Could you be a criminal?

(Picture is actually related)

I don't think it matters whether your actions are moral or not or whether you believe you’re a stable and moral person, I believe that everyone is a few bad incidents away from becoming a criminal. Or rather as I like to put it, I think that every single one of us is a few bad days, or horrible remarks or incidents away from letting our emotions take complete control of us. And when we let ourselves be controlled by our emotions we and me (speaking through experience) can do some really stupid stuff.

Humor me with the following hypothetical example:

You found your significant other; they’re everything and more no scratch that, they’re the most perfect partner you could ever dream up. Everything's perfect and life has meaning. You've bought an apartment together and it's pretty clear to everyone that you’re going to get married some day. Suddenly one evening you come home early from an absolute terrible time at school or work (or whatever you do during the day) and there your lover is cheating on you with your best friend, in the bed you picked out at IKEA or Homesense or wherever people buy beds. How betrayed would you feel? How angry would you be? Do you honestly think you'd be able to control your emotions at this point? Or do you think that when one's world falls apart that they have very little control over their emotions. I would think, in a life changing moment like that, that all rational thinking is thrown out the door and all that is left for you to deal with is the numb, intoxicating feeling of anger and betrayal. You stand there in the doorway full of rage, your palms get sweaty, you feel like fainting, you feel like screaming, all you feel towards your significant other is pure hate. What would you do? And a better question yet, what do you expect out of your worst? You and I probably have no idea what we would do or are capable of doing. I could make an educated guess that most of us would like to think that we're better than those that act and who have given into their rage. However,  I also believe that it's not fair to pretend to know what we would do under such pressure. No human is perfect, and all people are susceptible to crack and breakdown given enough pressure. I could only imagine that when one is  full of rage, that hurting other people would only be a natural response, although it still  should land you in trouble. Given this situation  some might walk away to sulk into the night. Would they  take their anger out on someone else through the act of fighting or will they seek to escape? If you take it out on someone else, such as breaking someone’s jaw who looks at you funny when your stumbling around in your drunken stupor.  There is a very real possibility of  you  getting in trouble with law again. Say, instead of fighting, you feel like you need to escape. But with what? Do you drown yourself in alcohol so you can become numb and escape your problems? Or maybe you take something stronger? You could easily get carried away, get way too intoxicated on any number of things, and end up getting involved in any number of things illegal (i.e. breaking someone’s jaw).  Or maybe, just maybe, you belong to some weird group of society (or rather government experiment) that can control its emotions perfectly well. Maybe you’ve lived your life under pressure, maybe this is no big deal. And maybe you look at this situation, this meltdown and overall collapse of your life, as some kind of a fresh start. Or something that the overly optimistic people say they think about, but don’t actually think about. Either way, until your tested by a moment, an absolutely life crushing moment, I believe that it’s not fair for you to expect any certain behavior out of others or yourself, although man should strive for  non violence. Because hitting that cheating son-of-a-bitch might feel good in the moment but when the police get involved and you have to spend a few weeks in jail, you might realize beating him/her/transgender person might have not been a great idea.

My Grandma had a brother, had a big-ol’ forehead like me. He lived in downtown Toronto during the 60’s. From what my Grandma had seen of her brother he seemed well to do enough, stable enough, held a steady job and everything. One day he was unfortunate enough to come home from a hard day’s work and find his wife fooling around with another man. He was completely broken and shattered like I would imagine any man who loves his wife would have. He spent the next decade drunk on my Grandma’s couch and the  couches of his sisters. Apparently he would often go into the Eaton center in downtown Toronto and fill his coat to the brim with shoplifted things from the store. My Grandma and her sisters demanded he stop, he didn’t. He got in a lot of trouble with the law, much more than anyone expected him too. He died in a plane crash up in the arctic; he was helping chart it for the Canadian government. Apparently he found some girl up there that he had fallen for; she didn’t want to talk to my family. But yeah, he found love again, but only after he wasted away with a bottle for a few decades.

