyper Yo-Yo and apologizing

“Isn't that someone else's property?”

With these words, the dots of those memories all connected.

Chapter 1 | The Sealed Room of Impulse—The Self Before the Law

Anger, frustration, irritation, dissatisfaction, feelings of helplessness.

We harbor these emotions within us, but sometimes they run wild as a "force without an object."

At this time, it doesn't matter whose property the object you are trying to destroy is, or whose world it belongs to.

When you are at the mercy of impulse, the world exists only "within yourself."

Neither ethics nor law exists there yet.

All that exists is your own internal pressure.

It is not a lawless state. It is a "sealed room state where there is no room for the law to enter yet."

A state of consciousness where the self and the world are undifferentiated, and the existence of others is not assumed.

Chapter 2 | The Voice of Others and the Birth of Ethics

“Isn't that someone else's property?”

This question is not “Did you know?”

It is "Are you aware?" and an operation to make one turn their eyes toward the “otherness” of the act.

These words are not merely a warning, but an utterance of ethics.

Ethics is the voice that tells us that an act belongs to the world of others, and
that voice does not necessarily come as words of norms or rules, but as a questioning of existence itself.

Through the voice of this old man, for the first time, I "saw my own act through the eyes of another."

That was the germination point of ethics.

Chapter 3 | Encounter with the Law, and the Forgiveness of Deviation

The apology I uttered was not emotional.

“It was a shameful act for me to try to destroy someone else's property without any thought, leaving it to my own impulses. Please tell them I am very sorry.”

These words indicate that my act had reached the horizon of ethics.

It was not an emotional repentance of "I was wrong," but an introspection into the structure of my own act and the will to “convey” it.

However, the old man's next words were even more important.

“Well, I thought you were a dangerous person, but you're actually decent. I already called the police. Run away quickly. I'll handle things here.”

Here lies the twisted intersection of law and ethics.

Reporting it is a socially natural procedure.

But, noticing that “apology and restoration” had taken place right in front of him, he tried to temporarily suspend the function of the law.

Before the law could act, ethics arrived in time.

However, ethics arriving in time and everything being forgiven are not the same thing.

The old man sensed that.

Chapter 4 | To Those Standing Between Ethics and the Law

Since this experience, I have become interested in the "law."

However, the focus of my interest was a bit different.

I was not drawn to legal statutes or systems.

I was drawn to "what kind of human drama unfolds when a person encounters the law."The law is a cold and impartial mechanism, and precisely because of that, it leaves no room for ethics or emotions to intervene.

However, a person who is

“just about to touch” the law is not yet broken.Before they are severed by legal intervention, there are times when ethics can arrive in time if someone calls out to them.

“a voice”In modern society, calling out to someone has become a risk.It is safer to "look the other way," and the voice of ethics is becoming increasingly faint.

In that environment, the "person who calls out" may be the last spark of ethics.

Final Chapter | Where Do I Stand Now After Running Away?

I took the old man's words to heart and ran away from the scene.

I thought I was running away from the police.

But now I think otherwise.

It wasn't just the law I ran away from.

I also ran away from the "self that had been stopped" and the responsibility of living out the rest of that life.

However, the fact that I am writing this now means that,
I must have been continuing to ask myself questions wherever I fled.

At what moment does a human being possess an "other"?

When do law and ethics diverge, and when do they overlap?

What is a voice?

And even now, I am thinking.

Can I become a voice that stops someone?

I also wonder if that old man was both my benefactor and the owner of the object I had tried to destroy.

Final Proposition

Ethics is the discovery of the other within one's own actions before being judged by the law.

Related Articles

"Where is Ethics Born: At the Intersection of Knowledge and Experience"

"The 5-Quadrant Model of Karma: The Truth Behind 'What Goes Around Comes Around' and the Power to End It"