Three years ago I worked with an Englishman. He was a really nice guy but there was something strange in his behaviour. He was 44 then but spent all his evenings in pubs drinking beer and picking up girls. I don’t find drinking beer and having sex as something wrong but when you are 44 and life is just fun for you and you don’t feel responsible for anything, I think there is something weird in it. Well, for Western standards I'm quite conservative.
I’m writing about it because I’ve just read about a 32-year-old Swiss guy who, in a company of an Englishmen, scribbled some graffiti on a Singapore train, for which he was sentenced to flogging with a rattan stick and 5 months in prison. We may discuss the commensurability of the punishment with the crime, which is a separate fascinating subject, but the motive of a 32-year-old man (‘man’? A ‘boy’ maybe?) who can’t resist the temptation of writing some nonsense on a public train. What’s wrong about these guys? Should we explain their lack of responsibility and simple childishness with the fact that no real suffering has ever made them real men? I’m not a promoter of painful experiences but, on the other hand, a person who has never been kicked in the ass might never understand the difference between what is OK and what is absolutely inappropriate. Should the boy who has never been punished receive his lesson and get spanked at last? Better late than never? I don’t know really…
