April 28, 2013

• “Safe again”

  This is a post that wrote offline but forgot to post, so it’s a bit dated at this point.  It’s not really complete, but I thought I’d post it before I forgot.

   

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  They caught (alive) one of the Boston marathon bombers, and in the Australian news, it’s pretty huge.  They are showing Obama at a press conference just because of it.

  The news report spent a lot of time talking to a Boston resident, who was talking about how she’s so glad that #justice is served, etc.

  A while ago, I went to dinner with some classmates– one of them had switched to postgraduate law after spending some time working as a social worker, and she commented on how purely difficult the job is sometimes.  In the course or our discussion of the matter, I remember saying something, and I wouldn’t normally remember what I say so closely, except that the ex-social worker commented on it.

  “The thing about our classes that pisses me off sometimes,” I said, “is that when it comes to discussion time, everyone is always pointing at corporations as criminals, and criminals as others.  I mean, sure, they do bad things– but so many of these people, fresh out of undergrad, fresh out of high school, have clearly no idea about human suffering except what they’ve seen on television.  You say you worked as a social worker– I have a lot of respect for that.”

  “Thanks,” she said.

   

  “No, seriously! The truth of the matter is everyone wants to be good, but frankly, that’s all talk.  99% of the people who talk about good and evil aren’t bad enough to do good.  I was helping out at a board meeting for the National Children’s and Youth Legal Centre– do you know what’s the problem for them?  When they’re pitching ideas to companies like Telstra or Optus (two of the biggest telecom providers in Australia), the companies like the idea of being attached to helping kids and all that.  As soon as they find out that we’re trying to work with child criminals, they back off.  Why?  Because they like the public image of helping children and the poor– but they wouldn’t touch the image of helping out in real situations of dirt and grit, like when a child due to poverty goes and steals and is sent to jail at 17 years old.  They wouldn’t touch a kid like that with a 10 foot pole.”

   

  When they caught one of the bombers, first thing the news did was show this relatively long interview of a Boston local, who went on about her toughts about the situation.  Basically, in order: shock, sadness, relief, happiness.

  I guess my problem with social mentality is that it’s a lot like being a sports fan– you root for a team, but very often, you don’t actually play the game.  People and a sense of morality are similar– we root for good causes, but we’re not willing to roll up our sleeves and actually do the deeds that need doing.  It’s much easier to join in the herd and root for the good guys– but who actually wants to be a good guy? Being supportive in words has it’s uses, but I think that it masks the fact that very little positive action is actually going on to back up those words.

   

  I guess I just get rather annoyed when people go all pitchfork and torches in news interviews when they have done nothing to contribute to that particular situation.  In which case– why are we asking your opinion, if, effectively, you’re not involved?  All they’re really doing is testifying of themselves being bystanders.  Talk to the people who are involved.  And by involved, I don’t mean implicated because the whole community is affected– when do we get over this first world shock of bad things happening, and start taking action to prevent it?

   

  The person being interviewed at some point said just something along those lines: “I know this kind of thing happens all over the world every day in some places, but for us, it’s not normal.  We don’t know how to deal with this.”

   

  Well, start learning how to deal with it.  It isn’t easy– but I don’t see why we should give so much attention to people who are simply “shocked.”  All that demonstrates is a class divide from people who have experience with  “problems” and people who have experience with problems.  The former, I am totally uninterested in.  The latter, that’s what matters.

   

   

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  This is probably a roundabout way to get at a very simple point– yes, there are bad individuals out there.  They should be held responsible for their actions.

  I’m really impressed with the work that went into catching the guy– “manhunt is over… justice is served!” was the headline I think.  

  But here are my thoughts, in bullet form, because there’s a lot going on here:

  • Is justice served before we actually convict the guy at a fair trial?  Does catching a suspect mean that you’ve got the right guy?
  • Further, even if we have the right guy– is locking him (like every other problem we have in society) the right thing to do?
  • What kind of social system do we have in place that produced a person like that in the first place?
  • Why is it so easy for us to think that a perpetrator is so different from us?
  • The person in the news interview seemed to think that it was great that the community was getting together and all that.  In retrospect, isn’t it kind of sad that bad things have to happen before we appreciate small things enough to do good things?
  • Why do we feel “safer” when a “criminal” goes to jail, when the society that produces the criminals carries on?

   

  • 8:51 pm
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