Saturday, December 6, 2014

On social justice and deeply ingrained patterns

I've been reflecting on two recent news event. One - the protests related to the death of Eric Garner who was essentially killed by a police officer. The officer put him in a chokehold during an attempt to arrest him for a suspected minor violation. The other - the recent protests of fast food workers demanding $15/hour pay and the right to unionize.

http://news.yahoo.com/family-nyc-chokehold-victim-moved-protests-163013787.html
http://www.msnbc.com/msnbc/fast-food-workers-strike-fueled-other-low-wage-employees-eric-garner

The first thing I realized is that people with higher income are less likely to engage in illegal activities. I am sure there is plenty of evidence in the data, though I'd be curious to check for myself. For one thing, if you are making a decent income, you have more to lose, and you have less of a reason to engage in something illegal. On the other hand, if you are not making enough money to make a decent living, you will probably give another thought to other available options.

I have definitely found out for myself that as my outer circumstances changed back and forth, my attitude to slightly illegal activities changed dramatically, and also back and forth. I have also met a number of people in New York who were engaged in somewhat illegal activities, or at least were emotionally prepared to do that, and VIRTUALLY ALL OF THEM HAD LOWER INCOME THAN THE PEOPLE I KNOW WHO DO NOT ENGAGE IN SEMI- OR SLIGHTLY ILLEGAL ACTIVITIES. In most cases it was fairly obvious: those with little money were looking for ways to make a better living, whereas those with more money were afraid of getting into trouble.

The other reason for that is that people with a lower income are likely to belong to a community where illegal activities are more acceptable, more common, and also easier to learn.

Of course, it is easy to say: change your situation. Change your pattern. Good luck with that! Can you stop drinking coffee every morning? Can you stop working so much and start spending more time with your spouse and your children? Can you start exercising regularly? See! Suddenly changing the patterns does not seem so easy any more, when those are your patterns.


Fine; let's move on to the Fast Food industry. If I think about it for a second,
there is no way I am going to accept a job at Mc'Donald's even for $30/hour, if I have any choice at all. Except, perhaps, for an interesting experience. Those 4 million fast-food workers in the United States accepted those jobs for a reason: they needed a job. Look around in NYC. Do you see teenagers working in Mc'Donalds for some extra cash? Clearly not. I have not seen a single teenager working at a fast food place in NYC in my several years here --- except for those helping their parents at Chinese and other Asian places.

You have to understand that different people have different reality, different perception of life. Try to grow up in a poor neighborhood with your parents screaming at you and kids doing drugs on the block. Do you know what kind of patterns it sets up in the subconsciousness? What kind of subconscious self-image?

Patterns, perceptions, childhood traumas take years  to heal, for those who are fortunate enough. It takes time, money, and a supportive environment. I've had the luxury to work through a lot of pain, loneliness, rejection, and humiliation that I had had in my life. Yet I've had the intelligence, the time, and the financial resources.

I am so acutely aware that it is easy to say "go and do something about your situation if you don't like it", yet it took me years to get to that place. For many people, this part of the soul, this part of the subconsciousness allowing one to change one's circumstances does not develop properly. We think we are bad, guilty, not worthy, incapable, whatever it is. And you just can't. Can't say that you disagree with your boss. Can't go and look for another option. Not that you were afraid; your subconsciousness may not even let you get to that point.

Similarly, if you grew up in a middle- or upper-class family, even the thought of something illegal may make you freak out. This is, however, just your perception. Had you been born in different circumstances, your life and your character would've been very different.


It is easy to talk about justice, about fairness, about responsibility for one's actions. Yet we just repeat the clichés we had received from the past generations. People are not born equal. They do not have equal circumstances. And because we take in our environment, we internalize what we receive from our lineage through our parents, what we receive from our culture and our country, we do not have the same possibilities, even before financial or legal circumstances are taken into account.

Thus, it is absurd to claim that fair justice is the same sentence to any person who commits a particular crime. This may be the most practical approach, but there is nothing particularly fair about it. Sometimes you can say at birth that this person, being a male born into this environment, already has a very high chance of committing a crime as a teenager.

Of course, a deeper insight is that there are no "bad" people: people commit crimes because of subconscious patterns and attitudes passed to them, because of need, or because they are crazy, or because something that is called a "crime" should not be considered as such. It is absurd to imagine normal a human being who would willingly, consciously hurt another human being or a group of human beings, and would do so with a clear understanding. Similarly, in the case of Mc'Donald's workers, it is absurd to imagine that people would go to the trouble of protesting out of vanity, laziness, or other bad traits.

Everyone does the best they can, and everyone's perception is so limited.

So let's forget this mythical ideas of "fairness" and even "justice".  These ideas are not completely useless, but they lead us into mental traps, into a world of concept and ideas that do not really exist.




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