A society of sinners, casting stones…

July 16, 2003
by Rob Lafferty

Although we live in an imperfect world filled with flawed people, we constantly strive to make our communities a better place to live. Our greatest mistakes occur when we ignore the truth about ourselves as we try to force a brave new world into existence.

Faced with an increasing sense that many people in society are out of control, the urge to tighten things up is understandable. Surrendering to that urge is causing the loss of our Republic and a lessening of our humanity.
In our efforts to punish undesirable behavior in others, we sacrifice the very principles that could make a better world become a reality.

With each new social or personal problem that arises, we expect government or the courts or someone – anyone – to quickly provide a solution, pass a law or arrest those who represent the problem.

That approach rarely works. Instead our society has become ever more hypocritical, because we aren’t logical or consistent in how we define and enforce those laws.

It’s almost a crime now to be young – and often a crime to be different. Generations that came of age between 1960 and 1990 lived through one of the most excessive and indulgent eras since ancient Rome, yet the survivors of those years seek to deny others the same freedoms that they themselves enjoyed and abused.

Young people may seem to be ignorant or naive at times, but most of them have quicker minds than their elders. They see hypocrisy easily, and they tend to rebel against it in all forms. And rightly so.

Young minds see the hypocrisy of paying teachers the lowest living wages in the nation while expecting them to resolve difficult behavioral problems without the same disciplinary tools that yesterday’s teachers had – then blaming the school system when kids can’t read their sixth grade graduation certificate.

They understand our social and financial priorities when the county will spend over $250,000 to rebuild a small bathroom at Pa‘ia Park only to lock it closed after dark, then claim to have no money to support programs that help the needy while spending $3.6 million to promote tourism.

They grasp the injustice of police officers sending lifeguards to chase surfing classes out of the ocean at Cove Park, even though the county has no jurisdiction over the ocean, lifeguards have no police authority at all, and the surf schools are not breaking any laws.

They listen when Lieutenant Governor Aiona proposes sending anyone arrested for possession of drugs directly into Drug Court – before any trial, never mind a conviction. Drug Court may be a good program for dealing with criminal behavior, but the right to be presumed innocent until proven guilty still exists – or at least it does for “respectable” citizens who are accused of committing crimes.

Meanwhile, marijuana growers are seen as equally as bad as a person who cooks methamphetamine into ice, and both can go to jail for selling any amount of their psychoactive product – but tobacco producers can advertise and sell and kill people by the thousands with their poisonous product, becoming wealthy even as they are vilified for doing so.

Meanwhile alcohol use is openly promoted, even as it causes mayhem on our highways, and destruction to many families. The person who sells alcohol is called a clerk or a bartender, and they can earn praise and a wage increase if they sell a lot of that particular psychoactive chemical.

If you grow wine grapes and ferment them into a psychoactive liquid, you can become rich, famous and admired in the community for your skill and expertise. People will sample your product in restaurants while speaking of the health benefits that come from using a small amount daily. And they can drive home as long as they only become impaired within an arbitrary legal limit.

On the mainland, if you sleep in a motorhome, you’re assumed to be a “snowbird” or a retired traveler with adequate means of support. If you sleep in a station wagon, you’re sure to be considered an indigent transient – and a suspicious character, too.

Since there aren’t many motor homes on Maui, everyone sleeping in a car is suspect – unless, of course, they paid a fee to rent one of the few dozen camping spaces that exist on this island.

For someone too poor to pay the ever-increasing costs for a space, life becomes the homeless version of a shell game – is he here, under this bush? Over there behind that dumpster? Or parked out in the cane fields after dark, sleeping in an old Chevy and waking before the sun to struggle through another day, pretending to be a person of substance?

Throughout history, unjust laws have failed miserably at preventing human behavior. One of the realities of being part of a society is the fact that we all must share in the cost and consequences of foolish or destructive tendencies that are inherent in many of our fellow citizens.

Positive social change can’t be legislated into existence; it always comes from an evolution of awareness in one individual at a time.

The best way to cope with many of today’s problems is to show a greater level of tolerance for our differences, and have some compassion for the weaknesses in each other. Perhaps then we will learn how to set our priorities in a way that enhances life for all citizens – even those who act in ways we don’t like.