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On the tyranny page we learned about how government can go to hell in a hand basket when the representation pyramid is corrupted. However, it's not like that's where our problems end.

Tyrants don't just grab power without our permission "because it's there" - they do it for their own, and their friends', personal gain. So once in power they need a way to keep their position. This is done very efficiently and very naturally by corrupting the rule of law that they are supposed to uphold. Then they use their new legal framework to strong arm any opponents and protect what they've just stolen ...and to make sure that we don't raise a fuss.

With a tyrant in office, only heaven can help those who raise their voices and refuse to go silently into the night - for the tyrant will unleash all kinds of injustice upon anyone who does not fall into line.

Legal Foundations

To simply say that there should be no law, or the least amount of law, is simplistic and short sighted. We need to have some laws in place, for what kind of lives would we have if those around us were free to steal from us, beat us up, or worse? In order to avoid a rapid descent into lawlessness and complete chaos, societies have always tried to put mechanisms in place to maintain some kind of order. We agree to give up some of our freedoms, obey rules, and accept the consequences for breaking of rules; in exchange for the stability and safety of a belonging to a civilized society.

And just as perfect equality is unsuitable for building power structures; perfect equality not a suitable way of distributing power either. Sure, we're told that everyone is equal before the law, but that's not the whole picture. Every day the rules can be, and are, broken by many people in many ways. Members of the police, soldiers, paramedics, and firemen all obey different laws than the rest of us. Lawyers are allowed special privileges in a court in order to argue their cases. Judges are allowed to pass sentences and ...judge. Wardens and guards can do things that very few of us ever can, or want to, do. And lawmakers are allowed to determine what kind of rules we all must obey. It's a subtle but important distinction to make - that although once the law is broken we are all supposed to be treated equally, there are many different limits operating which determine where that line is for each of us.

Power is not possible without a concentration of power. In order to have a way to distribute power; we need to accept that different people in society will have different amounts of power.

There are a few no-brainers when it comes to recognizing an good rule of law system, these are things like safeguarding each of our inalienable human rights by deeming people innocent until proven guilty, by allowing them due process, allowing legal redress for perceived injustices both civilly and against the state, a trial by a jury of our peers, access to legal counsel, transparency of the legal proceedings for scrutiny by others, and freedom of the press.

Then - just like with organizing the building of power - there are the fuzzy areas where there are no straight answers to how we should go about the distribution of power. For example, how much force should be used by the police to subdue a perceived offender? What kind of weapons can be used to protect property? What criteria need to be in place before war is declared? How much leniency do judges have in determining sentences? What rights does the accused have? What's the intention of punishing convicted criminals and how should punishment be carried out? On what grounds are the laws created? How are laws written and passed in the first place?

As we can see, the process of establishing a legal system is not a simple one; and over the human history this system has evolved and gone through many changes. Here is a quick run-down of some major developments in our judicial systems:

Elder

The earliest human societies were constructed around traditions and stories passed down vocally from generation to generation. A society's elders and diviners were regarded as the wisest and most knowledgeable about what's good and bad for the tribe - and so they became the first judges, charged with determining the law and acting upon or vetoing requests brought forth from others members. Shamen/women helped facilitate detailed contractual relationships between their congregation with the deities, negotiating the IOUs to be repaid (sacrificed) if the Gods decided to grant a wish. Sometimes, if the clan/band/tribe was large enough, the elders formed councils to make collective decisions. This tradition still exists in some form today, as the opinions of elders is generally viewed as a guiding light to help secure order, make society more powerful and show the difference between right and wrong.

Rhetorical

In the groundbreaking societies of Ancient Greeks, the judicial proceedings were opened up to ever larger juries, and defendants and accusers were encouraged to argue their case and explore as much of the nuances of the law as possible. The oral tradition was turned on itself, and the law became a living thing and a large part of what knitted their community together.

Religious/Written

As Ancient Rome came to dominate the region, they brought about a centralization of the way the law was distributed. In order to do so, they enforced two things. First was a strong return to the religious component that was part of the authority in familial and tribal systems. In addition to this was an emphasis on the written word in order to spread their dominion far and wide without direct supervision, and religious texts and their interpretations took on a substantial role in determining how governments handled legal proceedings. (Many of the very same religious beliefs continue to influence the way we work our modern-day legal systems.)

