Just because it's legal...

...doesn't mean that I will respect you after you do it. There are a lot of things you can do that are not going to get you arrested, but if you do them and tell me about them, or if they affect me directly, I am still going to judge you. Suck it up. Some of those things might not affect me directly, but I might still think you are an idiot or immoral if you do them. Some of them might affect me directly, but even if your philosophy is 'that you answer to yourself, and yourself alone' be prepared that I might still think you are a moron or a jerk, regardless of your personal philosophy guiding your actions. Don't get me wrong, I don't want to criminalize poor manners, or poor judgement or even selfishness, but if you live in a world with other people, you should be prepared that they might not necessarily think that it's okay that you act within those parameters.

By the by, I am not really being specific because this isn't about anything specific, just stuff I have been thinking about and talking about with people recently. Sure, over the course of my life I have encountered people who have violated what I thought the social contract was between us and that fuels this, but it's not specific. I am not even mad about anything right now - so if it comes off like a rant - it's not meant to be.

Complacency Weighs on Me

In my blog surfing I came upon the following post:

http://www.rifters.com/crawl/?p=932

in which Peter Watts, a science fiction writer was beaten, pepper sprayed and detained at a US border crossing when returning to Canada. He was detained and then after bail arrangements were made he was dropped off without a coat in the cold and without transportation (they seized his car). His only 'crime' it seems, if getting out of his car to ask what was going on when the border guards swarmed his car.

I keep thinking about this. I don't know him, but I am appalled by the way this has all played out for him. To be sure, I only have his testimony so it might have played out differently, but no matter how I play it in my head it is wrong. Now, would I have gotten out of the car? Probably not. Now, would I have been flagged and pulled over, probably not. But in our world, you don't really think this kind of thing can happen. You assume that everyone is reasonable and they are obviously not. I worry about my complacency. I avoid risky situations, true, but many situations of risk do not exist for me because of who I am and what I look like. I hear about things like this and I worry about my sons who, in the future, may be walking down a city street (presumed safe) and jumped because they are adolescent males. In our world - this world of plenty that we in North America live in - why do people stoop to inhumanity, like these border guards did. Was there not one of them that knew that abandoning a man in blizzard-like conditions without a coat and transportation was inhuman? I worry and I don't know what to do. It is hard to understand.