No, Your Enemy

I've been reading a book lately that has a cast of anti-heroes as protagonists. It reminded me of when I was a kid, and I had gone to a movie with my mom. We went to movies almost every week while I was in grade school, and this one was some ultra-violent post apocalyptic bubblegum that I don't even remember. What stuck in my mind, was the two of us getting in the car, and her asking if I thought I could ever kill anyone. Not the kind of mother-son conversation one is likely to forget. So there I was, 11 or so years old, and my mom is telling me how if there were any people trying to hurt me or anyone else in our family, she was pretty sure she would be capable of killing them. I imagine that would be true of most mothers, but it isn't something that is often discussed.

There are always going to be subtleties in morality. Your vices are my verses, vice versa and versa vice. Take the Israeli offensive going on right now. Opinion is likely split among those who support Israel, those who are outraged, and those that don't care because it isn't happening to them. This is a conflict that has, in one way or another, been going on for over a hundred years. There is no way of saying which side is right and which is wrong. How can there be any sense of morality in this situation?

On a more basic level, everyone has been through times when it was seemingly appropriate to be dishonest, cruel, or just plain wrong, but for the "right" reasons. What, though, are the "right" reasons? I'm inclined to think there are no "right" reasons, just as much as there are no "wrong" reasons. What it comes down to, is that everything is justifiable in one way or another. Not that I'm planning to do a Marquis de Sade and explore every possible depravity, I'm just saying that I can't judge anyone's actions, and no one can judge mine. Each of us has a biased perspective of our own worlds, where each of us are rulers of our domains. For instance, I don't have any interest in having a 9 to 5, coming home to a wife and kids for a night of TV and the occasional weekend getaway/ yearly trip Disneyworld. Some would say that not propagating the species is wrong, sinful, and just plain weird. I would say that there are enough people on the planet, and enough unwanted babies being born to fill all of Angelina Jolie's needs.

If there are no morals then there is no good or bad, just subjective levels of freedom. This is the true nature of anarchy. Say "anarchy," and most people will have visions of Mad Max style living, but anarchy just means, "one should do what one thinks is right at that moment in time." That is about the same thing as "do what thou wilt shall be the only law," the motto of Alistair Crowley, who cribbed the idea from Francois Rabelais (who was a Benedictine Monk, so let's skip over the satanic thing for now). There is an assumption that anarchy would lead to increased "criminal" behavior, but if there aren't laws, there can't be crime.

...OK, that was the flippant answer, the real one is that one is responsible for one's own behavior. Hopefully, as part of that responsibility, one is making decisions informed and infused with love of others and the self. We are a fallible race, so of course not everyone will be looking out for everyone or even anyone else, but that will happen whether or not there are laws in place to redress the minority of truly evil spirited people. There are not many Lex Luthors in the world- people who plan and act out ways to prey on others. Most crimes are crimes of opportunity, committed during a moment of desperation in the perpetrator and weakness in the victim. No, I'm not saying that the victim is asking for it, I'm saying that predators prey on the most vulnerable: it may be the hungry cheetah in the Serengeti who attacks the gazelle that wanders off alone, or it may be the crack addict that attacks the drunk who wanders off into a dark alley. The people in the center of the bell curve don't have much to worry about. No matter what laws are in place, or who is in charge, things don't really change for those being governed.

...but I won't grow a ponytail

I've been geeking out pretty heavily lately. Photoshop is something that I like to fool around with, and I've been doing it for years without any real purpose. Now I feel like my experience is growing into a skill I could actually do something with. I know I just ended a sentence with a preposition, what are you going to do about it? To further my skills, I've been entering Photoshop contests online (where else?).

I told you- GEEK