Feudal

Over time, in the countryside, imperial societies broke apart into kingdoms and serfdoms. Feudal landlords who were charged by the reigning monarch to maintain order in their regions often dished out the law in a haphazard, mafia-like manner. In the cities trade associations and other groups worked within a gang-like framework for maintaining order.

Modern

As all these system have evolved into more-and-more complex social structures, they have all been integrated into our current somewhat-standardized means of establishing and enforcing the law.

So the question is, since we need to build a power-distributing system, based on unequal amounts of power; how should it be organized?

Legal Structures - Good and Bad

Let's first address the goal of a good rule of law system, which is obvious to most of us - the minimal amount of interference possible. Proper representation strives to make sure that every person's voice is heard and accounted for... Proper rule of law ensures that what the government determines we can/can't do collectively benefits all of us. Fair laws, enacted by our duly elected representatives, preserve our collective freedom and security.

The best type of power is when it ascends in a pyramid structure...

With this goal in mind, we come to see how once again a pyramid represents the best way to distribute power. Pyramids provide the most stable kind of inequality. A power distributing rule of law pyramid puts those with the most power on top, providing oversight and structure to those below. The overall size of the pyramid provides a way to monitor the amount of power being used, and allows us to see where the law is coming from and to contest it in court proceedings. This symbolism may seem a little odd way of describing power, but it will help us as we look at how power can go terribly wrong.

The most effective rule of law is one in which the people get to decide which laws are enacted - through their elected representatives - and then those rules are passed back down through the pyramid to the people.

Corrupted Justice: The Brutality Hourglass

Brutal, or Evil? According to the vote sizing model, brutality is not just a creation of pure evil. Yes, brutality means being vicious, violent and inhumane; but it takes it a step farther by being all these terrible things under the guise of some kind of overriding form of perverted justice. Another important aspect of brutality is that it doesn't exist in a vacuum. People aren't just bullies for no reason - instead brutality works in conjunction with tyranny, greed, and patronage to maintain a corruption hourglass. Tyrannical, greedy, and incompetent people all understand that a little brutality can go a long way in furthering their cause, and that's why they do it. They can keep us in line by manipulating and/or destroying the rule of law in their favor, thereby enforcing a cyclic system of corruption in which everyone plays a part.

Just as the all corrupting hourglasses are made up of a bottom, middle, and top... so is brutality.

The cycle of brutality begins at the TOP, where tyrants determine how best to keep the rest of us in-line and submissive. In order to maintain their own illegitimately gained power they have robbed from us, tyrants need to create their own set of rules and employ a force to tow-the-line and brutally administer them. These enforcers of corrupted rules form the people caught in the compressed MIDDLE - and they often have their own hands tied, stained with the blood of their victims, or both. On the BOTTOM we'll find lots and lots of those victims - people who are simply strong-armed into bowing down in front of the tyrants rule.

Life in Brutal Times

Let's take a closer look at these layers in the brutality hourglass, and see just how specific devices are employed by brutalizers to keep us towing their line:

Corruption chokes the proper distribution of legitimate power, and creates a pyramid structure where everybody end up humiliated.

Perpetrators of Brutality - The Dysfunctional Top

In a brutality hourglass, those in the top are there in part because of their disregard for the rule of law and a willingness to abuse their positions as representatives of the people - demonstrating sociopathic disdain for any rules that don't suit their interests. Often these aggressors not only disregard the standing rule of law, but create their own rules to suit their interests. Combined with the use of patronage, tyranny and greed; they pay generous amounts to sharp lawyers to exploit legal loopholes and slick handlers to steer the media attention away from the more flagrant violations.

Organized Crime

At the bottom of the top, gangs and organized crime syndicates run the streets. From street-corner drug gangs to old-school gambling/extortion mafias to international networks specializing in smuggling contraband and humans, organized crime yields $1 trillion in annual profits for criminals around the globe. Often, these organizations pay-off corrupt police/judges/lawmakers, further intensifying the problem.

Corporate Crime

Thanks to the legalization of these amoral, non-existent entities (see our patronage page for more info on corporations); corporate crime has also been allowed to run rampant. Corporate crime is often unrecognizable because of its truly staggering size - involving the wholesale destruction of environments (often those of us living there accompanying it), life savings of pensioners and share-holders, and the integrity of our media and academic institutions. In fact, our whole way of life is now held hostage by corporations who insist on privatizing more and more of the public domain and extorting money for it.

