Lawton’s Most Wanted

Something happened to me the other day that got me to thinking (well, everything that happens to me makes me think).  This particular experience got me to wondering about the nature of the connection between law and thought.  

I have three pugs, one of whom is very old.  His name is Pugsy and we think he’s about 19 years old, actually.  He’s incontinent, arthritic, blind, is prone to seizures and has almost no teeth.  With a fenced back yard, the pugs have plenty of room to roam in relative security.  The other two jump, play and run around, but Pugsy can’t even make it up and down the back stairs by himself.  We have to carry him in and out.  He’s about as feeble as a dog can get and still be able to walk.  

The other morning, the back gate was open.  I don’t know why, but it was.  I didn’t realize this when I let Pugsy out.  Now he has a habit of barking when he wants back inside (which these days is almost immediately after we bring him out).  So when several minutes passed without a peep from him, something was clearly wrong.

Pugsy was gone and the gate was wide open.  In a panic, I ran outside to look for him.  No sign of him.  So I got in the car and drove down the street looking for him.  I found him in the back of an animal control truck.  The guy was on my street responding to another animal call.  There was Pugsy, shaking, confused, and pathetic in the back of this meat wagon.  After some wrangling I managed to talk the guy into giving me my dog back.  He still wrote me a ticket; fine, whatever.  But what really incensed me about all of this was that a ticket for a dog roaming at large required a mandatory court appearance.  

I went down to the court house to see about just paying the fine.  I was told that there are no exceptions for this charge.  “It’s the law,” they explained to me.  I must appear before a judge.  People who go rocketing up and down my street like they’re acting out Grand Theft Auto can just go and pay a ticket, no questions asked.  But I have to go and stand next to murderers, rapists, child molesters, and drug dealers just to explain to a judge why my 19-year-old toothless dog and I are not a clear and present danger to society.

Yes, my people, I am the new Kingpin of crime in Southwest Oklahoma.  I’m Lawton’s most wanted, y’all!  Ding Dong ain’t got nuthin on me!

I’ve long held that the reason people think about things is so they don’t have to think about them.  That is, they think about something for the minimum amount of time it takes for it to become automatic.  Take driving a car for example.  Once you get the hang of it you do it without conscious, deliberate thought.  When you come up to an intersection where you have to turn, you just flip the turn signal.  It’s done automatically, without thinking.  

My overall belief on this subject is that the reason people make laws is so they don’t have to make decisions.  Their judgments are automatic and do not require original thought, only minimal interpretation.

I suppose it’s a defense mechanism against a community that is too large.  If a community grows beyond it’s ability to manage itself, they must agree on some sort of standard.  The burden of making judgments increases with the population of any community.  At some point, either from frustration or economy (not enough time), rules are created.  This creates relief for those responsible for making judgments.  They don’t have to consider what to do anymore.  They can always fall back on the rule.   

This creates a trap that’s very easy to fall into.  Making a rule to replace original thought makes one’s life easier.  They’re not unlike macros for day-to-day existence.  Instead of having to make judgments over and over for similar situations, they create a rule that applies broadly for similar situations.  

Something happens collectively to societies that replace creative judgment with law.  In creative judgments, there is an intimacy with the problem to be solved that makes it easier to answer the question fundamental to all judgments:  Is this right?

If you are forced to creatively judge something, the question of right and wrong is made very simple.  You are aware of the details and circumstances around the event you have to judge, and you know right from wrong.  The more a person, group or society relies on rules, the harder it is for them to gauge right and wrong.  

Perhaps the problem of law replacing creative judgment has to do with size.  In smaller groups (village-sized, for example) the person responsible for making judgments (chief or elder, etc.) can afford to make calls on a case-by-case basis.  In smaller groups, the senior individual knows all of the members of the group and can grasp all of the nuances and interpersonal relationships within the group.  Their responsibility for making judgments is relatively small in scope.  

If you make a call in a situation, you know you’re applying your moral standard to the judgment.  But this process is more demanding.  It requires more time and greater effort from the person responsible for making the judgment.  Since people follow the path of least resistance, they will typically fall back on the law to absolve them of the responsibility of making a moral judgment.  

Now before you judge me as an anarchist, I will say that some law is good.  There should be laws against obvious crimes, like rape, child molestation, murder, etc.  But no law, no matter how well crafted or intentioned, should replace moral judgment.  

