There is no justice except that which you bring from within yourself

Have you or a member of your family or close friend ever been victim of a violent crime? Has your home or vehicle suffered a break-in or robbery — perhaps multiple times?

If so, you will probably understand the premise of this article quite quickly, even viscerally.

There is no better explanation for how this world has gotten so messed up than our human desire to gain an eye for an eye. If you have experienced violence on your person or if the safety and sanctity of your home has been violated, it can be extremely difficult to let it go. You cannot return to being the person you once were.

When it seems that the people who commit crimes against us are going unpunished, or the crimes just continue in other families and other homes, it feels like a portion of our own humanity has been stripped away. We are left with more animal reflexes.

There are few true innocents around the shooting death of Colten Boushie in Saskatchewan. The racist furore on all sides in social media proves it. Violence begets violence, and when the “sides” are identified by race (as in the Boushie case) or by religion (as in the Middle East) our shared human impulses for revenge harden into lines that are extremely difficult to cross.

Boushie, 22, a resident of the Red Pheasant First Nation, was shot and killed at a farm residence near Biggar. He and three friends were apparently seeking help with a flat tire.

Gerald Stanley, a 54-year-old farmer has been charged with second-degree murder. There is obviously more to the story, but for now, we'll let the courts deal with the details.

Today, we need to look at our own human reactions to the story.

This one mirrors another killing in 2008 in Lethbridge, where George Many Shots was beaten to death by Bradley Gray, a man who did not react well when his truck was broken into by a pair of Aboriginal people.

His was not the only property violated in the neighbourhood, where a native shelter had recently opened.

Many Shots was assaulted and beaten in an unprovoked attack. He was just the wrong guy in the wrong skin in the wrong place at the wrong time.

After being convicted of second degree murder, an appeal reduced Gray's charge to manslaughter. Then the case went back to the original judge for sentencing — and the result was that the killing was deemed a hate crime, because the judge was convinced Gray simply hated natives, and wanted to get his own back upon them.

This is how the cycle of violence is perpetrated. This is how it comes to the point where nobody gets the benefit of the doubt.

Houses get broken into. Red Deer, in fact, has been tabbed by Macleans magazine as the Canadian city most likely for one's home to be broken into. That adds up to a lot of victims with personal feelings of violation — and identification of the kinds of people who do these things. Individual responsibility be damned; at some point groups of victims assume for themselves outrage at groups who look like they break into homes.

Our family was rocked by a violent night attack years ago. It took a long time — years actually — for the case to be resolved. In that time and after, the feelings of helpless anger would surface almost of their own volition and suck up the energy needed to become a normal, trusting human being.

It helped me to become a volunteer. I served on a board advocating for people with brain injuries. I also cooked at a downtown soup kitchen for a time. I often wondered if I had worked all day to feed the people who had attacked my family.

In the end, after a court conviction was achieved, we faced the media in the court parking lot. We were asked if we had found closure.

There is no closure, not the kind you can lock away and forget. In that time, I learned the police cannot bring you justice. The courts cannot bring you justice. They are concerned only with the person charged with the crime.

The only justice for you is that which you seek from within yourself, however you try to find it.

Homes and farms and businesses get robbed. By people from an identifiable group. The police do not always catch those responsible.

It is wise to be wary. It is wise to take precautions. It is not wise to blame people whose story you do not know, or hate them because of how they look.

Forgiveness? That's a personal question. But with taking an eye for an eye, soon everyone is blind. No one can see that no one is innocent anymore. This blindness has messed up the entire world.