Imagine you live in a seven-story apartment building somewhere in Southeast Asia.

Recently, a small series of makeshift, single-story lodgings was erected directly adjacent to your building and occupied by about a dozen Burmese workers.

Every morning the workers gather and depart to, presumably, some kind of blue collar engagement, most likely construction work.

These folks own a rooster whose habit it is to vocalize loudly beginning at roughly 4am daily, persisting till daybreak and beyond.

The rooster’s sound wave production invariably interrupts your sleep and, having awoken, continues to preclude its much needed resumption.

As your room sits on the fifth floor and the position of bedrooms on your side of the building is identical to your own, it’s not unreasonable to assume that the magnitutde of sonic inconvenience is roughly comparable (accounting for acoustic vagaries such as walls and sundry intervening objects) across all seven inhabited floors (the eighth floor is the roof, which houses a swimming pool and scenic views of the surrounding countryside).

The sixth and seventh floors, though further away from the source of the cock’s cacophony, are included in this estimation because the volume is such that all but the heaviest of sleepers would go the whole night unperturbed.

In response to several days’ lack of restorative somniferous activity thanks to the Burmese’ rooster, you appeal to the front desk staff of your apartment building to look into and attempt to resolve this matter on behalf of both yourself and your fellow tenants, who, you assume are being similarly molested (plus or minus a few degrees of molestation.)

While the building staff smile and profusely assure you that the matter will be investigated forthwith, you hold your expectations low, knowing full well the local peoples’ aversion to conflict.

(It must be pointed out that the conflict was introduced by the Burmese workers, and what you are asking the building staff is to seek resolution, not conflict).

This timidity, compounded by the local disposition toward molasses-like execution speed, leads you to expect another sleepless night and a revisiting of the matter upon the morrow.

Your cynicism proves justified and you spend yet another night in an insufficiently lengthy state of supine, semi-conscious recuperation on account of the rooster’s crooning.

The following evening you change your strategy.

You appeal to the evening clerk, who calls upon a Burmese employee in his charge to go and talk to his fellow countryfolk and seek a rather more definite resolution of this matter.

You supplement your appeal with a handful of petty cash.

It is then agreed that the rooster will be removed from the premises so as to no longer disturb neighboring residents.

The promise is kept and the rooster is relocated.

(One wonders dimly whether this hadn’t all been some clever scheme to extort money from sleep-deprived neighbors).

The confict is resolved, you are 6-dollars-and-change poorer and you sleep like a baby for the first time in 4 days.

Now what exactly took place here?

First, it was the Burmese workers who introduced the disturbance.

There is nothing inherently offensive in owning a rooster (though I understand that the fowl is a particularly dim-witted beast, unfit for the same affection bestowed upon cats, dogs and to a lesser extent, bunnies.)

Further, if an alarm clock’s purpose is to rouse from sleep those who require rousing (while sparing those who need not be roused from said rousing), at the appropriate hour and ONLY at that hour, then it must be admitted that the rooster makes a rather inefficient and wholly incidental alarm clock.

One could arguably do better with no alarm clock at all, or a dog, who quite predictably wakes its owner early in the morning to be let outside to do its business.

In the absence of hens, this begs the question: why the hell own a rooster at all?

But I digress.

The inclusion of money in the request for rooster removal was a a bribe meant to expedite the return to normal conditions conducive to prolonged sleep.

Since it way the Burmese who caused the nuisance to their neighbors to begin with, it was well within reason to make your appeal without including any money.

After all, you were living in peace, they came and disturbed the peace, and it is incumbent upon them to remove the disturbance, certainly not upon you to pay for its removal.

It is instructive to consider how this situation might have been handled differently in another more “developed” country (like, for instance, the USA) where the de facto method of conflict resolution is often to summon the authorities.

In Southeast Asia, where this story takes place, the cops don’t give a shit about such a petty situation, mostly because they present minimal opportunities for bribery.

And hence, you are forced to find a resolution yourself.

It’s not hard to see, then, why a place like the USA is more violent than a place like Thailand (although, this doesn’t account for equally corrupt and poor countries like El Salvador, which is as of this writing the murder capital of the world).

If you inherit a nation of laws, you’ve skipped the process of having to solve conflicts face-to-face without the cops’ constant intervention.

This is not unlike a man who inherits his father’s wealth without having gone through the struggle of acquiring it.

You must, in both cases, arrive experientially at the realization that the police and the laws are meant as a last resort to conflicts that can’t be resolved amicably (and, in reference to the latter, must come by your fortune through struggle).

If the Burmese had refused to remove the rooster, what recourse would you have had?

Perhaps you would have involved several of your neighbors and used the power of group pressure to help the Burmese understand the degree of inconvenience they were causing.

And if that failed to convince them, perhaps you would have resorted to a vigorous bout of rooster-strangling.

It is when this last resort becomes the final option that it is appropriate to involve the higher-ups who of course are an indirect means of violence themselves; mediators if you will.

Though, hailing from a Western nation, you were tempted to involve the police from the very beginning, you knew that your efforts would scarce be rewarded and hence proceeded to work it out for yourself.

Good for you!