Remember, there’s been a total of 110,000 violent crimes reported in 2008 alone, who’s to say that you’re better than the 110,000 people who gave into their rage? Who’s to say that you’ll be the one to walk away? Who’s to say you’re stronger than my great uncle? In the way I see the world it is my belief that there’s a very thin line separating  me and you from those who have made some very big mistake and ended up trapped behind bars. Although I do admit that some people in prison do truly belong to be there, for the safety of us all.

With all this having been said, I hope I showed you all just how close all of us are from slipping up in life and ending in jail. On the other hand, don’t live your life so safely and mundanely as to ensure that you’ll never go to jail. Yet  being a part of many illegal activities such as drugs, and more drugs, probably isn’t the wisest choice ever. To have a semblance of a happy existence I think a balance must be stricken between these extremes  somewhere straight down the middle.

 Sources:

 http://www.statcan.gc.ca/pub/11-402-x/2010000/chap/crime/crime-eng.htm

Armed Conflict?

Could an internal armed conflict ever happen here?

It’s a terribly pessimistic and rather dark question to ask. And I’ve recently noticed that those who want others to believe that they have a sound and stable mind tend to avoid asking and pondering these sorts of questions out loud. To clarify when I say “here” I am referring to anywhere in the world where the situation seams unlikely that an armed conflict might arise. If you have read and or studied the many genocides/internal conflicts/civil wars that have happened in the last 30 years alone one can see how quickly a polarized political landscape, or a group of radical opportunists born with remarkable oratory skills can seize the moment and turn a country into a full-blown battlefield chalk full of foreign weapons and crimes against humanity. And as these dictators, chancellors, “freedom fighters”, or even sometimes-elected officials send out there death squads and tanks to roll over their opponents the international community usually mobilizes to send economic sanctions and sometimes foreign aid, for the most part intervention is off the table. All the while the countries next door or across the pond try and keep themselves occupied with other things to clear there conscience, it usually takes a full blown genocide or oil riches to get anyone from the international community involved. This leads me into my first point that when one examines the many internal conflicts that have happened in the last 30 years it is clear how disinterested the international community is in intervening. That latter point is much truer if there is zero to little economic benefit in intervening.

Furthermore one can see the countless examples of modern internal conflicts, in the first world and third world, citizens from the same country have shed each other’s blood many times. Firstly in Northern Ireland the Irish Republic Army, tired of English rule shot at and killed many of their countrymen as well as British forces. In Spain Basque separatists more specifically the ETA  have killed 820 people, most of them police officers.  In Rwanda Hutu extremists savagely and mercilessly chopped Tutsi’s apart with machetes in the streets. During the bloody Bosnian war Bosnia Serbian extremists convinced United Nations peacekeepers to release Bosnian Muslims into their custody. Shortly after the Serbians drove out of the sight of the United Nations peacekeepers the Bosnian Muslims where then separated into two groups.  One group was adult men and in the other was women and children, the latter group survived. The men however where then promptly murdered and buried in mass graves. The death toll is said to have been around 7 500 bodies. And interestingly enough the people the IRA, the ETA, the Hutu’s, the Bosnian Serbian’s where killing also happened to be there neighbours and people who they had previously co-existed with. All those police gunned down by the IRA and ETA and all those murdered and raped by the Hutu and Serbian extremists could have never imagined how horrible of a situation they would have ended up in. And I can only imagine the majority of those who where committing mass atrocities could have ever imagined themselves behind the trigger or blood soaked machete. And I suppose that’s my point, political situations and entire countries can get so polarized so quickly that before we know it everyone’s pointing gun’s at each other. Or in some cases one sides pointing guns and the other’s getting senselessly massacred. And as they get massacred the west promptly organizes it journalists to be sent over so we can plaster pictures of atrocities on our magazines and websites. When brushing over the most famous internal conflicts of the last 5 decades it is clear how many internal conflicts have erupted across our world.

