Forgive me my fellow Eye'ers, I obviously have this stuck in my head at the moment and it needs to be addressed.
On GMTV this morning we had an ex burglar talking about what he feels over the initial arrest, sentancing and subsiquent reduction of prision term for a Mr Munir Hussain (http://www.gm.tv/articles/44308- burglars-prosecution-jailed.html). Who chased burglars out of his house and administered to one of them a bloody good hiding. The ex burglar was talking about choice vs instinctual behaviour, whilst unsupprisingly the majority of calls, texts and emails into GMTV on this subject were all for a lessening of the law which restricts us to 'reasonable force' in defence of our homes or loved ones. To my mind a restriction from 'reasonable force' can only mean allowing 'unreasonable force' so I guess you can say that I do not agree with this one at all. However although I'm sure that we will get into that one here, this is not the point I wish to make at this time. Back to choice then. I think the ex-burglar correct, even when it comes to acting instinctivly to protect your loved ones, I would suppose that my instinct if I where to find myself in Mr Hussain's predicterment, would be differant from Mr Hussains. The burglars fleed his property and he choose to chase them out, rather than seeing if his family were all okay. Okay I guess I am I and he is he, I cannot know the kind of person he is nor what his lifes experiances have been upto this point. Which is getting towards the root of my concerns now. A quick potted history of the life of Lee, in order to understand my next thought I think. As a child I, along with the rest of my male siblings, was beaten a lot by my father, it has certianly left it's mark on my and goes a great deal to explaining certian facets of my pysche(as you would expect), the biggest off shoot of this is how I think about the effect of my actions on other people before I choose to act. As a child getting a beating by a perant hurts, emotionaly and physicaly. So I retain the memory of how I felt at the time, and ask myself, this question: If I act that way towards another person am I not engaging in the very same actions that hurt me so much? The answer is of course yes. Now having realised this I must further ask, retaining the memory of how all of the felt and the mark it has left upon me, why would I wish to inflict the same upon others? The answer is I cannot do so and remain unhypocritical. These questions and answers I feel are based on more than my lifes experiance, they are cold rationality in action, that is of course I realise that my perception is skewed because of my experiances, yet at the same time I do not think my answers irrational. So back to My Hussian. After being tied up and beaten, and experiancing how that felt, the rational choice to make (according to me) is to ensure that his family are all good, that any injuries get seen to that any emotional or pshcological damage is restricted. To my mind to seek instant redress and to 'do unto others as they have done unto you' seems illogical, unhumane, and even worse it does make you into the very thing that you are trieing to protect your family against. Choices? Ummm can we choose our belifes? I don't know, I suspect not. Can we choose how we behave? Yes yes of course we can. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups ""Minds Eye"" group. To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [email protected]. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/minds-eye?hl=en.
