Anyone can see that Canadian society has evolved quite a bit over the last 100 years. In fact, some would say that our society has changed a lot even over the last ten to twenty years. There are a lot of things one could list to show these changes, but we will focus on how our modern culture has influenced and changed the business world.
The public has always leaned towards listening to what society says and does. We pay attention to what it says is socially acceptable, and because of this, society has slowly changed the public’s mindset of what is normal and abnormal. The Canadian pardons businesses are a good example of this. For instance, in the past centuries, right on up to the middle of the 20th century, giving someone with a criminal record a pardon was not only unheard of, but also would have been highly frowned upon. Many criminals were actually branded like cows throughout history so people would know what they had done for the rest of their lives. To forgive their crimes would not have been considered socially acceptable.
However, if we fast forward a few years, almost anyone who has a criminal record can apply for a pardon in Canada and hundreds of thousands of these people have been granted pardons since 1970, when the government came out with the pardons process. Somehow, this country went from branding with a hot iron to granting pardons to criminals. How did this happen? Our society slowly but surely led us to this point.
Forty years ago, pardons companies in Canada were unheard of, and may still have been frowned upon by many people in Canada. Today however, there is a lot of competition in this area of business because it has become socially acceptable for criminals to rehabilitate back into society, and the only way for them to do this successfully is to get a pardon.
Society’s changes never happen overnight. It just couldn’t work that way, because as people, we usually find certain changes hard to take. We get used to the way things are, and many people do not want things to ever change. In fact, some people fight hard against change of any kind, regardless of whether it is a good or bad change. This is not good, as there has to be a healthy balance in our society, but too much change would not be good either.
There is an old story about boiling a frog. If the frog is thrown into a pot of boiling water, he will naturally jump out. However, if the frog is placed in a pot of cold water that is heated up slowly, he will be boiled alive without realizing it! This is a good example of how people can react to change. Our society slowly heats up the water, and before we know it, things are different – we experienced a change without even realizing what was going on.
Some things that society tells us are acceptable are actually good; others are not. Granting pardons to people who made mistakes in their past is a good thing. Giving pardons to sex offenders is not a good thing. The question is, will we continue to let our society decide what is right and wrong for us, or will we finally start to notice when the water is heating up? The sad thing is that the people who do notice and try to “get out of the pot” are the ones who we generally look at as abnormal. Why? Because our society tells us they are!
Tags: canadian society, the journal of buckingham