When we consider ‘the legal system’ as people who are not trained in the law, we naturally consider that the policing and the legal system are there to uphold our rights as citizens, to keep us safe from harm. We consider that the legal system and the laws are founded on some notion of truth, keeping society safe and true to what we all innately know are universal human values, of truth, decency, and respect. We know that we need order in society and that order needs to be founded on these key values, as it is those key values that underpin the functioning of society.

Yet when we turn to the legal system when something goes wrong or we are harmed, do we find consistency clarity and true support and laws upholding truth? Or do we find confusion and at times the protection of the rights of abusers in society? Certainly when you turn to the law with respect to cyber abuse, you find that the ‘rights’ of people to abuse and lie about people online are well and truly protected, particularly in Australia at the moment. Anyone who has had dealings in property realises that contracts do not necessarily endorse that which is decent or true.

How can this be so?

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At the moment in Australia and much of the West, we say that we are a civilised society. After all, we wear clothes, well, most of the time and go to work in offices, we have running water, toilets and live in houses which (usually) have roofs, walls and windows. We have television, electricity, cars, public transportation – of variable efficacy – we have family units, schools, education systems, the internet, hand held mobiles, small computers, big computers, shops, money and banks. We have ‘art’ and we have ‘music’. But are these the things that make us ‘civilised’? And to what are we comparing ourselves…

What is it that makes us civilised? Is it our ‘mod cons’ and the fact that perhaps we wear more clothes than what used to be termed so called ‘primitive savages’ ie the apes or early man? Is it because we have less body hair than the animal kingdom? Or is it because we have and live by certain values?

Surely it is the values that a society live and work on that are the foundation of a true society and surely a true civilisation is one where people live and work in harmony and love together? And thus is it not civilised to be loving and to treat people with decency and respect? Continue reading →