source: http://s242.photobucket.com/home/skullard

While most agree that blackmail — the act of threatening to disclose true, but damaging, (potentially secret) information about a party unless payment is made (to earn silence) — is a criminal act, it poses two interesting paradoxes in the theory of criminal justice.

The paradoxes are as follows:

• The first paradox is that “two rights make a wrong”; blackmail renders two otherwise perfectly legal actions illegal when performed in conjunction with each other. To use the example (albeit slightly modified) from Blackmail and Extortion – The Paradox Of Blackmail: “For example, if I threaten to expose a businessman’s income-tax evasion unless he gives me [sic] X amount of money, I have committed blackmail. I have a legal right to expose and to threaten to expose the tax evasion, and I have a legal right to request for [sic] X amount of money, but if I combine these rights I have committed blackmail. If both ends and means are otherwise legal, why is it blackmail to combine these legal ends and means?”
• The second paradox, persisting with the example above, is: while it is consider blackmail for me to threaten to expose a businessman’s income-tax evasion unless he gives me X amount of money, it is perfectly legitimate for the businessman to voluntarily give me X amount of money (despite I not asking him and not even suggesting that I have knowledge and proof of this tax evasion) to not expose his income-tax evasion; it does not constitute blackmail.

These two paradoxes have been a thorn in the side of jurisprudence for many decades and are yet to be resolved to everyone’s satisfaction. In fact, these paradoxes have inspired a significant minority of scholars and libertarians to advocate for decriminalizing blackmail! Seeing how Wikipedia does not have an article on this issue (yeah, it surprised me too!), I decided to write something up in lieu of it. Let’s take a closer look at each paradox.

Paradox 1: Two rights make a wrong

The crux of the issue is the following. If the threat to commit an act (like murder) is dangerous enough to be criminalized, then the action itself must be more dangerous, and therefore be a crime. However, if an act in itself is not dangerous enough to be criminalized, then it makes little sense to criminalize the threat to commit that act. Paradoxically, blackmail  is criminalized despite the fact that it constitutes a threat to commit an act that is otherwise perfectly legal!

The many justifications for criminalizing blackmail include: it is immoral; it encourages disclosure of incriminating evidence, thus deterring crime; it helps minimize the “victims” from resorting to “self help”, like killing or harming the blackmailer, or even suicide; and so on. Unfortunately, none of these arguments really resolve the paradox. They merely explain how criminalizing blackmail is a good thing, but don’t really explain the nature of blackmail itself and why it should be an exception (and hence trigger the paradox).

It is easy to see why blackmail involving incriminating evidence is criminalized. First, if the blackmailer is withholding the evidence, and worse, profiting from it, then he/she has failed in their moral and civic duty. Second, withhold such information is obstructing justice. Third, profiting from something that presents a danger to public safety is morally reprehensible. But what about blackmail involving embarrassing information that has been obtained lawfully and where the blackmailer is within his/her legal rights to disclose it to public?

Here, it is helpful to examine the relationship between the parties to see how blackmail is different from all other legal threats. Again, to quote from Blackmail and Extortion – The Paradox Of Blackmail:

Consider first informational blackmail. Here the blackmailer threatens to tell others damaging information about the blackmail victim unless the victim heeds the blackmailer’s request, usually a request for money. The blackmailer obtains what he wants by using extra leverage. But that leverage belongs more to a third person than to the blackmailer. The blackmail victim pays the blackmailer to avoid involving third parties; he pays to avoid being harmed by persons other than the blackmailer. … In effect, the blackmailer attempts to gain an advantage in return for suppressing someone else’s actual or potential interest. The blackmailer is negotiating for his own gain with someone else’s leverage or bargaining chips.

Ken Levy from Harvard Law School offers the following arguments in [39 Conn. L. Rev. 1051] to resolve the paradox (while maintaining blackmail as a criminal activity):

Levy argues that while the correlation between the legality of the action and the legality of the threat of the action is strong, it is by no means is a causal relationship. That is, there is no reason to believe that legal threatened action entails a legal threat. Consequently, the paradox is simply an artefact of our bias and not the law itself. But that still does not explain why blackmail should be illegal.

