The Start Of Another Day: Chapter III
By A.H.Z
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CHAPTER III: The Great Divide
Understanding is not something all human beings have in common, since we can all agree that everyone likes to play the role of a judge from one time to another, or how I see it at least. What I find to be problematic however is that many times, a lot of people seem to prioritize judging and defining what is “right” and “wrong” over understanding the logical causes behind certain actions. This is especially true when talking about the different cultures and beliefs. Besides people’s sense of justice, there are other reasons why people from different cultures have a problem understanding each other, one of which is unrealism.
What I am referring to by unrealism is the fact that some people do not take into consideration the circumstances and reasoning behind the behaviors of a certain group of people, they would simply rather stick to their ethics and sense of justice to start condemning them for being different even though they have different circumstances preventing them from doing so, which is something that happens in most conflicts and debates, whether be it a religious debate, a debate about ethics or anything really. I am going to take piracy (or illegal downloads / copyright infringements) as an example because it is very widespread in Algeria and a lot of developing nations, I will start off by stating that I do not condone piracy in any way or form, with that out of the way, almost everyone I know has been exposed to pirated content before at least once in their lives: whether be it video games, movies or operating systems, not only that, but even administrations and some corporations use illegally obtained operating systems for their computers here, some people will hurriedly label these “pirates” as being dishonest, irresponsible people that do not support the industries they should be supporting, however, let me first explain why piracy is so wide spread in Algeria. Algeria being an ex-communist country has developed a somewhat of a strict policy regarding importation, which means that a lot of commodities besides essential products are very hard to find (if they are available that is), and are very expensive because of the supply and demand economic model. However this is not the only reason why products such as electronic devices and software aren’t very accessible, another reason is that the Algerian currency is very weak compared to other currencies and its exchange rate is very low, people are able to buy essential products such as food only because these products are subsidized by the government(Algeria’s oil and gas reserves are what allows the government to provide this financial aid knowing that these resources form 97 percent of its exports), other products however are not subsidized, so people must pay the full price on their own which then becomes very hard to do considering how weak the currency is, and how sometimes those commodities aren’t available as we said earlier. Another important reason why piracy is accepted and even glorified in Algeria is that most people that commit it aren’t actually aware that it is illegal or harmful in the first place, for example, most of the people I know that do buy pirated software do not even seem aware that there are official legal versions of the software that they got for a relatively cheap price from a sketchy electronics shop. Most of the time, when you go into a shop looking for a legitimate copy of a certain product, your chances of finding it are very low especially if you live in a more rural region. Some of the vendors even think that someone was kind enough to leave a download link for a “free version “ of the product we’re looking for so they might think that they are saving us the trouble of downloading it and burning it into a CD, all the while getting paid for it. Of course, this isn’t always the case since sometimes the vendors are fully aware of the legal editions but prefer to get more profit by selling the pirated ones; this is thankfully becoming less and less of a problem recently since people are becoming more and more aware of what they are actually buying or downloading, but it still is very much a problem, a problem of awareness, not ethicality.
The second problem I want to mention here is prioritizing emotions over consequences, I’ll take as an example something that occurred to me while watching a documentary about Thai boxing a long time ago, Thai boxing is Thailand’s national sport; it is a martial art where you are allowed to strike using every part of the body except the head, it also has a number of rules and scoring methods that make it different from other martial arts. The documentary was mainly focusing on young Thai boxers and how damaging it is for a child to be engaged in a violent sport such as Thai boxing at such an early age. It is a common practice in Thailand to train aspiring champions from a very young age, however, some Thai gyms allow their youngest members to start their professional career and participate in full-contact matches. The repeated head trauma caused by the strikes starts accumulating the more the child fights, which leads to severe health issues in certain cases such as Dementia and CTE brain damage. A lot of comments on the platform were discussing the topic and I noticed that a handful of people were saying that this should most definitely stop as it is blatant child exploitation; many people were also demanding the arrest of the gym owners and the punishment of the parents that allowed their children to fight. At first, I agreed with most of these opinions, but the more I knew about the economic situation in Thailand and Thai fighters, the more I started viewing this matter under a different light. The reason why these kids are pushed to fight in the first place is the financial state of both the parents that see it as a last resort and as a “dignified” escape from poverty, and the gym owners that are desperate to get decent income off of their members; now imagine a scenario where it became strictly illegal for children to be pro fighters and all parents that previously did allow their children to fight lost custody of their children in addition to the closure of those gyms, that would not resolve the underlying issue that is poverty; the other parents that were now no longer considering child fighting as a solution and were at an equally dire situation might just start considering other relatively more harmful options such as forcing their daughters(even as minors) into prostitution. Granted, they might start looking for more positive ways to make ends meet, realistically speaking however, how I see it, the odds aren’t in their favor. Even if the Thai government keeps banning all these harmful activities, people in need will always find a loop hole in the system. This is the main reason why the Thai government hasn’t made it illegal yet, since they are fully aware of the consequences of doing so. What the government should be doing instead is attacking the problem at its core by trying its best to reduce the poverty rate in the country and improving the quality of life for the low income class of society, or at least that is what I think would be most useful.
You will find that throughout this book the idea of attacking problems at their core is a reoccurring theme, which is because I do believe that it is the best way to deal with a problem long term. Short term solutions however, will always be used one way or another. I am sure that you have noticed that long term solutions such as improving the overall economy, education, or quality of life aren’t as achievable as enacting a certain law prohibiting a certain activity, which is unfortunate, but we will have to accept that problems will always be a part of our lives and that pointing fingers to look for someone to blame isn’t necessarily going to help.
The term “Great Divide” is an expression I use regularly to describe the vast difference between western cultures and Algeria’s culture and traditions. Sometimes I feel amazed, and almost as if I live in an entire different planet when I try to compare Algeria to the west. Something that equally baffles my mind however is the western views of Algeria which I find to be simultaneously amusing and absurd. If you were ever to look up reviews about Algeria online you would find two categories of people describing it, the ones that overly praise it, and the others that overly condemn it, the reason why the views seem to be very extreme is very simple, some people set very low standards when visiting Algeria which is generally due to a lack of knowledge about both the country and the continent; they expect to see that stereotypical impoverished and broken nation, but when they finally arrive, they get surprised by how developed it is compared to what they had imagined. They see skyscrapers, relatively good infrastructures, public transportation means and the availability of services such as the internet and electricity, and even the absence of decapitations in broad day light! They then assume that everything must be perfect, which then leads them to write a very inaccurate review about the country in my opinion; other people see those reviews and think that it must be just like any European country since it was colonized by France and so on, and when they visit to see with their own eyes they are extremely disappointed by the state of Algeria and how different it is from democratic countries(no freedom of speech, biased justice system, corruption, overly invasive and aggressive mentality, a high crime rate especially theft ) so they go on about how it’s just like “every other African country”.
Both types of reviewers are doing a huge disservice to Algeria but I cannot blame them, the situation in Algeria is quite hard to describe let alone understand, besides, a review free of bias and subjectivity does not exist. The main issue here is that these reviewers and documentary channels only view a certain part of the Algerian population and project what they saw on the whole country which is indubitably going to lead to inaccuracy, my advice to people that want to know more about Algeria is to always keep that in mind (this can also be said about every other country mind you).
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