There might as well be certain kinds of "first principles", pertaining to law and order that provide guidance on how to identify and resolve disputes, especially in grievous matters concerning the theft and destruction of people's lives and livelihoods.
If there ever was a "truth" to be observed in this universe, it would at least need to start with the idea that "observability" and "controlablity" are physical phenomena that allow interactions among corporeal beings.1
Next, to be a bit more considerate, one can define the following six concepts with the perspective of prioritizing the needs of a given system's "end-users":
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Suitability
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Availability
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Accessibility
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Equivalency
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Substitution
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Confidentiality
You may choose what each of the above six words mean to you, and guess how significant they already might already be, particularly for being able to secure and avail your future socio-economic prospects, living habitats, and livelihood.
As an example, suppose we look at a system involving a stair case in a building, from one of its floors to another. Would an elevator with a particular loading capacity be an affordable substitute for the given building's staircase, in terms of usability? We can then ask, "for whom might an elevator be needed, within a building?" Also, in which kinds of scenarios would each pathway from one floor to the next, involving a staircase or an elevator, be accessible for a particular end-user, of a given type of building? For instance, scenarios such as an outbreak of a sizable fire on a floor of the building being considered, ought to come to mind of a systems analyst concerned with safety and usability.2
So, do things like personhood, dignity, accessibility needs of a person, and the liberal availability of viable options for managing daily living activities in a healthy ecology, sound like precepts that ought to be prioritized by a society of human beings? What kind of a society would throw away such ideas, or de-prioritize them, and instead make life deliberately difficult or dangerous for ordinary visitors, citizens, residents, and refugees? Always remember, things that are available, accessible and useful to you, need not be for others.
Now, before we go into a deeper discussion on the topic of foundational precepts (Vedh), let me direct your attention to the question:
"While talking about the concept of a mind or a psyche, have you ever managed to analyze a mind that wasn't in a body of any sort? And particularly, if a mind that you were able to interact with and analyze, was indeed in a body, wasn't that body within an environment? So where then does the mind reside? Can there ever be a body without an environment? Can there ever be a living human body without a mind?
Would you be conceited enough to assume that just because an entity did not present itself in a manner to satisfy your criteria of having a healthy and a sound mind, in concluding that it didn't have one, as opposed to you realizing that you simply never possessed the appropriate depth of knowledge and understanding, about how beings can merely exist in nature, without needing your permissions and categorizations about their state of existence?
More importantly, was it you that caused your existence to manifest within this universe, by choosing to come into existence prior to having any kind of a physical form? Did you truly choose to be born of your own volition, along with a set of birth conditions chosen by you, prior to even having any type of volition that was strictly yours, and only yours? How will you ever manage to prove or disprove any type of an answer to such questions to other people in a 'scientific' way?"
For millennia, there have been a large variety of ways in which people have tried to come up with answers for the above types of queries. And even if, you were able to come up with ideas or answers for them right now, ones that might be to your satisfaction, for now, how would those answers alter the state of knowledge about such topics for any other person on Earth, at any other conceivable point in time?
The staggering variety in how these types of questions can be answered or even approached, naturally gives rise to "differences of opinions", and "cultural differences in worldviews" among any set of people who may come into contact with each other, and then remain in contact through some quality of interactions, for any span of time.
What might be the maximum level of severity of physical outcomes, from any possible conflicts that may result from 'struggles' between groups of people during their interactions with each other? How might those outcomes impact the lives of innocent bystanders who can't even be directly linked to conflicting interactions among any given parties that are opposed to each other?
Over the ages, so-called wisdom on directing one's life in the best way possible, has been passed on from generation to generation, including culturally bound rules and norms on how to survive or even have the ultimate form of "success", in this universe. Given that this universe is guaranteed to present difficulties and challenges to living beings, which set of "inimitable and unerring precepts have you imbibed?" And so what if those sets of precepts are "the ultimate test of good versus bad, or legal versus illegal?" Their existence doesn't say anything about yours, or mine, or anybody else's skills in being able to practice and embody them.
Several cannons of knowledge and information do exist, each of which might not even be acknowledged as "the greatest of all scriptures and 'divinely bestowed' commandments", and are none-the-less adhered to by their proponents, as the purest and most pious form of dictum to all of human kind. An example of such a collection of ideals laid out on a parchment, would be any industrialized country's political constitution, especially the American one, that is often touted as the greatest boon to humanity by its followers.
What's more, those types of codices derived from partisan activities of racist and sexist "forefathers", have remained notably inconsistent and ambiguous in how they are to be interpreted by modern people, and in how they are to be implemented by future oriented societies. Worse, those enshrined documents with their demonstrably glaring flaws and problematic loopholes, are taken by cult followers as flawless, foolproof, and future-proof norms fashioned by a succession of divinely ordained 'Supreme Leaders.' Such basic issues have remained a part of day-to-day lives of people from all over the globe, for most frameworks of legal discourse taken from any part of the world. Those frameworks even present differing and opposing views on what ought to be done on the very same set of discernible facts, when a challenge presents itself in the context of verifiable facts of a case. This has been especially true when a legal decision is to made on who is going to have the final responsibility and say, on how a given situation ought to be dealt with. This is why, quite often, people resort to the 'economic practice' of using aphorisms and maxims, that tend to take the place of unambiguously recorded legal statutes, as a substitute, even when those unsuitable and poorer quality aphorisms are derived from mythological stories and religiosity of a bygone era.
One such aphorism that I heard recently was: "It is better to be an armed warrior in a garden, than to be an unarmed gardener in a battlefield."
Sure, the above-mentioned maxim sounds sufficiently esoteric and wise, as if it ought to be adhered to by anybody who even has half the wit to be able to say it out-loud. One may then even conceive that as soon as any group of people were to start following such a saying, they would almost immediately, be able to claim, to have become fit and ready, for any type of a battle, whenever and wherever required, compared to all those who failed to appreciate and follow such a truism. However, usually, wars are fought for capturing and exploiting gardeners (especially young female ones), as well as for capturing and plundering their 'gardens' and equities, by those who feel that, "might is right."
So, is there any room for non-violence in this universe? What can innocent people do once their equity, including the equity contained within their body and in their reproductive rights, is stolen by predatory brutalists, or by insidiously cunning mentalists.
One could start with the idea that the might of treachery, guile, cruelty, and brutality isn't right nor supreme, especially in the face of साहस (courage), प्रामाणिकता (authenticity from honesty and integrity), करुणा (compassion), and दया (mercy).
Footnotes
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By the way, observability and controllability are not two sides of a duality. Controllability is a proper subset of observability because all controllable system states are necessarily observable, even though not all observable states of a system being analyzed, are likely to be controllable, via the conscious directives of the observer or the systems analyst. ↩
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Would you like to take a look around and point to that which is "not a system?" ↩