Levy goes on to argue that the reason for this is that right to life, physical well-being, emotional well-being family, liberty, and property constitute what are called “legally protected” interests, and it is in the interest of the people and society that criminal law protect people against any harm inflicted to these interests. This is why acts like homicide, kidnapping, rape, assault, harassment (among many others) and even threats to commit such acts are deemed criminal. So where does that leave blackmail? Blackmail threatens a person’s reputation, and reputation is not a legally protected interest (although we are protected against disclosure of untrue, but reputation damaging, information). In fact, right to reputation and right to free speech are often in conflict, and we as a society happen to value right to free speech higher than right to reputation. Consequently, right to free speech becomes legally protected, but right to reputation is not. So, isn’t that an argument for decriminalizing blackmail?

To this, Levy argues that although right to reputation has been trumped by right to free speech in set of legally protected interests, the former, nevertheless, embodies the “spirit” of legally protected interests and individuals do treat reputation as an enshrined right, and in fact, this is precisely the reason why blackmail does succeed! Therefore, it follows that in all cases where right to reputation does not compete with or imping upon the right to free speech, any threat to the right of reputation should be considered on par with threats to other legally protected interests. Hence, blackmail should be criminalized even though its constituent actions in isolation should remain legal. This, Levy argues, resolves the first paradox. Levy concludes “well as a novel positive justification for criminalizing blackmail threats. Once again, blackmail threats should be
criminal for the same reason that menacing, harassment, and stalking are: they involve the reasonable likelihood, not to mention intent, of putting the target into a state of especially great fear and anxiety. And we as a society have decided that-like life, physical well-being, family, liberty, and property-emotional well-being is a supremely valued interest and therefore should be protected from deliberately inflicted injury when no competing moral or institutional interests, such as freedom of speech, would themselves be compromised.”

Paradox 2: Blackmailer-initiated vs. blackmailee-initiated

Here, if A offers to conceal B’s embarrassing, but true, information in exchange for money, then A is committing a crime (blackmail). But if B voluntarily offers money to A in exchange for A’s secrecy, it is a legitimate transaction. What is the difference between the two transactions that makes the first one a crime and not the second one?

Interestingly, the libertarian philosophy sees no distinction between the two transactions because they both take place between consenting adults and are the same transaction except for the party that initiates that transaction. The libertarians often cite the legitimacy of the second type of transaction to argue for the legalization of blackmail. On the other end of the spectrum, Marxists also see no difference between the two transactions, and often cite the illegitimacy of the first type of transaction to argue for criminalizing blackamilee-initiated transactions. The Liberal, on the other hand, has the hardest task of all: to argue for criminalizing the first transaction as being a crime while simultaneously making a compelling case to keep the second transaction legal.

Kathyrn H. Christopher argues for the Liberal case in her paper “Toward a resolution of blackmail’s second paradox” that appeared in Arizona State Law Journal, 37(4), 1127-1152, 2005. Christopher provides the following example:

Acceptance of money, pursuant to an unsolicited offer, not to commit a criminal act is lawful. For example, suppose that Lilli (a robberee), who is very rich and extremely averse to being robbed or threatened with harm, offers everyone she meets $1000 if they agree not to rob her. The recipients of Lilli’s offer neither insinuated they would rob her nor had any intention of robbing her—Lilli’s offer is entirely unsolicited. The recipients even inform Lilli of their lack of inclination to rob her. But Lilli is not to be denied, reiterates the offer, and the recipients finally accept. Have the recipients committed a crime by accepting Lilli’s money? Presumably not. They neither (impliedly or expressly) threatened Lilli, nor defrauded her, nor accepted money under false pretences. Thus, the recipients commit no crime by accepting Lilli’s money in return for agreeing not to rob her or threaten her with harm.

If accepting money, pursuant to an entirely unsolicited offer, not to commit a criminal act against the offeror is not a crime, then a fortiori accepting money (under the same circumstances) not to commit a lawful act must also not be a crime. If only one of the two were to be criminalized, it would be accepting money not to commit a criminal act. …one has the right to commit lawful acts. Thus, one should also have the right to accept money for foregoing the right to do that which one has a right to do.

Consequently, it should be legal for A to offer money to B so that B exercises B’s right to keep some (non-incriminating, but embarrassing) information about A secret.

