A young college student was beaten in front of my house in broad daylight recently by a local man and badly hurt. The circumstance are simple: The boy objected to an unprovoked insult as he passed by. The attacker has a criminal history and is living in the neighborhood--a nice city community--apparently through the largess of his mother-in-law. His wife is the only witness and presumably nothing will result from this attack.
There are few cultures, other than some religious shards, that encourage gratuitous attacks and damage outside of warfare. Indeed the limiting of such behavior is the basis of most social law. But this threatening element is always lurking in every culture.
The disparities--or inequities, if you prefer--are glaring here. First there is some expectation that the law-abiding community has for justice. There will be none. There is some expectation the law-abiding have for simple safety. There is none. The courts clearly give us decisions, not justice; the police are usually little more than armed secretaries who rarely intervene. But the most important inequity is the disparity of futures. Here is a confrontation between a student with hopes and aspirations and a man with none. The young man has a future, the criminal has none. As a result the confrontation has no implications for the criminal and broad implications to the student. There is no way the student can win this. Even if he wins the fight he will be caught up in the legal whirlpool with its notoriously random results so a successful defense might ruin his life.
This is a difficult realization for the young. The productive member of society cannot win in this situation and the predator knows it. Meeting the predator on his terms is an unqualified disaster. The only option is flight and isolation. The society has no interest in the old virtues and anyone who abides by them is an anachronistic idealist who needs good insurance if he loses and good legal help if he wins.
In a culture that mouths its hatred of inequities, here is a place it could start.
There are few cultures, other than some religious shards, that encourage gratuitous attacks and damage outside of warfare. Indeed the limiting of such behavior is the basis of most social law. But this threatening element is always lurking in every culture.
The disparities--or inequities, if you prefer--are glaring here. First there is some expectation that the law-abiding community has for justice. There will be none. There is some expectation the law-abiding have for simple safety. There is none. The courts clearly give us decisions, not justice; the police are usually little more than armed secretaries who rarely intervene. But the most important inequity is the disparity of futures. Here is a confrontation between a student with hopes and aspirations and a man with none. The young man has a future, the criminal has none. As a result the confrontation has no implications for the criminal and broad implications to the student. There is no way the student can win this. Even if he wins the fight he will be caught up in the legal whirlpool with its notoriously random results so a successful defense might ruin his life.
This is a difficult realization for the young. The productive member of society cannot win in this situation and the predator knows it. Meeting the predator on his terms is an unqualified disaster. The only option is flight and isolation. The society has no interest in the old virtues and anyone who abides by them is an anachronistic idealist who needs good insurance if he loses and good legal help if he wins.
In a culture that mouths its hatred of inequities, here is a place it could start.
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