If the system can survive only by imprisonment innocent people, then it deserves to be destroyed. My personal safety is important because I’m a human being.
After a talk with Kaplan, Anderton is not sure about the accuracy of his system anymore. He puts his interests higher than lives of many people who may suffer if the system is destroyed. He is ready to give everything up, because somebody has told him that he is wrong. Such a thing often happens with people – they have their opinion, they know that it is right, they know the truth but when someone doesn’t share their thought they start hesitating, the reason is only one – the fear of being wrong and thus responsible. It is always easier to refuse your opinion than to struggle for it.
Accused not of crimes they (people) have committed, but of crimes they will commit. It is asserted that these men, if allowed to remain free, will at some future time commit felonies. But there can be no valid knowledge about future
Kaplan criticizes the Precognition system, because it gives the police right to prison people who didn’t commit a crime and it is absolutely unacceptable. And maybe he is right, because even if a person is thinking of committing a crime it doesn’t mean that he or she will do it for sure, in fact, there is always a choice, we can change the future, there may be different factors that influence us, and it doesn’t matter how many times the person is arrested for his thoughts, if somebody really wants to commit a crime, he will do it anyway.
In that, the second –time path, all I wanted to do was to keep my job. It wasn’t Kaplan I wanted to kill. It was my own position and life I was interested in
All our deeds are motivated by our interests, there is no altruism even if we are doing something for other people we are waiting for something in response – whether it just “thank you” or money reward. Anderton is honest with himself – he murdered Kaplan not to show the society that his system is necessary for the police or that he tried to protect people from Kaplan, he just wanted to keep his job and nothing else. Unfortunately, he didn’t care if his system really works or there are thousands innocent people in prisons, it brings him money and respect and that is all that matters for him. And the desire to keep the social status is one of the strongest in our lives, our reputation is all we care about, it makes us do something we don’t want to, but have to.