Christopher then strengthens her argument with another example. Suppose blackmailee-initiated transaction was also criminalized, then

Case 1: Suppose that Blackmailer utters the following conventional blackmail threat to Blackmailee: “If you do not pay me $2000, then I will reveal your embarrassing secret.” Blackmailer accepts the $2000 payment from Blackmailee.
Outcome: Blackmailer is criminally liable for one count of blackmail.
Case 2: Suppose that Blackmailee 2 makes an unsolicited offer to pay $500 to Blackmailer 2 in return for Blackmailer 2 concealing Blackmailee 2’s secret. Blackmailer 2 rejects the offer. Blackmailer 2 counteroffers by uttering the conventional blackmail proposal (the same proposal as uttered by Blackmailer 1 above). Blackmailee 2 rejects the proposal and counteroffers $1000. Blackmailer 2 accepts these terms. Blackmailee 2 pays the money to Blackmailer 2 who accepts the payment.
Outcome: Blackmailer 2 is criminally liable for two counts of blackmail (or one count of blackmail and one count of the new crime of accepting money pursuant to a blackmailee’s offer of money).

Despite Blackmailer 2 obtaining one-half of the money that lackmailer obtained, Blackmailer 2 is, in a sense, twice as criminally liable as Blackmailer. Both Blackmailer and Blackmailer 2 commit the traditional offense of blackmail by uttering the threat. But unlike Blackmailer, Blackmailer 2 also commits a second count of blackmail

This is just plain absurd! Therefore, Christopher argues, that blackmailee-initiated transactions should remain legitimate. Thus resolving the second paradox.

Disclaimer: This post merely summaries other individuals’ research and is not the authors original intellectual property. All sources have been cited where appropriate. If there has been a misappropriation or negligence to cite some sources, I apologize and assure you that it was completely accidental. If you do notice something of this nature, please contact me and I will remedy the issue.

Here is the first video of the 12 [link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kBdfcR-8hEY]

www.youtube.com/watch?v=kBdfcR-8hEY

To the left, is a picture of students of DAV College in Chandigargh protesting St. Valentine’s Day and the public display of affection by, well, people. And to the right is a group of people in Manhattan protesting the war in Iraq.

Do you see any difference between the two? No? In that case, let us move to another example:

To the left is the office of dean in IIT Karaghpur (Please correct me if I am wrong), and to right is the engineering college in Stanford [more here]. Now, do you see what I am getting at? Or did I lose you further?

No, this is not a `US-is-better-than-India’ post, this is beyond that. It is about art and its influence on us. Just look at the pictures in the left column, and pictures in the right column. What you see in the left are the symptoms of the artless, while the right is just a glimpse of how art influences life.

It is unfortunate that we as a society are increasingly distancing ourselves from art. This can be seen in the falling quality of our movies (barring a refreshing few) over the decades. This can be seen in the increasing barbaric nature of our disagreements (from the Bombay riots to Godhara to Nandigram). This can be seen in the state of our public utility buildings (the red streaks for pan and tobacco in every corner). What does all of this have to do with art? Actually, quite a lot!

Art is a means of controlled expression. When you repress or discourage art, you lose the means of control, and its only a matter of time before society finds some means of expression. This new mean, unfortunately, has no control (because if it did, then it would be art). This manifests itself as an abomination which we refer to in different avenues as `movies’, or ‘protests’, or pretty much any form of expression you can think of.

But that’s just the half of it. When you lose art, you are not just losing pretty pictures, or soothing music, you are losing the ability to sympathize, the ability to empathize; you are losing emotion and feeling itself. Its all too common to hear a parent tell their kid “Don’t waste your time drawing pictures, its not going to put bread on the table tomorrow.”, or “What good is your acting going to do when you have struggle for your next morsel? Go pick up your textbooks and concentrate!”. And the child will listen, it will do well in school too, but when it actually comes down to having some happiness in life, the child would rather solve second degree partial differential equations than dance. It’s no joke: we are raising a generation devoid of art, a generation with no sympathy. A generation which sees injustice meted out to people, and yet doesn’t react because it cannot feel sympathy. A generation whose eyes don’t tear up to Taare Zameen Par because they ‘get it’ but they don’t ‘feel it’. A generation which looks puzzled if a stranger smiles at them. A generation which doesn’t understand how to express itself and vents itself through hysterical screams, violent mobs, and arson.

We, as Indians, are already building such a generation. We have taken away most of the playgrounds for high rise apartments and multinational corporations. We have already stifled our children’s creative spark for the rote of the textbooks and the multitude entrance examinations. We are replacing the people in our children’s lives with TVs, Computers, and a set of spare keys to the empty house.

There is only so much further down you can go before you hit rock bottom. What good is all the wealth in the world if you can’t shed a tear for it?

