How Expat attitudes change over time

It’s odd how one’s attitudes and perceptions surrounding central life issues can change, or at the very least become blurred, by living for a prolonged period in a foreign country with a different culture. I guess for the most part as human beings we tend to look at issues based upon our own reality, our own learned value systems and from the perspective of the culture we were raised in.

I know that before I left Canada and experienced first-hand a reality totally removed from that which I had known all my life I had some very deep rooted opinions and beliefs, nowadays I’m not so sure they apply anymore. Certainly they do not necessarily apply to the much different reality here in Brazil.

I’m not just talking about the habit of most expats who come from developed, so-called First World countries to feel that even though they’ve come to a developing nation that everything there should work in exactly the same way as it did “back home” or that most of the same rules should also apply here. It goes much deeper than this, very much deeper. I also now believe that it is patently unfair for organizations such as the United Nations (UN) to try and impose First World standards on Third World nations because they fail completely to take into consideration the realities of day-to-day life in that nation, much less the wishes of the majority of the population of that nation. What has happened to the UN’s ideas of DEMOCRACY?

The vast majority of Brazilian people are fed up with the soaring rate of serious crimes in this country, particularly those being committed by juveniles. There is overwhelming popular support for reduction of the age of penal majority from 18 to 16 years of age and I’m not so sure that wouldn’t be a great start toward a resolution. I don’t however believe that it is the solution in itself.

The United Nations, through its Convention of Rights of the Child has exerted great pressure on nations such as India and Brazil who in the face of juvenile crime rates that appear to be out of control have dared to express any ideas of lowering their age of penal majority to 16 to prevent their governments from doing so. While at least on paper and from the perspective of First World mentalities this all looks and sound good and reasonable it fails completely to take into account the reality of the situation in those countries and the fundamental right of the citizens to self-determination. Certainly I don’t feel the UN has any right to dictate to sovereign nations what they should or should not do, if they are not prepared to help put in place realistic alternatives, such as promoting  waiver laws that would provide young offenders to go to trial in the adult criminal justice system as they do in most of the UN member nations. Nor do they have that right if they are trying to force other nations to do something that they themselves do not do. To my way of thinking it’s nothing more than stepping in and demanding, “Do as I say, not as I do!” In Brazil’s case the current Worker's Party (PT) government under President Dilma Rousseff (following the lead of her predecessor former president Lula) has simply snapped to attention, saluted and responded louldly, “Sim, Senhor!” The government is wholly unwilling to listen to the public outcry and even in the highly unlikely event that the Congress ever did listen and lower the age of penal majority the President would simply veto the bill without any consideration whatsoever for the will of the majority. This is a sad comment on this country and its precarious so-called democracy.

I’m going to now paraphrase a quote from the Bible which we’ve all heard at one point or another.

When I was a Canadian child I thought as a Canadian child. Now I have put away all childish things. I used to have very firmly entrenched ideals about things like capital punishment and was firmly opposed to it, but that too based on my own pampered Canadian reality. I had firm ideas about the juvenile justice system, ditto! That’s somehow been tempered by my years here in Brazil living a completely different reality.

Nowadays, when I hear the average Brazilian’s outcry for instituting the Death Penalty in this country or for lowering the age of penal majority – and I consider the reality that their situation and the fact that it appears that, at least to criminals here, life has no value whatsoever (not anybody else’s life and not even their own) perhaps their desires do really have some merit. While I personally don’t think that my own beliefs which are opposed to capital punishment are ever going to change, I’m not so inclined as I used to be to close my ears and mind to the arguments of those around me who also had a right to their opinions. Whether they could sway my opinion I really don’t know, but I’m certainly more inclined to at least hear them out and keep an open mind now.

Cheers,
William James Woodward – Brazil Animator, Expat-blog Team