These renegade corporations survive on risk-management, so that rather than pay for expensive pollution-control devices, durable, safe and truly innovative products, fair wages and healthy working conditions, or the sustainable extraction of resources; they focus their attention on maximum profit and boiling down their legal obligation to the minimal amount by buying off governments who write the laws in the first place and collect the taxes. Meanwhile, fat-cat CEOs play foul with the numbers and line their pockets as fast as they possibly can while focusing our attention back onto the need for more and more consumption.

Teflon Bullies

Who's on the receiving end of the corporate pay-offs? Tyrannical bullies who use their warped power to hold everyone else accountable except themselves. So whenever the public demands justice, anyone who can't afford to fit under their cloak of immunity is cast out to bear the brunt of the violence stick to them as they take the fall, while charges of infraction slide right off of those truly responsible. The scope of their brutalization rivals only the corporations, because once in power, these Teflon bullies can destroy entire nations - often not just their own - by imposing their iron will while remaining totally negligent.

Martial Law

Most countries retain the provisional authority to impose martial law, which can include the suspension of constitutional liberties, mandated curfews, internment, and government control of the movement of goods and people. Designed to protect the people in times of national distress, martial law has also been used often to control populations not content to work within a corrupt system.

War/War Profiteering

Far too many companies and individuals in the war machinery and supplies industry see war as an economic goldmine. Because of the potential for high profits they are all-too-anxious to scratch the back of anyone within the political structure with the slightest access to military contracts; and thanks to the imposed secrecy of the military's incompetent bookkeeping, taxpayers have no idea how much they are footing the bill for ... or even what was in the food they ate.

If we required it (then) we must carry it by sea in peace and war from distant countries... Mastery itself was the prize of the venture. ~ Winston Churchill, on the consequences of converting Britian's navy from coal based to oil, April 1912

Fear Mongering

Fear mongering goes hand-in-hand with the war machine. The media plays a large part and gets rewarded with high ratings - meanwhile spreading plenty of undue paranoia so that we all go along with the idea of our governments pumping millions (to billions) of dollars into its killing potential. Some of this money goes into fantastically self-containing bunkers - but for them, not us.

Nuclear Threats

If the fear of hordes of stampeding enemy soldiers or sleeper cells isn't enough, then the threat of nuclear bombs can be conveniently floated whenever war-faring governments need to justify increasing their military spending. Mutually destructive warfare poses one of the most effective, sublime and dangerous ways for warlords to brutalize their own citizens - for the more each side stockpiles these weapons of mass destructions, the more difficult it becomes for any of the citizens to speak out against their own government - and the warheads may as well be pointed back at them.

Keepers of Disorder - The Squeezed Middle

By nature, the hourglass gains most of its ability by squeezing out anyone in the middle. In regards to the rule of law becoming brutality, that would be the people mandated to serve, protect and maintain order. Suddenly, they are often responsible for (1) enforcing unjust laws, (2) controlling the angry masses who hold them partially responsible, (3) maintaining their own status, (4) all while often being under-funded to boot. As it gets more and more perilous to straddle the widening gap between the legal system people want, and the legal system they get; many people in the middle of the battle are themselves caught in the brutalities destructive firing line. The choices given to them aren't too great: sell their soul and join in the fray, resist from within (good luck!) or try to wait it out while hammering away at - or looking away from - the very people who expect the best out of them. It's an impossible situation for even the most even tempered: watching the ruling elite grow and prosper from their activity while in the lower and middle classes it breeds discontent and violence. Let's take a look at a how brutality infects the upholders of derailed rule of law from the ground up:

Bribery

In many countries, the law enforcement officials, defense attorneys and judges are simply not paid enough to support their families honestly - so they often accept bribes in exchange for looking the other way; from simple things like ignoring traffic offenses like speeding; to aiding traffickers of more contraband items like drugs and humans; to doing their own dirty work like kidnapping and murdering. Of course, even in places where they are paid enough to live quite well; crooked cops, crooked judges and crooked lawmakers justify that little extra grease in their pockets, closet, or driveway by claiming that they're only following orders in a hierarchy of corruption, and that it's more important to maintain this status quo than risk handing everything over to the real criminals they have to deal with.

