You set out to hike up the nearby hill. You look down to tie your shoe. You look up again and now are standing before Mount Everest. It is bitterly cold now and you didn’t bring a jacket. What do you do?
Being white shouldn’t matter in what you achieve in life. Sadly to many around you years of oppression and hardships view your skin as a symbol of oppression. Like looking at a confederate statue. You don’t deserve it and they didn’t deserve the years of oppression and indignities. To make matters worse the entire system seems designed to make you choose sides. Even the language itself is working against you. Light is good and dark is bad. You can not easily use the letter K, or wear a white shirt without furthering a stereotype. People use codes to label furthering this, now we can’t use words that have “ck” in them. C is the 3 rd letter in the alphabet so now ck means 3K. Not very lucky.
Why has language developed like this? One thought is people use creative solutions to fight oppressions. If your child is going to be executed by the state, what sacrifice isn’t willing to be made to prevent it? This might help stop some problems yet it also creates other problems. Reminds me of the childhood game where the ground is lava. This is why oppression is so problematic. This is why I don’t think the death penalty is wise. Sacrificing society itself to allow some people to get their revenge is a terrible idea. Don’t ruin your families lives and future generations lives to get justice. True justice is rare, and would take in to account all hardships and wrongs. True justice is scary and would likely end up with us all going off a cliff.
Singapore interests me. It is a beautiful city. I would not go there. Not because I would transport drugs. Because the world is an evil place and someone else might use my suit case to do so. The price of a completely drug free city is high. Giving people true healthcare and stopping oppression would go a long way in stopping drugs. People’s lives should be more valuable than drugs, people’s lives should be more valuable than the drugs they transported or sold. So part of the price of that cities laws are me not visiting. Other’s might feel the same. Life is more than the sum of our own actions, so it is always a roll of the dice how the chips may fall. Creating a system without mercy might seem like a good idea, as long as luck is on your side. Sadly those that weren’t lucky might have been executed for the sake of a more perfect drug free world.
We can learn a lot from the world, about our own countries and our own lives. Not all parallels are apt but seeing patterns can help us learn what the means to the end is. Who we mean to achieve what end. I can understand how people might decide the end justify the means. I would prefer a way that works out better for everyone. If I was in their shoes would I have made a better choice? Maybe. Maybe is enough room for doubt to be merciful. What would it take for me to make their same decision? Where did they go wrong and where did they go right. Sometimes the right choices have the wrong result, this makes it easier to understand people making the wrong ones.
I don’t want crime and scams and people being oppressed through mob rule. An oppressive government is really no different. Evil takes many forms, and if it can’t effect one side of an equation it might try the other. In reality it seems to be a problem for all sides, even though all sides like to present perfection, image matters. If the people think the cops are corrupt why should they listen to what they say. If people think the cops are perfect they’ll lock up innocent people and throw away the key.
Death penalty on either side removes the eraser. Who wants to drive a car with no brakes and no reverse. So we are left with an imperfect system. An imperfect system requires mercy. Solving the problem requires creative solutions that don’t leave people dead. Maybe they just needed a job. Would losing 5k from my salary be worth it to keep them off the street? Yes. Leaving people with no means of survival is a death sentence. I realize achieving dreams requires resources and I haven’t come up with the perfect solution to this yet. “But they don’t want to work, they are just a junkie”, the effect, what was the cause? We win based on the goals on the board, and the ones we leave on the field. A pay check and a sky room to jump out of and no emotional support? How about we suck up our pride and talk to them instead. CEOs and leaders need support too, I realize speaking truth to power is hard, but I don’t want to lose that one on the field.
Everyone’s permanent record is modifiable. So don’t hold something over anyone’s head for life. Forgiveness. Without it kiss progress goodbye. Maybe God let them walk in those shoes for a reason. I am glad it wasn’t me and how do we help make their life not suck.
”It takes a society to make a monster”, so don’t leave all the blame on anyone. And don’t take all the blame on yourself, that isn’t even close to fair. Don’t use past mistakes to dictate your future and where you went wrong make amends the best you can and leave the rest in God’s hands. We all won’t agree on everything, “but they are different”, if everyone was like you life would be boring, and talking to yourself gets boring, trust me. At least I have a cat to talk to, must be what those on death row feel like. It’s not enough. Better than being completely alone.
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