The question resurfaced again, ‘Why was Gandhi not given the nobel peace prize?’. I did some searching, research, digging around and what I came up with surprised me! I am not sure how much of what I say is going to be news to you, but I think its something worth sharing, and so I will.

As a matter of fact Gandhi was nominated for the prize five times, in 1937, 1938, 1939, 1947 and, finally, a few days before he was murdered in January 1948. The Nobel Foundation has recently made public some of the details surrounding Gandhi’s case for a Peace Nobel.

In 1937, Gandhi was nominated for the first time by “Friends of India” association. The committee advisor was, however, exteremly critical of Gandhi. In his evaluate he said…

“He is undoubtedly a good, noble and ascetic person – a prominent man who is deservedly honoured and loved by the masses of India…(But) sharp turns in his policies, which can hardly be satisfactorily explained by his followers. He is a freedom fighter and a dictator, an idealist and a nationalist. He is frequently a Christ, but then, suddenly, an ordinary politician,”

Gandhi was nominated for the next two years but was denied the award each time. The critics blamed Gandhi for the bouts of violence is his non-violent movement for independance (all they wanted as an excuse anyway). And there have been charges of the British government having put pressure on the Norwegian goverenment. Das, in his book ‘Why the Nobel Peace Prize never went to Gandhiji’ says “Britain was highly perturbed when it learned that the doughty naked fakir was being considered for the prize. If he did get it, it would have meant severe political repercussions in Britain’s colonies.” and goes on to say “British government officials silently castigated the European zeal to award the peace prize to Gandhiji and termed their vigorous attempts as an over reaction to Nazism.” Although there is no factual evidence to back this claim, it is still plausible.

The next time Gandhi was nominated was in 1947. With the independance of India and Gandhi’s pivotal role in it, there was no opposition or criticism to his candidature. However, due to the communal riots, the slaughter and lawlessness thanks to the partition and the movement of indian troops in Kashmir (a move condoned by Gandhi) , he committee may have deemed it inappropriate to award the nobel peace prize to anyone in the subcontinent. Interestingly, The Times reported “Mr. Gandhi told his prayer meeting to-night that, though he had always opposed all warfare, if there was no other way of securing justice from Pakistan and if Pakistan persistently refused to see its proved error and continued to minimise it, the Indian Union Government would have to go to war against it. No one wanted war, but he could never advise anyone to put up with injustice. If all Hindus were annihilated for a just cause he would not mind. If there was war, the Hindus in Pakistan could not be fifth columnists. If their loyalty lay not with Pakistan they should leave it. Similarly Muslims whose loyalty was with Pakistan should not stay in the Indian Union.”

The last time he was nominated was in 1948, but Gandhi was assassinated two days before the nominations closed. Nobody had ever been awarded the Nobel Peace Prize posthumously. But according to the statutes of the Nobel Foundation in force at that time, the Nobel Prizes could, under certain circumstances, be awarded posthumously. However, Gandhi did not belong to an organisation, he left no property behind and no will; so the question was ‘Who should receive the prize money?’ After much deliberation On November 18, 1948, the Norwegian Nobel Committee decided to make no award that year on the grounds that “there was no suitable living candidate”.

In my personal opinion, Gandhi was too good for the prize. He never really cared for any accolades anyway. Awarding him the nobel peace prize would devalue his contributions and his impact on humanity. The best we can do is admire him. He will always be beyond our appreciation.

Fortunately for me, I am a computer science student, and I have the technical background to take a crack at this question. I know, a student of philsophy would be better equipped than I am, but when you are dealing with computational theory the lines get blurred, exteremly blurred. One of the assistant professors in computer science did his bachelors in philosophy and while pursuing his masters, specialized logic and stumbled upon computer science, going on to do a PhD in it. One of the best teachers I have taken a course under.

What is logic? Unfortunately we enounter a stumbling block at the very begining here. There no universally accepted definition for logic. The most general one I could come across was in MSN Encarta. It says “Logic is a science dealing with the principles of valid reasoning and argument. The study of logic is the effort to determine the conditions under which one is justified in passing from given statements, called premises, to a conclusion that is claimed to follow from them.” This is a fairly generic definition that includes most, but not all, of what logic is. This also gives me enough ammo to attack it with.

