9th Prophecy
She holds the scales
In hero silence
Blindfolded
And unaware
Of what’s going on.
--H. Moss
Recall my blog post on the 5th Prophecy: concerning the “green skeleton key” that opens and closes the law books. In it, I discussed the lack of oversight on the book and that, even if Moss never directly mentioned an overseeing entity. This prophecy connects to the 5th, not by number but by content. “She” that “holds the scales is the overseer missing in the 5th (ln. 1). Not only is the question of where the missing entity resides—for we can safely say it is present—but also who is overseeing the law book: a “blindfolded” (ln. 3) woman “hero” (ln. 2).
No more do we have to assume that law exists as its own independent being, inanimate (and therefore, objective or fair as law ought) because Moss makes us aware the overseer has a human face. This clears a few loose ends from the 5th as it gives law and its stewardship a human face. And, of course, this present us with a whole host of problematic issues when analyzing the law and its application. Giving law an anthropocentric character defeats the idea that law exists without any kind of human fallibility and in fact emphasizes its anthropocentric character. If human beings are subject to passionate whim (a la the single mouth) objective judgment is impossible for the human overseers, However, the human passions of the overseer are curbed by the blindness of justice as well as its muteness (“in hero silence” [ln. 2])—the misguiding idea that law must be blind to its sensual experience where it has it its own head a pure machine of reflection. Law does not see sensual experience, law does not, presumably, have the ability to discern other sensual properties of the people, events, and objects it has rule over. Law is supposed to have an intuitive judgment. Even if this intuitive sense of justice is prevented from drawing on its sensual experience the optimism that the singular mouth will be perfect in its judgment is presented with skepticism—where the book acts as an additional layer, another check on its power. Law, however, is an invention entirely of human origin and cannot be trusted by itself—hence the law book in the 5th.
Why is the agent of law a human figure (if even godlike)? If, perhaps, we assume the law book is the actual source of law and it is objective, it could not speak to us in the way a human could. The blind and mute human figure acts (counterintuitively) as the interpreter of the contents of the book. Though, I would be remiss if I did not recall that a green skeleton key—obviously an invention of powerful crooks—can effectively control the book as it is applied. Even if the human figure is the interpreter it is only the interpreter of the person or persons for whom the contents apply—the human figure and her judgment are always posterior to the contents of the book. This means the human figure does not have actual control over the law, but rather, the human figure is subordinate to the law. It must be noted that the people who aren’t in that position to be blinded and muted by the objectivity of the law (i.e., those for whom the contents apply) are likewise subordinate to the law. With the added layer of the interpreter of judgment those sighted and voiced people are subject not only to the law but also to its interpretation. If law is a human construct, then regular people are doubly subordinate to two human constructs: the construct of the law (in the book) and the construct of who gets to interpret and what they interpret (from the single mouth). Because the human figure has the power to enact the judgment, as represented by the “scales,” this means that regular people are expected to subordinate themselves to the subjectivities of other regular people who occupy hero-positions (6th Prophecy) (ln. 1).Thus, regular people are, in actuality, subordinate to positions—their subordination is an assumed and necessary part of the health of the hero-position. Disturbingly, this means we need lawbreakers to justify hero-positions as those hero-positions were constructed as bulwarks against crime: there needs to be a list of criminal actions to define criminality. Both hero-position and potential criminal (2nd) are necessary to the other and only exist because of the other.
Because the human overseer is, necessarily, subject to its own passionate whims judgment, no matter how many layers are placed overtop the human, passion and kneejerk reactions will always conquer. There is no way to make the human perspective objective—even if an artifact, the book, is left behind, The book’s historicity does not mean the book defeats human subjectivity—as the law must be interpreted. Here, I do not believe Moss is attempting to say that law is actually objective—rather, he is saying that even if there is some kind of objective law, it is not something that humans can divine—the book (and thus natural law) is unintelligible even to the human overseer. In fact, any kind of objective force may be so overwhelming as to negate (maybe even destroy) the human faculty for human sense perception, rendering the human overseer nonhuman (at an extreme—though, it could just be that a human without its sensual experience is an impotent contradiction). Moss shows us the uselessness of a human overseer as the most basic necessary condition is for the overseer to be nonhuman.
Moss uses this absurdity of the nonhuman-human to warn us of the fabrication of human authority (or law interpretation). Seemingly, we give an unquestioned faith to an unquestionable authority. However, this authority is a contradiction because it is a hero-position that controls us, not humans over humans, but humans who assume a dominant-subordinate relationship interpersonally. The only power hero-positions actually have is that of publicity. It is as if Moss is warning us of our own tendencies to attribute more power to hero-positions than to the people who occupy them (or simultaneously to the people who occupy them).
But, it’s not as if people were to stop obeying the law that it would cease to exert its absurd power over us. For police have guns and have the ability to extrajudicially kill whoever they want. Simply noncompliance (on a small enough scale) is not enough to reverse or ameliorate this situation. No, in fact, because the human overseer is both blind and mute, she is “unaware of what’s going on,” she is unaware of the double-standard the law gives to itself (and to those crooks who hold the green skeleton keys) (ln. 4-5). The problem with assuming hero-positions and the human interpreters of a (falsely) objective law is that because the hero-positions (necessarily nonhuman) are occupied by (falsely nonhuman) humans, we assume they are above the law—for one cannot be simultaneously own and be owned, control and be controlled by a particular force. There is no way (in our naïve conception thereof) to see how the interpreters of law, the human overseer, can interpret the laws to apply to themselves—that’s wishful thinking at best, deadly fallacy at worst.
The law is not a power that belongs to any one human—and certainly is not a bludgeon to be used to control other humans. Were all cases true (i.e., the law is objective, the overseer is held accountable—by their limitations and suspense of passionate subjectivity—and that human interpreters are held to the laws they interpret) then we would have no intelligible law. Law, objectively speaking, would have to be the sum total of all human perspectives (radical, complete consensus) wherein all human interpreters are one the same page, so to speak. This is not the case, obviously, because passionate reasoning makes it so we do not have the same desires nor the same ideas on how others should be controlled (were the law objective, no one could control one another because no one wants to be controlled; just a thought).
Moss wants us to know that the law is a contradiction as we know it—and I am with him in repudiating any and all attempts at codifying some kind of law is merely an attempt to control others, not by divine right, but out of sheer powerlust, sheer masculine blindness which needs to be projected onto the bodies of the citizenry. Take note at the gender of the human interpreter, the powerless interpreter subject to that projection: she plays the double part as interpreter and beholden to its interpretation. She represents the double-bind citizens find themselves in: told to understand the law, to know, to interpret it, but she cannot speak of this new interpretation as is subject to the dumbness of the book.
--J. Stainz