In Canada, my dear sweet Canada there has thankfully never been anything close to what happened in Rwanda or Serbia. However there are still a few events in my nation’s modern history that are relevant to my topic. During the October crisis people in Quebec rioted in the streets and the FLQ, a group of French extremist separatists who were responsible for over 90 bombings, took diplomats hostage; the situation had gotten so extreme that the military had to come in to try and curb the situation. A few decades later again in my dear sweet Canada a Mohawk community becomes appalled that their sacred burial ground was about to be turned into an extension of a golf course. The Mohawk exhausting their legal options decide to blockade the local land off as well as the highways and bridges that lead into community. Many of them also decide to carry guns with them. This act soon got the attention of the entire nation along with the police force of Quebec. There’s a shoot out.  A Quebec police officer infamously died in all the havoc, the Quebec police along with the nation found themselves in utter shock a second time as a brave, handsome, young police officer with a bright future was murdered so tragically. In a horrible twist of fate it was revealed much later that what caused his death where bullets fired from the guns of the police officers and not those “Damn Indians” everyone was very keen on blaming.  Watching clips of the Oka crisis you can see the hate, the pure unadulterated hate that the residents of Oka and the Mohawks had for each other. There’s this infamous clip where at one point the Mohawks are driving through town and the local residence are so frustrated that they decide pick up rocks in a fit of rage and chuck them at the Mohawks cars.

What those people had for each other (residents of Oka and the Mohawks) is something very real; most of them have probably never met outside pleasantries and nods of the head. A few months before the whole thing went down they probably shopped at the same grocery store, drove on the same roads, maybe used the same library, ate the same food, watched the same sports, but because of this conflict that escalated so quickly and without warning they’re sworn enemies blocking each other’s roads and throwing stones at each others cars.

What do you all these famous scenarios have in common? Besides groups vying for power and arms being raised against fellow countrymen. All these many infamous incidents share a common theme, of a repressed group seeking power, and of their extremists rising up to kill and committing atrocities.  The main and final thing all these events have in common is that 5 years or even 5 months before some of these events started to no one could have predicted how terrible the outcome or situation could have happened, they would have never guessed that there streets would be lined with bodies and bombs about to go off, with green helmets and automatic machine guns. True in Rwanda and Serbia ethnic tensions where always present but not many, save a few sole individuals could have ever expected the body count that finally came out of those dark chapters of our human history to have occurred.

In conclusion, yes, it is very likely that a armed conflict could happen in any country where there are two separate cultures. In Canada there are too many (great) cultures to count: French from Quebec, French Ontarians, the Maritimes, Catholic, Protestant, Muslim, Hindu, etc... Maybe not in a decade or a decade, hell, maybe in 5 years the political scene could become polarized, no one can tell the future. So that’s why it’s our duty as citizens of Canada and citizens of the world to guarantee that no armed conflicts erupt that will surely take many innocent lives with it. There’s one way we can all do our part to prevent genocide and armed conflict, it sounds horribly cheesy and cliché, but it’s cliché for a reason, because it works so well. Love your fellow man, or at least try to, never ever take the actions of one man and hold a grudge against his race or culture or religion for it. You can do it for yourself to simply feel good; to simply know that you love so much is a great feeling. If you don’t believe in that, than do it for those who haven’t been born yet, those who will inherit the world and our problems and the problems of the future with it. If we love our fellow men as much as we tend to love ourselves; our children, grandchildren, nieces, nephews and future citizens won’t have to deal with the fallout of our racist remarks our bigotry and our hate. So please, love your fellow man, even if those guys that come from the far east of your country do speak a little funny.

It is important to note that the IRA and ETA and even the FLQ all ceased major operations/mass killings when they were represented in their respective government. However one has to ask, couldn’t they have gained power through democracy/protest instead of mass killings? Do you think waiting for bureaucracy and government to change is worth less than the lives of the innocent and those who disagreed with you? I think not. And I sincerely hope you do to.