 

 

The Sad Girl – Vintage Regular

I saw a picture a while back, and it made me sad.

It was a mural, actually; A black and white photograph blown up to larger-than-poster size. I saw it in a mall in my hometown, hanging up just outside some designer clothing store. In the foreground a man was sitting down. He was handsome; immaculately groomed, brilliantly dressed. He was looking smugly at the camera, with his hands clasped just underneath his chin. He looked worldly, rich, and powerful. 

Standing right behind him was a woman. She was physically beautiful, at least according to society’s standards; thin, blonde, somewhat large breasts. She was slouching in a sexually suggestive way, and was lazily holding a martini glass. Her mouth was wide open in what was probably a laugh, and her eyes were half-closed and vacant.

I felt sorry for her.

I only looked at the picture for a few seconds, not even stopping to stare at it. But the image and everything it said to me were burned into my mind. In this mural I saw so many things wrong with society that I’m not sure where to begin.

For starters, the picture was not of a man and a woman; it was a picture of a man and his property. This was a man primarily concerned with his status. He didn’t have to tell people he was a big deal. He used things to display his importance; his designer clothes, his manicured hands and perfect hair, his woman. Here is a man who objectified the people in his life in order to elevate his own status. He was primarily concerned with his appearance, and enveloped himself with things that improved it. The woman standing behind him was nothing more than a status symbol, and like all the rest of his property, he treated her accordingly. 

There’s something worse about this picture than the attitude of the man. The woman’s presence, her participation, her acceptance of everything this picture said to me, is much worse.

Her presence in this picture implies that she has subjugated her will to the man in the photo. She looks for happiness only within the scope of her relationship to the man. For her, the world she lives in is one that revolves around the man in the photo. She is not a woman unto herself, she is his woman. Her identity does not exist outside the scope of his identity. Her sense of self is defined through his eyes. She dresses the way he wants her to, carries herself the way he wants her to, and probably speaks the way he wants her to. She is not his companion or equal. She is only his girl. 

Her participation in the scene implies moral agreement with her objectification. This is how she describes herself, how she defines herself. Her identity begins and ends not so much with this man in particular, but with a man. Her individual identity vanished at some point in her past. She has lost the ability to define herself exclusively; that is, she cannot define herself without incorporating herself into someone else’s definition. What else is she if she is not some man’s woman? What else is there? I see a woman who asks herself such questions glibly, even mockingly. She cannot allow herself to see any answer to these questions that do not affirm herself as she currently is portrayed in the photo. I want very badly for her to know deep down that to define herself the way she has is fundamentally wrong, but I don’t believe she can do that anymore. Her eyes are vacant and empty.

Her acceptance of her status implies resignation of her objectification. If she ever saw herself as being something more than some man’s woman, that idea is gone from her mind. Any fire burning inside her that may have once told her that she could be more has been put out. She is no longer someone who can live for her own sake. Her ability to be a woman to admire, to look up to, is gone. There is nothing in her mind that communicates to anyone that she is or could ever be a peer. If she ever saw herself being a doctor or lawyer, politician or scientist, author or teacher, all she sees herself as now is some man’s woman. Her mind is gone, and her body is all that remains.

I don’t think much of the man. I don’t feel much either, except some mild contempt. He lives in a society that both encourages and forgives him for devaluing women. He is a symptom of the problem I have with this picture.

The woman makes me feel pity and resentment; pity at what she is reduced to and resentment at whatever reduced her to this. Was she molested as a child? Has she gone from one bad relationship to another? Did she have absent or apathetic parents? I see someone who has endured repeated attempts at putting her fire out. At some point in her past, she became too weak to resist, to hang on. She gave up, and her value system collapsed. Now all she is is some woman in a slinky black dress sipping a martini, doing a careful dance around the man in the photo, hoping desperately to be whatever he wants her to be from one moment to the next. She does this so that he will continue to give her value, to give her the worth. She can no longer give these things to herself. 

All this from a few seconds of staring at a photo designed to sell clothes. She is a sad girl, and she made me sad.

Welcome (back) to Lincoln Park

Hi!  I used to have a blog with this name under a different blogging service.  I made a spot decision to cancel it and have more or less regretted it ever since.  SO I’m back now, relying on the kindness of strangers for bits of sanity.  See you around!