Collision Course

Culture and law collide with one another. They intersect. Each chooses to stand next to the other, at a mutual distance, and so a point is created at which culture and law diverge, converge, or even defy one another. 

We must ask how long law been established with respect to each culture. Many countries have corrupt or nonexistent government and, so, they also have less than sophisticated legal systems. Reprehensible acts go unpunished, without consequence to anything but the soul. The people become desensitized. The soul, like cracked earth, splinters in the drought. Indistinct and infiltrated, such government is far more permeable than culture. And so brews a bold, brazen blend of the safety in numbers faction. Though, safety in this context is guised as freedom from consequence, abating the conscience and soothing the soul. Freedom from conscience is potent and destructive, pumping not a pulse for the bleeding heart but a poison into it.

Mass murdering movements have propelled eras of moral destitution. Other such condemnable acts are often loud, though muffled, unseen, and unheard. Moral codes are then degraded to justifiable ethics. Remember: if you must justify something, there is a reason why it should not be. Indeed, not all cultures imbibe morals, though each broods over its own ethics, serving to depreciate true integrity.  Integrity, as not yet defined, is more than just consistent behavior. Integrity is a protagonist standing firm and fighting for principles.  Integrity spars fairly and with valor; it admits defeat and realizes weakness.  It does not exploit the weakness of others. To have integrity is to fully internalize the effects of all actions and beliefs.  At its core, integrity is the ability to swim against a current, so long as its mode of survival does not move towards its own extinction. In the context of culture, integrity is sustainable, cultivating, and altruistic.

If we assume that culture defines morals, laws are simply deterrents.  If law is not strict, culture can be unscrupulous, self-preserving, and callous.  Law that is set in place around the time of a culture’s inception is an attempt to align the motives of its people.  This creates a moral code, which is sometimes accepted into the law. This code, these characteristics of culture – humanity, survival, preservation, and violence – become entangled with law. Culture and law can have a symbiotic relationship but can also have one of measured defiance. And though we bend to authority, we flex as a people. We shift like glaciers but with the earth-shattering capacity of tectonic plates. Culture is indelible to law.