Tag Archives: society

Thoughts

Let the punishment fit the crime

Our penal system is ailing and I’d like to propose a fix. I think a lot of the time, we’re punishing people for the wrong crimes and we’re filling up our prisons with people who’d be better off serving our communities rather than sitting around at taxpayers’ expense all day long.

For starters, I’d legalize all drugs and put safeties in place to control how they’re made and sold. After all, a drug is a drug. It’s no coincidence that the drugs you get at the pharmacy and in the hospital, and the drugs you can get from your “friendly neighborhood dealers” are all called drugs. That’s because they’re all supposed to be made in labs and they act on the human body according to specific pathways. If we legalized them (and the legalization of cannabis is a good model to follow), that’d get rid of a whole bunch of inmates from the prisons and would ensure that certain things happen before and after a person begins to use the more dangerous ones. I may post more on this topic in the future if you’re interested.

Next, I think we should go through the books and clean up all the laws, particularly old ones that no longer apply. I’m sure that in every country, the penal code could do with a bit of housekeeping.

I would then re-classify crimes according to the punishment they’ll receive: prison terms or community service. And I would also introduce laws that would mandate community service that cannot be appealed in court for things such as:

  • Urinating on walls
  • Spitting on people, particularly on policemen
  • Harassing women on the street, for example whistling after them or making lewd comments
  • Exhibiting poor personal hygiene in public
  • Insulting people on the internet
  • Blocking the road with your car, motorbike or bicycle
  • Vandalism (even minor scratching) of someone’s property
  • Cursing in public or insulting other people

These are just a few example. I believe strongly that imposing penalties for these sorts of things (even though they may seem like petty actions to some) has a big ripple effect down the line and can reduce the number of bigger crimes, because it will cause people to have more respect for one another and for each others’ properties.

When the punishment is community service, those who get it must wear special community service attire with their crimes listed on it. At night, they wouldn’t return to their homes and would instead return to special community service facilities (similar to army barracks, with bunks set up in common rooms) and sleep there. While there, they’d have to prepare their own meals, wash their own clothes and clean up their rooms. Truant officers would monitor their activities and people on the street could text or call a number listed on their special attire to report them if they aren’t doing their service.

Where fines are involved, their amounts shouldn’t be fixed but should instead be set at a percentage of the offender’s income, say 10% of their monthly income for a certain offense, with the percentage set higher or lower for various offenses. And just to make sure no one gets out of paying the fine, a minimum threshold amount should be set that everyone must pay, even if it’s higher than the percentage set for a particular offense.

Let me give you more specific examples to drive the point home:

  • Let’s say a man is caught harassing women on the street. I would mandate the completion of a 2-day basic course in manners for him, with a test that he must pass at the end. He would then have to pay a fine and apologize in person to the women he offended, and complete a 14-day community service period and perform duties such as sweeping the streets, picking up litter, opening doors for women and other such activities. I believe such a punishment would better fit his crime and would in the end be more likely to achieve its goal of correcting the man’s behavior.
  • In the case of acts of vandalism, those people would pay a fine and be mandatorily assigned to work crews in the local community would be supervised by city personnel in the restoration of public buildings and public housing. Depending on the severity of the vandalism, they would get 2-weeks or 4-weeks or more of mandated community service. Their work performance would be graded and if they didn’t do a good enough job, their sentence would get extended.
  • In the case of those insulting people on the internet, I think the current model gives every Tom, Dick and Harry too free a hand in venting on anyone they choose and this is completely wrong. I think we should have better checks in place so that the identity of commenters could be easily traced and these people be held responsible for their actions. I believe they would also benefit from the completion of a 2-day basic course in manners, plus the payment of a fine.

In the case of crimes requiring prison sentences, again the punishment should be tailored to fit the crime. For example:

  • A convicted rapist whose guilt is proven would be physically castrated. I’m not talking about chemical castration. I’m talking about that man losing his testicles forever, so that he can no longer hurt someone else like that. He would also serve a lengthy prison sentence and go through counseling. When it is deemed possible by the psychologist or psychiatrist in charge, that man would have to apologize (either in person or on video or in writing, depending on the preference of the victim) to the victim and/or to the victim’s family.
  • Those who did serious financial crimes would in addition to their prison sentence also be mandated to suggest fixes for the loopholes or faulty laws that allowed them to exploit the system in such a way. They would also be required to assist the government in their ongoing financial investigations. In other words, if a lot of footwork and manpower is required for certain investigations, they’d be required to go through the physical or digital paperwork and assist the government as needed. After their sentence is complete, they would be required to complete years of community service where they would offer free financial counseling 2-3 times a week to college students and young couples, to help them understand how finances work and what they need to do in order to manage their money correctly. The counseling would be done by the book and would be monitored by truant officers.

These are just a couple of examples. I’m sure you can think of more if you’re thinking along the same lines as me.

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Thoughts

East meets West and troubles ensue

There’s a lot of talk and controversy in the news about the migrant issue nowadays. Some are calling it Europe’s biggest political issue in decades, and they’re partly right. It’s certainly a big issue, but it’s not as big now as it may get in the coming years, if it’s not addressed correctly.

Here’s what I think: it’s not about race, it’s not about color, it’s not about war or the economy; it’s about religious fanaticism vs. tolerance. That’s the subject that should be discussed openly here, without mincing words.