Traditionally, logic is bivariate. That is to say that there can be only two values to a statement, viz., ‘true’ and ‘false’. Logic also says all that is not false is true. It works well when you are dealing with the limited universe as defined by your premises. But the real question is, how valid can this be in reality? Not very. Consider the statement ‘It will rain tomorrow’, is it true? It is possible, but we cannot say it is true. This is not allowed in traditional logic. A statment can either be true or false, nothing else. How are we to try and understand the world, the natural, the supernatural or the divine with something as limited as this?

Granted, that we can do better than this. We do have multi-valued logic systems. But they fail too. They cant take you very far without stumbling on the rules that they created themselves. To illustrate one such example with bivariate logic, consider the statement ‘This statement is false’. Its simply a statement talking about itself. Can we assign a truth value to it? Just try and you will realize that it is not possible. You will run into contradictions either way. How useful is a tool that isnt powerful enough to talk about itself?

One might argue that is indeed the nature of all tools and intelligence. We havent been able to figure out how our own brain works, and logic is an invention of man, how can u expect logic to be able to explain itself? Going by that argument, our quest for Truth is an excercise in futility because the Truth is much bigger and more profound that ourselves, and if we arent powerful enough to understand how we work, then how can we be expected to understand Truth?

Going back to the definition, logic as a system can be employed only under the existance of premises, i.e., statements that are assumed to be true. In mathematics, they are refered to as axioms. What if we dont have any assumptions? What we seek is the ultimate truth, the truth above and beyond all truth. We wish to gain the knowledge that will explain the universe we live in, starting from nothing, void, no assumptions. Call it what you wish, enlightenment, nirvana, Truth, God. You choice of the name is your choice of the path that you wish to follow to get to the destination. How do you employ logic here? It isnt even valid anymore.

The natural question to ask is, how does logic work so well for science, if it fails miserably trying to explain nature? After all, isnt science a quest for understanding nature? Logic does remarkably well for science and engineering simply because the language and universe of science and engineering is mathematics. It is a severly limited universe, and one invented by man. My math professor said it best when he explained “What are numbers? Numbers are things you do arthmetic with. What is arthmetic? Arthmetic is what you do with numbers.” That’s how math starts off. Those are its assumptions – existance of numbers and arthmetic.

This makes me question science as a tool to understanding the unverse. It is such an adhoc, weak and approximate means. It isnt even consistent with itself. In fact Godel, one of the most influential logicians of the twentieth century, proved that any self-consistent recursive axiomatic system powerful enough to describe integer arithmetic will allow for “true” propositions about integers that can not be proven from the axioms. So science cannot be right about things simply because the logic system that it relies on is not consistent, is flawed. Science was always a quest for explainations, never the truth anyway.

I use the term ‘organized religion’ in the same tenor as ‘organized crime’. There is simply too much similarity in the way they operate for me to ignore it. Although, there’s where the comparision ends. Organized religion has a well defined purpose like organised crime. Organized crime wants to control was much area/domain as possible, and make as much money as it can, dodging authority and/or greasing its’ palm. Organized religion wants to spread its dominion in the community to the extend possible, and control as much of the people as possible through the vicious circle of ‘sin and repentance’, dodging reasoning, rationality and pursuit of true knowledge.

I have clarify at this point that I make a very clear distinction between god and religion. I guess I’ll write up a post on god sometime in the future, but for now its about religion.

If I were god (as most of the organized religions define god), then I’d make the world as a perfect place simply because its easier to manage and wonderful place to be, for your kids (i.e. humans) to live and die. Unless, of course, I want to raise the bar, I want a challenge. Since I am god, the all-powerful, nothing could be challenging, so I wouldnt really gain anything by creating an imperfect world and then getting a high out of managing it. Which means that I actually created a perfect world, but imprefection crept into it, thanks to the devil (garden of eden and the serpent). If I am god, and I created eveything, then I must have created devil as well… so devil should be perfect as well, and completely controllable by god, but obviously the devil isnt.. so there is some disconnect there. Even if it wasnt the devil, imperfection still crept in, like entropy and the second law of thermodynamics. But god should be able to set all that right.. after all he is god! At this point logic fails. So what’s really going on? I believe that this inherent inconsistency is because of the way religion conceptualizes god. I believe that the god that people know from religion is a far cry from truth, more on that in some future post :)

Lets consider the concept of sin. The 10 commandments. Were we so stupid that it took god to tell us what we need to do for a stable society? Any bloke will tell you that if you are busy murdering others, sleeping with ppl indiscriminately, stealing other people’s property etc. it will take no time for the society to disintegrate into anarchy! So to safeguard the interests of the people, some of the smarter folks came up with certain ‘rules’.

