If those who enforce the laws control our lives, then those who write the laws control our destiny.
Of all the attributes and benefits of human development, our ability to live by, and make, workable legal systems is probably the least understood.
We can all see that humanity has been shaped by language, art and music, science and invention, agriculture, manufacture, freedom of expression and religion, the list goes on, but we might not add lawmaking until much further down the list, if at all. Yet there are few greater enablers that have brought us to our present state.
One reason for this is that we don't really know how or when societal laws were first made.
Discoveries of ancient remains often point to gruesome executions which are always assumed to be sacrificial in nature, some part of an ancient religious ceremony, and many of them probably were, but we have no idea how many were actually punishments for social transgression, or as we would now say, for some form of criminal behaviour?
Those earliest legal systems were almost certainly ones of crime and punishment, and this holds true today throughout much of the world. In other parts, particularly in the Western hemisphere, they have been replaced by an emphasis on law and order, where society and behaviour are regulated to preempt criminality.
A good working example of this is in how private transport is regulated:
In the West, we are required to pass a test, own a license, maintain a roadworthy vehicle and keep it insured. Speed limits are generally respected, traffic lights obeyed etc.
But anyone who has traveled extensively knows that much of the less developed world does none of this. Dangerous wrecks are overloaded and driven recklessly by the uninsured and unlicensed with apparent impunity. The result of this is that a minor accident can become a serious incident, with faulty brakes, unsecured passengers etc. contributing to the mess.
What we have then is an almost identical situation which in one society is handed over to an insurance company, to be settled with minimal fuss and delay (in theory at least), while the other may lead to serious injury and loss of income or liberty when a faulty vehicle and inability to pay compensation are determined.
The distinction between a system of regulated order and one of criminal punishment should be obvious, but it goes deeper, because the one society takes responsibility for it's behaviour to prevent a crime, while the other does not recognize a crime until it happens, a kind of 'I've done nothing wrong unless I'm caught', culture.
This distinction is important for Western societies to understand, because our whole legal system is predicated on the Law and Order model, rather than the one of Crime and Punishment.
If you wonder where this is leading, then it gets worse, because when the perpetrator of a crime has no culture of Law and Order, they may not accept having done anything wrong if there is no punishment attached to their actions, so that the leniency of a Western Judge - the offering of another chance - is not taken as an opportunity to join the social order, but as an admission that the crime was not really so bad after all, and the opportunity then, is not to 'go straight', but to go out and commit that same crime again, or worse, to push the boundaries to see just how much more criminality will pass unpunished.
Of all the attributes and benefits of human development, our ability to live by, and make, workable legal systems is probably the least understood.
We can all see that humanity has been shaped by language, art and music, science and invention, agriculture, manufacture, freedom of expression and religion, the list goes on, but we might not add lawmaking until much further down the list, if at all. Yet there are few greater enablers that have brought us to our present state.
One reason for this is that we don't really know how or when societal laws were first made.
Discoveries of ancient remains often point to gruesome executions which are always assumed to be sacrificial in nature, some part of an ancient religious ceremony, and many of them probably were, but we have no idea how many were actually punishments for social transgression, or as we would now say, for some form of criminal behaviour?
Those earliest legal systems were almost certainly ones of crime and punishment, and this holds true today throughout much of the world. In other parts, particularly in the Western hemisphere, they have been replaced by an emphasis on law and order, where society and behaviour are regulated to preempt criminality.
A good working example of this is in how private transport is regulated:
In the West, we are required to pass a test, own a license, maintain a roadworthy vehicle and keep it insured. Speed limits are generally respected, traffic lights obeyed etc.
But anyone who has traveled extensively knows that much of the less developed world does none of this. Dangerous wrecks are overloaded and driven recklessly by the uninsured and unlicensed with apparent impunity. The result of this is that a minor accident can become a serious incident, with faulty brakes, unsecured passengers etc. contributing to the mess.
What we have then is an almost identical situation which in one society is handed over to an insurance company, to be settled with minimal fuss and delay (in theory at least), while the other may lead to serious injury and loss of income or liberty when a faulty vehicle and inability to pay compensation are determined.
The distinction between a system of regulated order and one of criminal punishment should be obvious, but it goes deeper, because the one society takes responsibility for it's behaviour to prevent a crime, while the other does not recognize a crime until it happens, a kind of 'I've done nothing wrong unless I'm caught', culture.
This distinction is important for Western societies to understand, because our whole legal system is predicated on the Law and Order model, rather than the one of Crime and Punishment.
If you wonder where this is leading, then it gets worse, because when the perpetrator of a crime has no culture of Law and Order, they may not accept having done anything wrong if there is no punishment attached to their actions, so that the leniency of a Western Judge - the offering of another chance - is not taken as an opportunity to join the social order, but as an admission that the crime was not really so bad after all, and the opportunity then, is not to 'go straight', but to go out and commit that same crime again, or worse, to push the boundaries to see just how much more criminality will pass unpunished.
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