Necessary faith: Kira’s ideal
Dec. 27th, 2009 03:52 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
narcasseWhen I wrote my Death Note review one of the last points I made was that Light’s desire to keep himself alive over everything else was what finally robbed his grand scheme of any moral high ground. So to expand on that and break down the argument that his form of justice was applicable my argument is as follows.
First and foremost Kira’s idea of a society without crime seems like a generically hopefully thing to wish for which on its own it is. That it’s a system based on fear of repercussions isn’t even the issue because the civic justice system works like that already. There are penalties for wrong-doing and the privilege of living peacefully if you choose to obey the law. The criminal justice system is at heart a deterrent and criminals serve as examples to citizens when they’re subjected to the authorised use of violence by the state. It doesn’t necessarily even have to be a huge amount of violence, even the tussle bring a suspect down and restrain him counts. Then if the criminal is proven guilty there’s the loss of freedom and all the rights that go with it and while this isn’t always an effective deterrent it does work for vast swathes of the population. State institutions teach the benefit of abiding by the law and demonstrate the consequences if the law is disobeyed. It’s not perfect but for the majority the system works. Besides, the state institutions are generally empowered by established regulations in conduct and are at the end of the beholden to whichever representative democratic institution the citizens have elected their advocates to.
From this baseline if Light had been simply concentrating on the outliers, the obvious criminals who had escaped via loopholes in the current system while he’d still be operating outside of the law he’d been quite obviously justified. Even then he’d have to keep the numbers down and act so discreetly that he never came to the attention of official law enforcement. If he’d operated in this fashion they might have a suspicion but never really much actual evidence that Kira even existed. He might well have got away with it. But this isn’t what he does and instead he focuses his energies on wiping out all wrong-doers on a massive scale making himself a problem because despite his intent on that large a scale it’s a little difficult for police organisations to ignore his vigilante actions.
Having brought himself to public attention Light then goes on to attempt to establish a system of perfect lawfulness based on not the duty of citizens or an adherence to state principles but out of fear. To him the ends justify the means where the means are enough to be his undoing in the long run. A state system based on fear isn’t the best vehicle through which citizens can reach self-actualisation. Light isn’t employing a little Machiavellianism in attempting to protect his citizens: he’s sewing the seeds of distrust and demoralisation, which may in fact be exactly what he wants. He doesn’t after all want to empower the Japanese state or all world states similarly: he wants to create a world nation under his command. He doesn’t even want to set up a supranational system with himself at its head and he doesn’t seem to have much of an idea of multi-level governance at all if his micromanaging everything is anything to go by. So even if he had succeeded I can imagine that the entire endeavour would have crumbled from lack of decent management anyway.
Which comes to back Light’s major problem that impedes his attempts to do anything else: he doesn’t trust anyone else to get the job done. He’s not content to re-establish Japan’s judicial authority over citizens or anyone else’s. He wants to circumvent the entire state system placing himself above all citizens as the embodiment of justice so that everyone is answerable directly to him. It’s the sort of setup that could only ever work on a small scale because Light behaves like the leader of a small enough group that could be directly managed. He doesn’t negotiate with the Japanese police force nor anybody else and instead makes threats because all he seems to understand is the rule of fear. Quite why he only understands that method is possibly debatable but it generally comes down to his belief that his superior intellect means that he doesn’t have to explain himself to his lessers, which also means that since he won’t explain himself if he wants them to behave as he wants them to he’s going to have to be there to micromanage it all.
In the latter DragonLance novels the Knights of Takhisis all experience a sacred vision during their initiation and this guides them to work in harmony to achieve their order’s goals but when their leader is killed that vision vanishes. Similarly with Kira, the idea of a perfectly lawful world requires Kira to manage it otherwise it cannot be sustained. Light realises this on some level and especially towards the end of the manga it becomes fairly apparent that his ultimate goal is to keep himself alive rather than establish world order. Granted his desire to rule the world is based on egotism but it’s that egotism that cripples a lot of his ideal and makes it something that can only exist while he lives. Slaying the wrong-doer silently and swiftly would have served justice, albeit in a vigilante fashion, and have bolstered the already established state mandated means of enforcing the law, it’s exactly what Batman does to great effect, even Sherlock Holmes occasionally errs on the side of illegality to see justice done. Light on the other hand has a notion of justice that seems to in the end be submerged by his ego.
There’s a dreadful irony in the fact that it isn’t Kira’s faithful who bring his ideal to ruin: it’s Light himself due to his lack of faith in humanity. He doesn’t believe in anyone or possibly, anything, either: his faith is reserved for himself and by the end even the ideal of justice and world order seem to simply be convenient trappings for the fact that he’s an egotist with a murderer’s notebook.