Police

Because fellow officers and society in general seem to look the other from the details of their job, police brutality often becomes part of the judicial system. Scratch the surface of many police forces around the world and you can uncover a festering problem with excessive force being used by law enforcement officers - as this only hardens the criminal element. In its more extreme cases, the fear of police brutality can grow until it has become a deterrent to honest people speaking out against the actions of their government.

Prisons

Inmate-on-inmate violence, riots, hunger strikes, torture, beatings and killings are all part of the international prison scene. Even if a prisoner survives abuse from fellow inmates and manages to stay out of the guards cross-hairs, most of the time they will likely still suffer the indignities of a terribly overcrowded and ill-equipped prison. Under such conditions, it's no wonder that diseases like tuberculosis, hepatitis and AIDS ravage prisons across the world.

In poverty-stricken countries, it's not like the governments can carve out a huge chunk of their thinning budgets to pay for the living conditions of their prisoners, let alone funding a suitable long-term plan for rehabilitating prisoners and re-integrating them into society. The role of prison wardens and guards becomes to simply try to keep his prisoners alive. Ineffective treatment of prisoners and monitoring of the situation inside, only hardens the inmates and turns the prisons into a higher-level-of-crime-learning-institute. But a life of crime also means a life in-and-out of more prisons; so it becomes an ugly lose-lose situation for both the criminals and society as a whole.

Soldiers: Willing and Unwilling

Much of the time it is soldiers who carry out a brutal leader's dirtiest deeds. Some feel a sense of duty to risk their lives fighting for the leader's cause; others are lured in by the excitement of killing, dieing and fighting; for many others the decision is triggered by the offer of money and other financial rewards; and then in many places when that doesn't work, then young men and women are rounded up and forced into governmental, or rebel, armies. As we said above, most of the people who will be harassed, displaced, injured or killed by these soldiers are the poor civilians that they are supposed to protect; so it's a very tough job that leaves physical and emotional scars on everyone involved.

Breakdown in Oversight

The distribution of power - law - works much the same as the distribution of wealth - they both depend on confidence. Without the confidence of the criminals that there is a better way, without the confidence of the public to know that the law is on their side, and without the confidence of those who create and uphold the law that they can make a positive difference; leads to a near complete breakdown at every level. In many countries, a large percentage of crimes go unreported, criminals remain trapped in a life of crime, the cops are ineffective (or worse) and the courts understaffed.

Governmental / Intergovernmental Bodies

Courts and cops are responsible for enforcing the law. However, before that even happens, it's essential for governmental bodies to have a good infrastructure to set the standards for what is and isn't acceptable. This kind of boring, high-end stuff doesn't garnish the media the same kind of readership that, umm, crime does - so there's precious little attention paid to this part of the process. Add to this the impossible-to-understand legalese of all those documents and the huge loopholes that are built-in to protect big-money interests - and we're left with governmental/intergovernmental bodies who try to function without the necessary public input to really make them work. Like science, once the law is seen as a mystery it opens up to all kinds of faulty assumptions, superstitions, abuses and wide interpretations; and that permits those corrupters of the system to close their doors to scrutiny even tighter.

Power Vacuums

The brutality hourglass is also very good in putting in a blockage to the flow of power. Setting too many restrictions and over-committing to the enforcement agencies creates an over-zealous judicial system. However, withdrawing from the responsibilities has just as disastrous effect as it creates a dangerous power vacuum where the law lacks clout. Without enough muscle behind it, the legal system can easily end up controlled by private, corporate or foreign government's interests and turn on its own citizens. No longer does the rule of law apply, only the rule of a free market and a determination from above to liquidate everything in sight. In this situation the only rule that endures is the rule of survival; and soon chaos reigns and gangsters and warlords fight for gain (not necessarily control, as that establishes their antithesis, stability). This kind of depravity can easily destroy organizations of all sizes, from small towns to small governments to the U.N.

