Adversarial Relations

John Berge

1992

Published in:

The Northwest Technocrat, 1st quarter 1992, No. 326

Some of us believe that, if words are written in a law book they automatically assume a characteristic of veracity akin to scriptural writings. Lawyers conventionally cite a list of precedents in arguing their cases; they seem never to question whether bribes, nepotism or whatever caused a previous case to be money.

The Nov. 4, 1991 Newsweek had an interesting story entitled ``Why I Quit Practicing Law'' by Sam Benson. Benson said he quit because he was tired of the chicanery and the misery he caused other people. He did a pretty good job of describing lawyering. This was no news to most people, but he did well in describing how lawyers are locked into a system that is adversarial by nature and within which lawyers can only senselessly attack with one sole objective -- that of winning.

Ideas of fairness, honesty, morality or of solving problems are simply not germane. And, if Benson were to enlarge the scope of his observations, he should be able to see that the entire social system is based on adversarial relationships, not just within the operating methods of lawyers alone.

The entire legal system is European in origin. The Romans had an influence and later English jurisprudence was studied and copied. Those ideas were almost exclusivly concerned with property -- who owns what, and, it is to be remembered, that women and minorities were considered property in varying degrees when the U.S. Constitution was written; and it was only after the main business of writing the Consitution was accomplished that the Bill of Rights was added on.

So, even now, we aren't too far advanced from the times when two Roman gentlemen in disagreement would enter the arena, not to fight but to watch their champions fight to the death, the gentlemen having agreed to consider the owner of the champion who was still alive to be the winner. Today, our proxies, lawyers, although in a modified form still carry on that ancient tradition.

Long ago our civilization was organized based on adversarial concepts. And now, despite our natures, we must treat each other as adversaries; so is it any wonder that we are so confounded with contradictions that we act the way we do?

Our history books contain distortion, and our political leaders tell us fairy tales. We hear claims that there is such a thing as "truth in advertising" but we know that any commercial on TV is mostly exaggeration. We need to become aware that our social system itself has become our collective adversary. As a society we have relaxed and allowed ourselves to become stuck with a bad deal, now we must make the effort to get out of it.

Only Technocracy provides a social design for a society that is compatible with the physical situation we find ourselves in.