The Editorial By Scot Rhoads More Money! Because of increased printing costs, we made a last minute decision to raise our cover price. This will not affect subscription costs for now. Since it is so hard to break even on wholesale copies, though, the price increase was very necessary. We have long planned an increase in subscriptions, too (so subscribe while it's still cheap!), but we are trying to wait until we can expand and improve the magazine. We want to dedicate ourselves to New Moon Rising and make it a going concern. We want an outstanding forum to share practices, research, philosophies and all information related to magick and Wicca. Unfortunately, the demands of running our shop have made it impossible to devote the time this project demands and deserves. So we have been working to sell our shop. Though it has taken a long time, we are optimistic that we will soon sell (f'or real!) and, after a transition time, finally be able to work hard toward making New Moon Rising the best Pagan magazine. (Not that we don't think of it that way already, but we want to make it official.) Sweet Justice
will rot your teeth The Oklahoma City bombing and the terrorism it represents bring up the question of justice. How can we have justice in such a circumstance? What is justice? Is it a way of thinking and feeling shaped by millions of years of natural selection? Is it something transcendent and Real? And who cares? This last question is in the front of my mind. From an experiential point of view, justice is another emotion, like love, or like the hate and fear that bring about the things that make us want justice. I say that because we don't agree on what justice specifically is. Depending on who you ask, it is just as much justice that government workers be bombed as it is that the bombers be tortured to death. In the face of so much disagreement, it is deceptive to try to approach justice from a purely emotional/experiential point of view. But who does that? Everyone has good reasons for pursuing justice. Yes they do, but those reasons are the product of the emotions, not the genesis. There are always good reasons for whatever people perceive as just. It is not good reasons that make justice, but the other way around. Why am I so sure of this? Because justice is a big so what? So you get justice— OK, now what are you going to do? You still face the same old problems. All those reasons are not really addressed in the application of justice. Why not skip the detour through justice and go straight to the real problems. What, then, are the real problems? I don't have to go into detail, they are the behaviors that we call unjust: rape, robbery, murder, fraud—. And our search for justice is dandy in as far as it truly addresses these problems. But it often gets in the way. I remember a story about a poll taken in Times Square during WWII. People were asked to vote on whether Hitler should be hung. The one person who did not vote in favor needed a police escort to take her to safety. People sure wanted justice! But would hanging Hitler be justice? What could we possibly do that would be commensurate with his role in the holocaust alone? If we killed him 6 million times, would that be justice? Nothing we could do to Hitler would undo his crimes. But what if we could? What if, magically, Hitler were alive and we could undo his crimes by killing him? By torturing him? By inflicting on him punishments that were somehow many times worse than everything he was responsible for? I imagine that response would be similar to that wartime poll. But what if we could undo Hitler's crimes by giving him a big, wet kiss? A million dollars? A winning lotto ticket and a lifetime of respect and love? Would we do that, even if there were a guarantee that nothing bad would come of it? I like to think that most of us would do that if it meant undoing the war and 6 million murders. But what if it meant only a few crimes would be undone? What if it were just one? What if nothing would be undone, but it meant that we would never have to worry about such a thing again? Or just for a hundred years? At some point, our sense of justice would rebel, probably while we still had a net improvement to lose. Here's another one: Suppose letting Hitler off meant that he would learn his lesson and be a good guy for the rest of his life(s), pay his taxes and be nice to children (and no one would feel encouraged about getting away with anything similar). Could we let him off? If not, again we lose, no one gains. I am thinking of the story of the man who found a genie trapped in a bottle. On releasing him, the genie promised the man a wish—but whatever he asked for, his enemy would get double. The man promptly wished to be blind in one eye. The problem is our emotions can drive us to pursue justice at anyone's and everyone's expense. This kind of justice may have served us well in the Paleolithic, when any records were spoken and all knowledge was limited to what a small community could remember. Then it would be a useful deterrent to know that a band might pursue you relentlessly if you crossed them. But certainly we can do better now! We can look at tangible goals like reducing crime, increasing happiness and security, and rehabilitation. And we can discard ideas of justice when they do not serve these goals. The image of the blindfolded Justitia is appropriate. She's got the authority of Her scales, but She can't see them. She's got Her sword, but who knows what She'll hack with that blindfold on? If She could just set one of them down long enough to take off that blindfold? Not that we are likely to discard justice entirely. It is part of what we are. But, as with so many other aspects of our being, civilization demands we restrict it to a certain context—and rewards us when we do. We can think of justice as the flavor of food. It is very important, and affects our diet; but nutrition is more important than taste, and we have to be able to sacrifice flavor in favor of a healthy diet. When something bad happens, the first thought should not be justice, but how do we prevent it in the future. If all the justice in the world does not prevent future occurrences, we should put our resources elsewhere. If it's never going to happen again, then justice is merely an aesthetic, emotional exercise. But what about punishment? It can be a deterrent, but we should treat it that way. We should look at which punishments work and which don't and what might work better. And we can think in terms of punishments that improve things—community service, boot camp prisons (at least in theory), punitive damages that go to charity or society or prevention. But what about the victim? Surely they deserve some compensation. I don't disagree—we must address the new needs that a crime creates, and the criminal should be the first person responsible for meeting them (but not the last!). But compensation should not extend to inflicting meaningless suffering on the perpetrator. We need not indulge the need for retribution, no matter how justified. If there really is any healing or catharsis in revenge that we would lose, we would do well to find a way to replace it with constructive rather than destructive action. The energies that the demand for justice whips up would serve everyone better if channeled into improving society. Every injustice should inspire us to make sure that every child knows they're cared for. It should inspire us to make sure people feel that they can contribute to society. It should inspire us to make sure that everyone feels empowered and heard. It should inspire us to love, rather than hate. This is not appeasement! Appeasement became a dirty word because it was a failure, and I am advocating that we reject those behaviors that fail even when they promise emotional satisfaction. Neither is this coddling—that is mercy (the flip side of justice) in a similar disproportion. This is paying less attention to the abstraction that our brains evolved millennia ago and more attention to the tangible fundamentals that our modern resources allow us to address better than ever before. So, should we ignore the bombers in Oklahoma City? Are we wasting too many resources in pursuing them? I doubt it. The act deserves at least this much attention; and I am saying it deserves more—but not just the short-term whodunit, string-'em-up attention. However much we devote to this, we should be sure to devote much more to making people feel safe and empowered. We should not spend money on a prison or law enforcement without spending at least as much on prevention and improvements. If we pursue justice for things in the past, we are using it in its negative form. There is an endless list of grievances. Look at the Middle East or Bosnia. If everyone were punished as they deserve from that perspective, we'd all be dead. With that kind of justice, everyone is a victim. We must remember no matter how we feel at the moment, the Goddess hates none of Her children! But justice can also be an abstraction representing equity, equality, freedom, and security. If we understand it this way, and can at any time examine its components in detail and in context, then justice can represent a guiding principle that shapes our choices for the future. It would be vague and mercurial, but could serve our need for a general principle to embody our goals. But to keep it under control, it should be something that we don't try to have for ourselves, but for our children. When we fail, we should not waste resources striving for the illusion of undoing that failure with a clumsy, destructive justice. When we fail, we should use that failure to show us what we can do to improve, to try to achieve a justice that we know we can never reach, but can always get closer to. This is dedication to the Goddess. Blessed Be | 
