What's Wrong With This Picture?

In retrospect this is a very messy and disorganized format... Not to mention it's  volume! It's hard to put myself in the mindframe of the last post because the post is "finished".  Onwards, then. I consider the "institutions" part tackled. I would like to talk about the government's responsibilities in protecting the weak from the strong. I wonder... in 1878, were things different? I mean {les enjeux} here. You have to ask; who are the weak, and who are the strong. This system operates under the capitalist system, which is essentially a business plan. Financial terms fit right at home in a world where imaginary persons can be tried through stand - ins and prosecuted as if they were a real person - though they can't be sent to jail, now can they?  In a financial system, wealth is power, not to mention that the military is an arm of the government, also more or less a corporation. Of course this doesn' t involve small cases. A poor and hungry man walks down the street, shoplifts a kitchen knife and walks off with food taken by force. He is arrested by the police and charged for whatever crime sounds more official. The strong is punished, the weak roams free. But perhaps this man was poor and hungry because he was fired due to - ah whatever! the important part is


I can't stay focused. I know what I want to say but my hair is in the way. I keep putting my hands through it and finding knots. I *have*  to go deal with that! Right now! I'll be back.


And by right back I mean right back after I take a shower and make some lunch and sit outside for an hour in the sunday sun and read a comic and then come back. I also learned that my drawing teacher sneak-assigned me to do a watercolor painting of shells, marbles and a block or brick in a plastic bag filled with water. Shells. Marbles. Bricks. Oh yes, I've got just the thing in my wardrobe. Funny thing, I had a feeling when I left my small Ontario town that I might need to bring along some marbles and a seashell and a brick from the house wall and keep them in my spacious closet. Gee it's a good thing I listened to myself, how would I have been able to complete this assignment otherwise?
 
Back to business, can the government efficiently prevent the strong from opressing the weak? In other words, is our country just? It's definitely more just than that of a poor war-torn country ravaged by famine, but these aren't necessarily within the state's ability to regulate. And we regard ourselves as being more just than the arab world, especially when it comes to the treatment of our women. Certainly, our cultures are different, but in the less civilized parts of the world, things we consider basic rights here are often unheard of. Obviously, the use of the words "less civilized" arouses some debate; is it politically correct to regard another culture as "less civilized"? What if it is only "less civilized" from our point of view? I would like to use this as an opportunity to draw the line. When I returned to my small town in eastern Ontario I found that the demographics had changed slightly; where previously the town had been almost exclusively composed of white french canadian families from long ago, had already begun to diversify. There was talk of a chilling incident that had happened in a popular local bar; two haitian women were having an argument and a local man stepped in, trying to disperse the fight. The haitian man who was accompanying the two women saw the three arguing, and eventually stabbed the white man, killing him. This I heard in the car while returning home. I had a discussion about this with my family; disregarding that there may have been more to the story, a consensus was reached. We do not, as far as my family is concerned, fight unless provoked, and we do not carry knives, and we do not stab, because we do not wish to kill. However, in Haiti, where "justice" is likely a fairly different concept than what it represents here, taking action yourself in order to settle a dispute quickly and avoid a worse outcome in the future may be the norm. Perhaps in that country, one would not meddle in the affairs of others, but I think that a person with enough guts to step in and prevent others from fighting is worthy of praise.
In any case, the man died, and the other man was sent to jail. Hooray. Most likely believing that his action was justified, and that things are simply different in this country. FOR ONE, THIS COUNTRY HAS POLICE. One could argue that it was the white man's fault, that he should simply have made a report to the police, that his part would have ended there. The problem here is that the situation could have been avoided if Canada could somehow indoctrinate it's immigrants into understanding canadian mentality and culture, as well as the crucial but unspoken social conventions, such as Thou Shalt Not Kill Bystanders. Or anyone, for that usually ends up with you spending a sizeable portion of your life in jail, not to mention having to move to a different town, because in boxed in french communities like those, no one would ever trust you again. And you'd forever have a smear on your crimial record. A pretty big one; 2st degree murder. Perhaps there was a reason, but it seems unlikely as any reason would help the defendant, and none was disclosed to the medi, as far as my reliable source is aware.

The crux of the matter is this. Yes punishments are set in place to prevent people from taking the law into their own hands, it is rather difficult to be the legal posessor of hunting firearms, not to mention handguns and the like, inconspicuous weaponry is illegal, so it's not like the system doesn't already enforce peace, only it allows outsiders who are not, at least not at first, indoctrinated in the same manner as the rest of us, and they, with their inapplicable social norms, are liable to stir up trouble in unforseeable ways, with disastrous results. To return to the original point of this diversion, those cultures, when superimposed upon our own, seem less civilized. Where rights must be fought for tooth and nail, where the infrastructure put in place to protect you doesn't exist, or doesn't really care to ensure your safety, or will gladly look the other way in exchange for "compensation", being civilized is probably the least of your concerns. Alternately, if I were to take my cute imaginary girlfriend to Saudi Arabia and have her stroll around with no regard for their social norms -assuming she could pass for an arab, I would have another thing coming. When in Rome... clearly that idiot murdurer who sullied the reputation of black people in my village didn't get the message. 


I did a test, later, walking around the grocery store with my scarf wrapped around my head - as it is meant to be worn, might I add -  and got quite a few unpleasant looks from passers-by, though those who talked to me recognized my french accent and knew me as a local. What was I trying to use this example for? Do we have systems in place to prevent people from taking matters in their own hands? Well, yes, we do. Though their effectiveness is questionable, what is most effective is social norm, which is a subtle restraining bolt not unlike that used by the Dollars. But I have mentioned this earlier. Other than that, we certainly could do a better job at preparing immigrants to live in small towns with no services for foreigners.