People are very happy for laws to be changed and enforced, as long as it doesn't affect them. We all agree that speeding kills, but we still speed, because ... oh because of a hundred little lies we tell ourselves. "I'm going to be late", which actually means "I'm so much more important than anyone else that it doesn't matter if I speed and kill someone, because they're not important and I am."
We all agree that in order to respect people's humanity, we should treat others with the same dignity and respect we would wish to be treated ourselves. We cluck over the behaviour of residents who react violently when a convicted paedophile moves into their neighbourhood. Yet, if a convicted paedophile should move into OUR neighbourhood, then suddenly our fears would allow us to justify our own aggressive, and possibly even violent, reactions to that person's presence.
NIMBY.
Today I read this article about a first year teacher who was physically assaulted by a pupil, and has just won her court proceedings against the principal and education department, for failing to protect her from the pupil.
I was shocked as I read it. I wondered where this horrendous incident occurred. As I read further I got my answer: in my backyard. The school in question is in the next suburb to me. Suddenly, I can no longer stand and cluck at a distance. If it had happened in a school on the Cape Flats, or in a township, it would have been far enough away from me that I could just shake my head and wonder "How could the principal be so reckless?" But now that it's in my backyard, I'm forced to take a long hard look at my own school, at my own actions, at whether I might have made the same error in judgement as that principal.
Suddenly, I am confronted with my own hypocrisy. And that, too, is shocking.
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