Ancillary
Exegesis: an example of injustice.
or
If
it happened it could not have been otherwise.
When
considering the circumstances surrounding an unfortunate event the opening statement,
“You could have prevented this.” with its companion admonishment, “You are at
fault and will be punished,” drives me nuts.
If you want to begin with, “In the future, can we prevent this from
happening again?”, I have no quibble.
It is fitting to begin your questioning
with, “Did you let this happen?” or “Is this the outcome you expected?” or “Do
you feel responsible for what happened?”
These questions are an attempt to determine if the person being
questioned believes that they had options and made choices and whether or not
what happened is what they expected or intended. By asking these questions you are trying to
determine if they believe they were in control and feel justice was done.
Once
something happens it is necessarily in the past and happened for whatever
reasons, and was not and could not and would not have been prevented or done
differently by the people involved, because it wasn’t. The past can only have one outcome. Maybe you think it should have had a
different outcome but it didn’t. End of
story.
If you don’t like the
outcome you may believe the participants were evil and wanted an unfortunate
event to happen or if you do not believe they are evil or do not want to state
publicly that you think they are evil, you may assert that they are incompetent
and because of their incompetence they did not see the unfortunate event coming
or did not see options that could have prevented it or you can say that because
they are incompetent they were incapable of carrying out the necessary steps to
stop said unfortunate event. But you
should not have the first thing that comes out of your mouth be that they could
have done other than they did and judge them without a trial or at least an
investigation.
The offensive
statements I mentioned in the beginning of this piece are an effort to judge,
convict and punish the participants by assuming that they had choices known to
them that would have prevented the unfortunate event from happening and that
they had the ability to carry them out and they still let the unfortunate event
happen. The aforementioned judgmental
statements assert the participants had nefarious intentions without giving them
the benefit of doubt or opportunity to provide their side of the story. The judgmental statements indicate a
prejudice of, “I don’t trust you and I think you are either incompetent or evil. You could have and should have prevented
this. And I will get justice for the
injured parties by punishing you.” I
consider this abuse of power an injustice.
If you think these judgmental statements are true, fine. But keep it to yourself until you are proven
correct. Then you can say “I knew it all
the time, the evil bastards!”