Victims of Brutality - The Compressed Bottom

Although brutality ends up saturating the whole corruption hourglass; the effects of the brutality - violence - have an especially nasty habit of obeying gravity and falling hardest upon the unfortunate people in the bottom. As with the other hourglasses too, a lot of this violence bounces around from one person to another. Corrupt elite would often much rather have other people do the dirty work than to do it themselves. So all kinds of unpunished crime, abuse, and state brutality is tossed around haphazardly and in a variety of degrees. Here are some signs of brutality that they experience, in order of increasing severity:

Property Crime and Fraud

Being the victim of identity theft, vandalism and financial fraud are some of the ways that people are exploited. Lots of times there is simply inadequate legal proceedings to protect people and crime does pay for the criminals who prey on them.

Privacy Violation

Who would've thought that one of the main technological household necessities of the 21st century would be a shredder? But chances are it's not going to be enough to protect you from prying eyes. With the exponential increase of personal information being digitalized, our private lives have become an open book for almost any determined hacker to read. How is the government handling the situation? They're basically ignoring the cracks in the system and channeling their own under the guise of fighting terrorism. These over-reactionary attitudes further encourage people to eye each other (and the government, and corporations, and heck, doctors, librarians, lawyers, councilors etc.) suspiciously, and make us think that it's alright to pry into whomever-it-happens-to-be's personal life.

Violent Crime

Younger, predominantly male, members of society are usually the targets of violent crimes - desensitizing them and making them that much more accepting of victimizing others.

Kidnapping

Kidnapping has become the extortionist's preferred crime in many countries - it pays well and there's a low probability that the kidnapping will ever be reported - let alone the kidnapper be caught. Indeed, holding people against their will has increased dramatically in many countries where there is a wide division in income levels; the law enforcement agencies and judicial systems are overwhelmed and unable to deal with the problem (let alone stay out of the kidnappers' sights); and many of our current gangster-orientated battle zones.

War

Civilians - innocent, uninvolved men, women, and children - make up the majority of war's victims. In the last decade alone, more than two million children were caught in the middle of armed conflicts and killed. The death and hardship imposed on these farmers, low income small businesspeople, entrepreneurs, and families (including widows and orphans) - is often overlooked when assessing the cost of war - and in so endures long after victory has been declared and the soldiers have gone home. Along with war causalities are the unbelievable amount of refugees and IDPs, discussed on the patronage page.)

Fear/Terror

Along with all the reasons above, a tyrant also strategically bombards the population with anything from a steady stream of reports predicting doom and disaster, to actual bombs targeting civilians; allowing for yet more erosion in security, calm, or self-reliance. Fear of the unknown and the belief that only a strong government can protect them leads people to surrender more and more of their personal rights in the hope of gaining that elusive feeling of security.

Why, of course, the people don't want war. Why would some poor slob on a farm want to risk his life in a war when the best that he can get out of it is to come back to his farm in one piece? Naturally, the common people don't want war; neither in Russia, nor in England, nor in America, nor for that matter in Germany. That is understood. But, after all, it is the leaders of the country who determine the policy and it is always a simple matter to drag the people along, whether it is a democracy, or a fascist dictatorship, or a parliament, or a communist dictatorship. Voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same in any country. ~ Hermann Göring, in Gustave Gilbert's Nuremberg Diary

He (King George III of the United Kingdom) has excited domestic insurrections amongst us, and has endeavoured to bring on the inhabitants of our frontiers, the merciless Indian Savages whose known rule of warfare, is an undistinguished destruction of all ages, sexes and conditions. ~ The United States Declaration of Independence, 1776

Breaking the Cycle

Brutality and tyranny form corrupted power structures externally; a cycle of pain and humiliation internally. Because of this kind of dysfunctional co-dependency and feeding off each other, it's very hard to find a way out. However, when looked at from an even larger perspective, because the cycle generally begins with the collapse of a voice through representation, then by giving the people their power back we can find a way to live peacefully together. Unlike a lot of other passive airy-fairy new-age movements, you can read on our vision page how vote sizing is effective in fighting the personal struggle against abuse and addiction; and unlike a lot of other reactionary political movements, you can read on our reaction page how vote sizing can combat brutality on a social level without becoming brutal itself.

However, we're still not done with our problems; because once tyranny and brutality take hold of our power structures, it's only a matter of time before the economic institutions are twisted around too (if they're not already, that is). In the next page, we'll see how corrupted power corrupts wealth, and how patronage plays a large part in keeping the hourglass in place.

We don't have to brutalize others because we feel so humiliated - there is a way to break the cycle.