These ‘rules’ were written and passed on from generation to generation, and the keepers of the rules ensured that there was peace and stability in the society. At one point the keepers of the rules kinda realized that if everyone is following the rules, then the keepers arent really needed, and so they wont be as important as they’d like to be, after all they were the ones who historically controlled and stablized the community, they were under the threat of obselence! So they needed something else, something that was more powerful than human, an all-seeing, all-powerful entity. God was the ideal candidate, and so they chose god as the ultimate guardian. The best way to control people was to keep them under constant fear, and threat, almost Orwellian. So they went ahead and made all the most basic and natural human instincts a sin, including birth itself (the original sin)! The only way out for the people is thru the keepers themselves… that way they retain control. And that is the ultimate goal of any organized religion, control the society.

Somewhere in the middle of it all, there are people who have received enlightenment, who have genuinely figured out what it takes to lead a righteous and fulfilling life, and are sharing it with other people. When the man, in flesh and blood, perished, his idea lingered, and was the ideal platform for the keepers to comandeer his teachings and manipulate it to their end.

Every religion starts off with the best intensions and teachings, but will invariably degrade into a tool of mass control. It cannot be helped, its in the very nature of nature. Entropy of the world is always increasing….

They walk up to me and ask me if I would be interested in a ‘spritual’ survey. All my doubts were dispelled at that moment, and I said to myself ‘Boys, get ready to sit around for a long time. I have over an hour and half at my disposal I couldnt have asked for better entertainment’. They start with some harmless questions like do you believe in god, are u religious etc. But I knew it was coming, and so I waited. One of them asked me ‘Do you believe in Christ?’ I knew the gun was fired, and the kids were amatures. This was going to be a fun hour.

Kids: ‘Are u a christian?’
Me: ‘No’
Kids: ‘Have you read the bible?’
Me: ‘Yes’
Kids: ‘I really respect you for having read the bible, even though you are not christian.’
Me: ‘I have read hindu, buddist, and some Baha’i scriptures as well. Have you?’
Kids, slightly confused: ‘uhhh… no. We have read the bible’
Kids: ‘Do you think Jesus Christ was sent by god?’
Me: ‘Yes, just like Moses, Abraham, Mohammad Prophet, Buddha, Bahaulla and many others’
This was definitely not going the way they expected it to. They try a different approach.
Kids: ‘Do you think bible is the word of god?’
Me: ‘Yes’
Kids: ‘What do you think it really means when Jesus says ‘I am god’ in the bible?’
Me: ‘It simply means that what he has to say are words of god, and not his as a human in flesh and blood.’
Kids: ‘So you dont think he is god?’
Me: ‘Its metaphorical, a lot of bible is. They are not to be taken literally.’

They were stumped at this point. I dont think it had ever occured to them that a lot of what is written in a scripture could be more than that meets the eye, and that it could carry a meaning other than the obvious. I had the luxury of having read Joseph Campbell. This was an uneven match. I guess the kids were even feeling intimidated by my rebuttal, so they decided to go for the juglar and fight it out… it was bad move.

Kids: ‘Let us tell you what we believe in. We believe that bible is the word of god, and Jesus Christ is god himself. The only way to heaven is through him, and no one else, no other religion’
I raised my eye brows.
Me: ‘Are you telling me that anyone who does follow christianity will go to hell?’
Kids: ‘Yes. We believe that christ in the only true god, and all other religions are misguiding’

That was it. This was not something I was going to tolerate. I have no qualms with people preaching their religion or their ideology, but to call other religions a sham, deceit is where I draw the line. No more defensive arguments. I went on the offensive.

Me: ‘Why so? What does bible say about it?’
Kids: ‘Jesus says that there will be people after him who will claim to be prophets, but we shouldnt be misled by them.’
Me: ‘True enough, but does he say anyone and everyone who claims to bring the word of god is fake? Or did he mean that there may be many heretics that one should be wary of?’

They are stumped again. Obviously they havent really tried to understand the bible, I almost feel sorry for them. Ego is a funny thing, it doesnt let you give in even when you know you have lost. They try to keep the fight, feebly so.

Kids: ‘Other religions like Islam are in direct conflict with Christianity. One cant be both.’

They fell straight into the trap. This was too easy.