I’m not going to name any particular religion. I don’t need to. The question to ask is: how tolerant are the religions practiced by these migrants? I ask this question seriously, given the problems we have encountered in Europe just in the last decade, in France, in the UK and in other European countries, all caused (directly or indirectly) by religious fanaticism.

Given the problems caused by intolerant religions in Europe, do we really want to introduce more of those same problems into the mix? If you look at photos of the migrants, or even better, go and inspect the situation for yourselves, you will see an overwhelming abundance of young males. Let’s do some simple math: add impressionable young males, plus religions which espouse intolerance, and what does that equal? It equals more of what you can see in the UK or in France, in certain well-known places where normal people don’t dare venture for fear of being attacked or killed, simply because they’re not of the same religion or have a different skin color.

In today’s civilized world, where science is widespread and superstition is all but absent, there are certain religions that still cling to medieval practices, and those religions have no place whatsoever where civilized society lives. Not unless you want serious problems.

The real litmus test is this: go ahead and wear a t-shirt with a controversial message in Eastern countries where an intolerant religion thrives and see what happens to you. Then, should you live to tell the tale, wear a similarly controversial t-shirt (or even more so) in Western countries and see what happens there.

I’m not of any religion, because I prefer to think for myself instead of regurgitating what religious books teach me. But I certainly appreciate tolerance among those who are religious, because it is a sign of higher thinking, of “using one’s noggin”, to put it into American vernacular. It’s a clear sign that a particular religion has managed to pull itself out of medieval practices of torture and killing and has come out into the light of the modern, enlightened world. Sadly, some religions are still stuck in the past, hundreds of years behind the times and show no sign of wanting to progress. Those religions and their believers have no place in the civilized world. 

That’s what we should be talking about, because if this situation is dealt with correctly now, we’ll avoid a whole slew of problems later on down the line, such as the de-stabilization of European society and the safety of its citizens, and the regression of our Western civilization down to the levels we can now see in Eastern countries, which is unthinkable.

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Thoughts

Body image, public perception and the media

Just wanted to publish here a post I wrote on Facebook this morning about body image and the recent controversy surrounding its representation in the media:

Something I don’t get: people are making such a big deal in recent times about being thin and how the fashion magazines are promoting it. They’re making it into a huge issue, as if the plump girls are being persecuted and they’re putting it as if this has been going on forever.

Truth is, this is only a recent thing. Until the 60s, it was a plump girl’s world. Yes, all the way from antiquity to the 1960s or so, people liked bigger women. The thin ones were the outcasts. Nobody wanted them because they were too skinny. They were told to put on weight. There were ads in magazines everywhere for fattening creams and lotions and vitamins and lard and all kinds of stuff to help girls put on weight fast and become “attractive”.

So here’s what I think: all this bulls**t be damned, if you want to be plump, be plump, if you want to be thin, be thin, but do yourself a favor and stop blaming others for your body type. If you’re plump and you’d rather be thin, stop complaining about fashion magazines and learn to love yourself. If you’re thin and would rather be fat, well then, you’re in luck because there are a ton of processed foods out there to help you achieve your goal.

And if you like yourself just the way you are, congratulations! You’re one of the lucky few who get what it’s like to enjoy life. Go on enjoying it, we typically only get 70-80 years of it and we shouldn’t waste it complaining! 🙂

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A Guide To A Good Life

Respect and Discrimination

So often in life we meet with situations where the question of respect and discrimination comes up in our minds. We get to decide whether to extend respect or to discriminate and after the fact, probably question our decisions, wondering whether we did the right thing.

In this video from “The Elegant Gentleman” series, I wanted to talk to you about the meanings of these two words and to give you a few simple criteria (such as appearance, personal hygiene and behavior) for evaluating a person or a situation that should ease your decision-making process.  I should make it clear here that I refrained from talking about the more controversial meaning of the word “discrimination” in my video, simply because it’s not the word’s primary or even secondary meaning; it is something we’ve chosen to associate with the word in recent times, which perhaps says something about the state of our society.

Here’s this video posting on my Facebook page:

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Video Log

The need for true craftsmen

I filmed a short vlog today about the need for true craftsmen, which is becoming more apparent in developed countries pretty much everywhere. The more emphasis is placed on white collar jobs, IT and college degrees, the less people you have going to vocational schools in order to learn how to become craftsmen. Countries don’t run on computers alone. We need people doing real, physical work, building the infrastructure and taking pride in their jobs, building with the best methods and to the highest quality available to them, otherwise fields like construction are going to get worse, not better. (Have you looked at the build quality of the sheds we call “homes” these days?)

I hope you take a few minutes to watch the entire video and do your part to encourage your children or your students in schools to become real craftsmen. They can make a good living, even a great living, doing craftwork, and they can do it without going into debt by the tens of thousands of dollars, getting college and post-graduate education which isn’t going to be useful to them. If you’d like a list of good, honest trades and crafts, this article which lists 19th century occupations alphabetically should help.

I’m not alone in my views. You can also watch Mike Rowe, host of “Dirty Jobs”, give a testimony before Congress where he urges the US government to encourage our children to choose to go to vocational and tech schools, because there’s a real need for these kinds of people in the US economy.

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