In many respects Light fails for exactly the same reasons that Seth does: neither really believe in the people around them and instead of promoting a higher sense of civil duty instead lay down crude laws which will never achieve the same effects on their own.
First and foremost Kira’s idea of a society without crime seems like a generically hopefully thing to wish for which on its own it is. That it’s a system based on fear of repercussions isn’t even the issue because the civic justice system works like that already. There are penalties for wrong-doing and the privilege of living peacefully if you choose to obey the law. The criminal justice system is at heart a deterrent and criminals serve as examples to citizens when they’re subjected to the authorised use of violence by the state. It doesn’t necessarily even have to be a huge amount of violence, even the tussle bring a suspect down and restrain him counts. Then if the criminal is proven guilty there’s the loss of freedom and all the rights that go with it and while this isn’t always an effective deterrent it does work for vast swathes of the population. State institutions teach the benefit of abiding by the law and demonstrate the consequences if the law is disobeyed. It’s not perfect but for the majority the system works. Besides, the state institutions are generally empowered by established regulations in conduct and are at the end of the beholden to whichever representative democratic institution the citizens have elected their advocates to.
From this baseline if Light had been simply concentrating on the outliers, the obvious criminals who had escaped via loopholes in the current system while he’d still be operating outside of the law he’d been quite obviously justified. Even then he’d have to keep the numbers down and act so discreetly that he never came to the attention of official law enforcement. If he’d operated in this fashion they might have a suspicion but never really much actual evidence that Kira even existed. He might well have got away with it. But this isn’t what he does and instead he focuses his energies on wiping out all wrong-doers on a massive scale making himself a problem because despite his intent on that large a scale it’s a little difficult for police organisations to ignore his vigilante actions.
Having brought himself to public attention Light then goes on to attempt to establish a system of perfect lawfulness based on not the duty of citizens or an adherence to state principles but out of fear. To him the ends justify the means where the means are enough to be his undoing in the long run. A state system based on fear isn’t the best vehicle through which citizens can reach self-actualisation. Light isn’t employing a little Machiavellianism in attempting to protect his citizens: he’s sewing the seeds of distrust and demoralisation, which may in fact be exactly what he wants. He doesn’t after all want to empower the Japanese state or all world states similarly: he wants to create a world nation under his command. He doesn’t even want to set up a supranational system with himself at its head and he doesn’t seem to have much of an idea of multi-level governance at all if his micromanaging everything is anything to go by. So even if he had succeeded I can imagine that the entire endeavour would have crumbled from lack of decent management anyway.
Which comes to back Light’s major problem that impedes his attempts to do anything else: he doesn’t trust anyone else to get the job done. He’s not content to re-establish Japan’s judicial authority over citizens or anyone else’s. He wants to circumvent the entire state system placing himself above all citizens as the embodiment of justice so that everyone is answerable directly to him. It’s the sort of setup that could only ever work on a small scale because Light behaves like the leader of a small enough group that could be directly managed. He doesn’t negotiate with the Japanese police force nor anybody else and instead makes threats because all he seems to understand is the rule of fear. Quite why he only understands that method is possibly debatable but it generally comes down to his belief that his superior intellect means that he doesn’t have to explain himself to his lessers, which also means that since he won’t explain himself if he wants them to behave as he wants them to he’s going to have to be there to micromanage it all.
In the latter DragonLance novels the Knights of Takhisis all experience a sacred vision during their initiation and this guides them to work in harmony to achieve their order’s goals but when their leader is killed that vision vanishes. Similarly with Kira, the idea of a perfectly lawful world requires Kira to manage it otherwise it cannot be sustained. Light realises this on some level and especially towards the end of the manga it becomes fairly apparent that his ultimate goal is to keep himself alive rather than establish world order. Granted his desire to rule the world is based on egotism but it’s that egotism that cripples a lot of his ideal and makes it something that can only exist while he lives. Slaying the wrong-doer silently and swiftly would have served justice, albeit in a vigilante fashion, and have bolstered the already established state mandated means of enforcing the law, it’s exactly what Batman does to great effect, even Sherlock Holmes occasionally errs on the side of illegality to see justice done. Light on the other hand has a notion of justice that seems to in the end be submerged by his ego.
There’s a dreadful irony in the fact that it isn’t Kira’s faithful who bring his ideal to ruin: it’s Light himself due to his lack of faith in humanity. He doesn’t believe in anyone or possibly, anything, either: his faith is reserved for himself and by the end even the ideal of justice and world order seem to simply be convenient trappings for the fact that he’s an egotist with a murderer’s notebook.
In many respects Light fails for exactly the same reasons that Seth does: neither really believe in the people around them and instead of promoting a higher sense of civil duty instead lay down crude laws which will never achieve the same effects on their own.
