I was thinking this morning about the comment I made in a recent blog regarding minority rights.
Society is complex and according to our norms it should be inclusive. It should include all measure of man and women. It should at least "understand" the the views held by people living within the society even if one doesn't agree with them. A sign of a healthy civilised society is the way we deal with the differences between us.
The differences that lie between us inside the national boundary has become greatly magnified over the last 50 years as the people have grasped the ease of travel and the globalisation of industry and capital has meant that skills are readily transferable around the world. The differences then are not skill or industry based differences but cultural.
Each minority group in one country belongs to a majority group in another and until the second and third generation have sufficiently distanced themselves from their ethnic root the norms of the old majority culture remain strong.
How do we evaluate another man's culture when set against our own especially if there are major differences. How do we, and should we, make allowances for a way of thinking that is alien to our own.
Remember of course the wide and multinational differences in our own society, within our own ethnic stock. They, in themselves reflect our willingness to allow people the right to be different.
The Islamist, Shari Law brings into sharp focus the difficulty we now experience in our generosity of purpose, to allow people to be different.
Shari law appears to us as, "in extremity", cruel even barbaric in its sentencing. Chopping off a hand, having been caught stealing. Stoning a women to death for adultery, these are the ones that catch the headlines.
It was not too long ago that we in this country hung murders. Go back a little further and we have "draw and quartering" to add to the list of acts that those in authority could use as a deterrent to the law breaker. The use of a deterrent was deemed justified since the law represented the view of society at that time.
There is no doubt that deterrents work, not all the time but they do work. I am sure the numbers of adulterers and those willing to steal are greatly effected by the barbaric end result if caught.Of course here come the nub of the problem, no one setting out to break the law expects to be caught. When they are and the State wheels out the apparatus of deterrent it has to use it, otherwise the purpose of the deterrent is nullified.
In this country we have whittled away our notion of deterrent to a minimum. The contract we now have with the populous, both criminal and non criminal, is education and, through education a reliance on society at large not to commit crime and the person who has committed the crime of seeing the error of their ways of not committing crime again ! Its a long shot and I think the criminal community have won the day.
Notice I use the word community since they the criminal are a community and like the other communities they have rights and must be respected.
Where do we go from here. Well statistics tell us that the "moderation" of the current ethnic view in this country will diminish as "we" the Anglo Saxon element become the minority in about 2050. Then the majority may, if they wish bring in more punitive laws and sentences which it is assumed the then majority approve of. Of course something else might happen. The new majority might, overtime, decide that the old, shall we call it, primitive way of conducting society was wrong and the way forward was to absorb new ways of thinking about ones fellow man within a wider society.
The key is the hold that religion will have, in 2050, over our society at large ?
Society is complex and according to our norms it should be inclusive. It should include all measure of man and women. It should at least "understand" the the views held by people living within the society even if one doesn't agree with them. A sign of a healthy civilised society is the way we deal with the differences between us.
The differences that lie between us inside the national boundary has become greatly magnified over the last 50 years as the people have grasped the ease of travel and the globalisation of industry and capital has meant that skills are readily transferable around the world. The differences then are not skill or industry based differences but cultural.
Each minority group in one country belongs to a majority group in another and until the second and third generation have sufficiently distanced themselves from their ethnic root the norms of the old majority culture remain strong.
How do we evaluate another man's culture when set against our own especially if there are major differences. How do we, and should we, make allowances for a way of thinking that is alien to our own.
Remember of course the wide and multinational differences in our own society, within our own ethnic stock. They, in themselves reflect our willingness to allow people the right to be different.
The Islamist, Shari Law brings into sharp focus the difficulty we now experience in our generosity of purpose, to allow people to be different.
Shari law appears to us as, "in extremity", cruel even barbaric in its sentencing. Chopping off a hand, having been caught stealing. Stoning a women to death for adultery, these are the ones that catch the headlines.
It was not too long ago that we in this country hung murders. Go back a little further and we have "draw and quartering" to add to the list of acts that those in authority could use as a deterrent to the law breaker. The use of a deterrent was deemed justified since the law represented the view of society at that time.
There is no doubt that deterrents work, not all the time but they do work. I am sure the numbers of adulterers and those willing to steal are greatly effected by the barbaric end result if caught.Of course here come the nub of the problem, no one setting out to break the law expects to be caught. When they are and the State wheels out the apparatus of deterrent it has to use it, otherwise the purpose of the deterrent is nullified.
In this country we have whittled away our notion of deterrent to a minimum. The contract we now have with the populous, both criminal and non criminal, is education and, through education a reliance on society at large not to commit crime and the person who has committed the crime of seeing the error of their ways of not committing crime again ! Its a long shot and I think the criminal community have won the day.
Notice I use the word community since they the criminal are a community and like the other communities they have rights and must be respected.
Where do we go from here. Well statistics tell us that the "moderation" of the current ethnic view in this country will diminish as "we" the Anglo Saxon element become the minority in about 2050. Then the majority may, if they wish bring in more punitive laws and sentences which it is assumed the then majority approve of. Of course something else might happen. The new majority might, overtime, decide that the old, shall we call it, primitive way of conducting society was wrong and the way forward was to absorb new ways of thinking about ones fellow man within a wider society.
The key is the hold that religion will have, in 2050, over our society at large ?
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