Protest

We assume that words mean the same thing to everyone. In courtrooms, that assumption can put innocent people in prison.

People protest when there is injustice. And I wonder what we understand by injustice — because we must always remember that language is ambiguous, and that meaning depends on the experience of the person.

Words mean different things with different nuances. When we communicate, we must keep this in mind in order to understand better — whether we are the sender or the receiver of the message.

I remember a case where an elderly man killed an intruder in his home. He shot him. People protested on social media in the old man's favour. But the prosecutor was able to make the old man say that he had not been afraid — and that was decisive. The prosecutor needed to prove two things: first, that there was a meaningful disadvantage between the two — the old man had a rifle whilst the intruder may have had only a knife; second, that since the old man said he was not afraid, he was not in danger.

But what does it mean to be afraid? I strongly believe it is not the same for an old man raised to think that a real man does not feel fear — or at least does not admit it — as it is for a man of the twenty-first century who may have been taught that feeling fear is acceptable and worth naming. Both may have the same chemical reaction in the body, the same alert state activated. Both can be brave. But one identifies bravery with the absence of fear, whilst the other understands it as fear acknowledged — fear that activates the stress response and drives them to defend themselves or flee. To be fair, then, we must understand the limitations of how people express themselves — because in this case, the way a man described his own feelings put him behind bars. And that is unjust.