Cyber Criminals Caught and a Young Boy Gets His Mother out of Jail

Sometimes it doesn’t seem as if the human race has much to recommend it. From a certain perspective, it's a dirty, anarchistic world. Countries are trillions in debt but they manage to borrow more money. Politicians lie and cheat the people they're supposed to be representing. Bankers destroy economies and get rewarded for it. Individuals' lives are ruined when they can't make a couple of payments on their mortgage or credit cards. 

A pregnant woman in India gets wrongfully convicted of murder and stuck in jail for 19 years because she couldn't put together the $180 bail money. Hundreds of thousands of people languish in prison for years - some for most of their lives - without being charged. 

Another woman commits a federal crime, is prosecuted and found guilty but escapes prison, gets a new identity, lives a decent life for dozens of years until she's caught but she gets off with a good lawyer. Yet another woman commits a lesser crime but can't afford a clever lawyer and her life is over. It's possible that race has something to do with it, because although on the surface it's coincidence that the one who gets to live the rest of her life as a free woman is white and the other one is black, it's no coincidence that most of the wealth, resources and opportunity have historically been available to whites and not to blacks in that country.

People are tried, condemned and executed on insufficient grounds unless you count the grounds of some DA or police department needing to bump up stats. Corporations that produce arms control politicians who create wars out of nothing and get away with it. 

Upstanding members of a community and various business men who wear suits and who everybody respects get to screw around with a woman's fledgling business, sexually harass her, contribute to the destruction of that business and get away scot free while she picks herself out of the gutter, stumbles and falls, stumbles and falls. This time it's not about race because they're all white. Might be about gender, though. Partly it's about people who don't give a damn but mostly it's just about what they know they can do and what she doesn't know she's allowed to do.

It's not hard to get totally bitter and twisted about the way things are. Yet in the face of such overwhelming evidence that the human race has nothing recommend it, some of us - maybe even most of us - still believe that good conquers evil; that everybody has something within them that nobody can touch or assail. That the darkest hours actually contain the light.

That it's possible to climb out of the gutter even when you don't know how and things look hopeless for you. It's possible to retrieve your life no matter how much anybody's screwed you around, no matter how much the odds seem - and are - stacked against you. 

We believe it's possible to turn your life around when it seems too late, that help is always at hand in reality; that we just have to learn how to see it. Because no matter how bad things look and are in the world people are fighting back. And conquering. Bankers are investigated eventually as are banks for illegal home repossessions. In a world that’s tailor made for the worst kind of criminals, when profits from child pornography and crime to the tune of $6 billion are laundered through shadowy cyber organizations they actually get caught. 

Corrupt systems and rulers fall apart. When you have lousy entitlement and self esteem you can get help and rebuild until you're very clear about what people can and can't do in your presence and to you. 

And in a country with so much poverty it's blinding to the soul, a young boy, Vijai Kumari, who was born in prison and spent his life being shunted around juvenile homes because his mother is unjustly and unnecessarily in prison, grows up straight somehow. Somehow learns a skill and gets a job. Miraculously saves and saves until he has the money to pay for a lawyer to get his mother released. And he succeeds.

When Stunted Logic Loses the Plot

Recently the New York Times published an article by Roger Scruton entitled “When Hope Tramples Truth” in which he argued for the benefits to society of pessimism, saying that optimism is blind and ignores reality whereas pessimism deals with facts. 

He attributes the rise of Hitler, the Bolsheviks, World War II, the Arab Spring, the troubles in Syria to unfettered optimism. If only people had been a little more pessimistic, the grand social disasters would never have happened and nobody would ever get into trouble. I’m paraphrasing, and saving the best for last. The fight for Gay marriage. 

Scruton allows that Gay marriage is a good thing and should be accepted in society, but then says that the people who promote it have called those opposing it intolerant, homophobic and bigoted. He allows that they’re probably right, then adds that it doesn’t matter because the important thing is that for the optimists, hope is more important than truth. Puzzling logic.

People who sincerely seek out truth, says Scruton, seek out those who don’t agree with them so they can get all the facts. Pessimists do that. Optimists, blind foolish creatures that they are, only want to talk to people who agree with them. Because they don’t care about the truth.

Well that's a rabid generalisation if ever there was one. I couldn’t believe my eyes to see such a ridiculous article published in the New York Times. I can’t imagine why Scruton chose Gay marriage as an example, because the fight for it is about human rights, it's got nothing to do with optimism or pessimism. The same with the Arab Spring, which is about people finally gaining enough courage to fight for their rights. Anybody who opposes a person's rights isn't a pessimist, they're a bigot. And that isn’t pessimism, it’s truth.

Pessimism is responsible for all suicides - people can't see that there might be a better solution - and optimism underpins all the great things that have happened in society. Nelson Mandela was optimistic. So is Barack Obama. So was Ghandi. So was Bill Gates, Oprah Winfrey, any Nobel Peace Laureate. Elvis Presley, The Beatles, J.K. Rowling.  

Pessimism is absence of vision. It's about condeming oneself or another person, society, or the whole human race to never moving forward. Hope and optimism are about understanding that there is that within us which can transcend our own bondage to what holds us back.

Certainly if we try we can fail and we do, but that's not because our hope or optimism was unfounded, it's because nobody can realize what all the obstacles are until they engage. People with hope and optimism keep trying and eventually succeed or lay the groundwork for those who follow. Which is success in and of itself.

Roger Scruton could do with a class or two in logic and basic psychology and the New York Times editorial staff, clearly out to lunch, should please come back.