Humans & Laws
Is everything a direct consequence of being a sapient being?
Any species with self-awareness, the ability to communicate and retain knowledge will eventually form a society. And as a consequence will eventually create laws to protect people?
I'd like to say, "Hey, laws are great, they serve the purpose of maintaining order.", but I can't lie like that. Having laws mean nothing for society without a better judgment and well enforced application of the law. But none of those reflect our world.
We live in different, but world sharing, societies. This leads to conflicts in beliefs and interests. While one land enforces her practices over others, other nations cast a shadowy look of disapproval, while at the same time, doing little to enforce their own beliefs.
Of course, if everyone tried to push their believes over others, wars would never cease. But technically laws are there to avoid this... avoid abusive power over others, not wars. Wars as a abstract confrontation with or without violence is unavoidable, but we can prevent large scale conflicts using common laws that should go through out our race, not our lands.
The problem with everything is that few places really enforce their laws, leading to corruption, because in the end, when pushed against the wall, 99,999999% of all living beings will only look for their own interests, (being of course in case of most animals, their own life).
While we can pretend there are places where laws are actually enforced, there is still the problem of whether the laws make sense. Because, no one will agree to ALL laws they are faced with in the land they live. We vary so much in opinion that we can't simply find a common ground. And there are still people who will say that no matter your opinion, the laws are there for the BEST of people's interest in mind. Like there could exist such a thing as the best of people's interest. Law systems are plainly flawed, and we don't care because we don't feel the obligation to abide by them, unless under direct supervision by someone who will enforce the law up our sorry asses.
In case you are wondering, if you have more than a certain age (let's say 20 years old), you most surely have already broken AT LEAST one law. Haven't you played a game forbidden to your age? Downloaded an mp3 you had no right to download? Have you ever looked deeply into your traffic laws, because I'm sure there are infinite stupid things to break the law there.
Laws represent something good, but in our world, it has become a 18000 headed monster. Ever looked into, say a microwave, and seen a warning, DO NOT PUT ANIMALS IN THE MICROWAVE? Well, what leads to such a warning? The fucking law actually is on the side of people without any common sense (this is a really bad expression in the english language, is means "sound and prudent judgment based on a simple perception of the situation or facts", but this is something that the common person DOES NOT HAVE. In Brazil we use the directly translated Good Sense.). Back to the subject, the law grants people who do stupid things the preference over people that used "good sense". Manuals all over are filled with stupid sentences, that simply defy all logic, to protect companies from people ill intended.
This way we end up with lots of laws that seem stupid.
Recently I hear the new snow patch on the snowball. Somewhere (I didn't get the place, but it seemed that is was either US or UK) they are trying (or actually did, I'm still not certain) to create a law prohibiting the possession of a kind of pornography. Of course, this came from a desperate parent, who lost a child to some weird lunatic and had nothing better to do than find some reason to explain why someone killed his child and found this sort of porn as an excuse.
You all recall that fucking kid that grabbed some guns and fire inside a movie theater, and because he had played shooting games, people believed that the cause for his actions was rooted in the violent games. Oh COME ON, stupid shrinks!!!!! This was a minor set back for the industry. And in the very same way, this will ripple badly through porn industry, and affect many innocent people.
What I find flawed is that while there was a peaceful existence with things that are now illegal (example, the kind of porn) for many years. Upon ONE incident, (or statistically a very low number of incidents), they feel that disturbing the lives of many, because of one persons fault, is justified by "avenging" an angry parent.
A death of a dear one is always tragic, but taking it out on people who had nothing to do with it is just wrong.
Here the legend goes that RPG were prohibited some years in the past because a crazy vampire player actually KILLED a girl during one of his sessions.
Yet they believe that playing video games, rpg and watching porn is something bad, or that can lead to violent behaviors. That all considering that television news are more than packed with violence, and death. And with some countries waging wars with terrorism as an excuse.
People don't understand that the laws should keep humans from interfering with other people's lives in a bad manner, but instead most laws just fuck up most innocent people, because some delinquent had not the control over his temper. The guy is never a crazy serial killer, noooo, he always had an abusive parent, or painful childhood. Newsflash, many people have those, and very few manifest those scars in such a bad manner. People so like to believe that humans are plainly good and that things corrupt them, but no one is born good or evil, we are all born with both inside of us. (We shall ignore for the sake of argument that there is NO such thing as good or evil)
Whenever you make a decision, simply do the right thing. Think how your action will affect others, if it may cause pain to someone, then don't do it (with personal exceptions, you should not sacrifice yourself for someone else's sake, unless you want to).