We are who we think we are, aren’t we!

We all have a self image of ourselves, it is an integral part of the armor we wear to help combat the attacks on our id that naturally happens throughout our daily routine, whether from our friends, family, co-workers or bosses.

And from time to time we catch a glimpse of our actual physical self in a reflection and , “Oh Shit!” Your self image crumbles like the walls of Jericho, but more like in seven seconds rather than the days it took Jericho.

Of course the glimpse is just that, a small fleeting look and once it passes our self image immediately springs back into place and with but a few lingering moments of guilt-induced, “I should get to the gym more often” or “I should really start a diet” we carry on as if it never happened.

Unless of course you live with my sister, in her house of mirrors, or as I like to refer to it…where reality really comes home. Giselle’s long passed husband had decorated the house with mirrors, not hanging intricately framed wall mirrors, but with ceiling to floor mirrors…on every wall. You could literately see yourself coming and going at the same time, yes the bedroom had mirrors as well.

Whether the reason for his choice was self preservation, you’ll never have your wife saying lets change the colour of the living room walls or a form of conceit, he was a good looking man, I’ll never know, but it does bring a sobering dose of realism to one’s id to constantly see yourself as others do.

And maybe this a good thing, as it humbles one’s natural ability to see yourself as the conqouring hero and more as the average Joe on the street, which face it, most of us are. And in so doing allows us to be more courteous and considerate of other average Joe’s since, we are, after all, but part of the madding crowd.

The Law Fails with Human interaction

In any civilized society certain basic agreements must be in place, agreements that everyone must agree to abide by. These agreements, that we have labeled  “Laws”  provide the basis upon which human interaction should take place.

These laws have been expanded from the basic, the 10 Commandments from the Bible, to the complicated set we now have in place. Like what Henry Ford did to manufacturing, present law makers have tried to do, that is by producing a single law to deal with the infinite possibilities of a single human interaction.

In manufacturing mass production has resulted in the lowering of costs, making many items available to the wider populace. This benefit though, has a negative repercussions, such as the loss of individuality to the consumer, since now every household has exactly the same Campbell's chicken noodle soup. But individuality is  important to us, and so our natural inclination for personalization created a new business oppertunity for products that allow us to reintroduce our uniqueness to mass-produced items. I can buy a car identical to the one you can buy, but I can personalize, i.e. make it my own, with add-on's such as seat covers, wheels, tires etc.

Not so with the law. The law deals with specifics that are written by lawmakers and no amount of aftermarket products can change the specific law that pertains to your case. Unlike manufactured products were perimeters are based on constants, example:- your dish spoon is made of high density plastic and is yellow, no matter if you produce 100 or 1 million, they will always be plastic and yellow. Not so with humans, our complicated nature practically demands that every interaction, stemming from a constant [like bumping into each other on a busy street] is uniquely different and to have one written law that defines only a single possible reaction from this is just not realistic.

In my opinion trying to define reactions between humans is impossible, lawmakers are approaching our problems from the wrong direction. Rather than trying to define each individual and unique possibility stemming from a single human interaction they should instead seek out and train the best interpreters of a universal right and wrong and train them as judges bound only by the basic laws and their own conscience.