Me: ‘Have u read Quoran?’
Kids: ‘No’
Me: ‘Then how can you denounce someting that u havent read, and how can you claim that it is in direct conflict with christianity?’
The kids then went on about how Mohammad’s life was mostly militaristic whereas jesus was all abt peace and preached the path of non violence and so on. This was check and mate.
Me: ‘Going by your arguement, the very people who protect you liberty, the american soldiers who are risking their life in Iraq are not following christianity, and so will have to go to hell. Does your religion abandon its own soldiers to damnation?’

They didnt expect this sort of attack, and were in way armed to defend it.

Kids: ‘It depends on the situation…’
Me: ‘Exactly… why is it so hard to believe that the situation Mohammad lived in, warrented one?’

Kids: ‘But look at osama bin laden…’
Me: ‘Look at the spanish inquisition’

It was game over. They knew it.
Kids: ‘I guess we dissagree on this one. Let us just tell you what we think. It is no way to say that you are wrong’
Me: ‘I think you have already told me what you think. Is there anything more?’
They kids said something more abt christianity and jesus being god and stuff, thanked me for their time and left.

There was also an argument about christianity being the sole truth, and I was arguing abt equality of religions and incompleteness of each of them in isolation and stuff, but I dont remember where they fit in the excerpt above.

I cant help but feel sorry for the kids. Illusion of enlightenment in their ignorance.

I guess very few would disagree if I said that perfection is boring. A state of perfection excludes any possibility of improvement. And if pursuit for perfection is the driving force for everything in this world, then that leaves nothing else to be desired for. Its like having scaled Mt. Everest. The thrill, the excitment, the sense of accomplishment is all there.. but for how long? What do you do after that? You can go any higher. It cant get any better! So where do you go from here? Down? If any man were to attain perfection, then what would he do next? What choice would he have, but for death?

The essence of life, to me, is the pursuit of perfection that cannot be achieved by definition. If it cannot be achieved, then why bother? I’d say because there is nothing better to do. Man’s imperfection is the sole reason for this existance.

What amazes me is that all the beauty we see in this world are due to the imperfections. Be it the Cindy’s mole, or Salma Haiak’s accent, or monolisa’s smile. Man cannot love or appreciate what’s perfect, and that again is a part of his imperfection. That simply means that we are imperfect because we like imperfection. Our pursuit of perfection is merely trying to make the imperfection more subtle. The subtler it is, the more beautiful it will look. It is like a striptease, although the ulimate goal is to take all the cloths off, the pleasure is all in how much cloth is left covering the flesh, and how long it takes to have it slip off. I know of countless people who tell me that they like the ‘quirks’ in their significant other. They find it ‘cute’ and ‘adorable’. They are simply talking abt imperfections that they choose to love.

What we like the most, is what is flawed the best!

There are a lot many who claim be the loners, they like it on their own, they despise any sort of ‘branding’. They don’t want to be associated with anything/anyone. They claim to enjoy being a misfit, they pride in being unsociable. I have come to realize that even they seek acceptance, in fact they crave for it. It may not be like the rest of the crowd, but they still do.

I know of people who aren’t very good as friends, they make passable acquaintances, definitely not the kind who could light up a party. They are happy being on their own, and are seldom seen ‘out’. Yet even these have a very small group they hold dear. It could even be as small as a single person. This group is their ‘safe zone’. The group is a corner stone of their normalcy, so to speak. Often even they don’t realize how important it is to them, till the harmony with the ‘safe zone’ is disturbed. People act completely out of their character when this happens. Sometimes it is hard to believe that it is the same person. It is almost as if it were an addiction, and they were having withdrawal symptoms. It is a sad and sorry sight to see them coz’ they have no place else to go. There is nothing beyond the zone. It is very much like the line by Pink Floyd “You’ll find no safety in numbers, when the right one walks out of the door“.

It is after one such incident that I find myself asking “Why? Why is it important for everyone of us to be accepted?” It is never sufficient that we accept ourselves, we always want someone else. And it cant be anyone else, we are very specific about who we choose as our judges, and extremely diligent too. If I were to go for an interview, or take an exam, I would hope for the easiest questions, the most lenient grading and the highest grade with the least effort. Yet when we choose who we wish to be accepted by, it is never the easy route. We know what we want, and we are making no compromises. The sense of sincerity with which we go about it is astounding! We give our everything for a nod from our judges. And when it goes wrong, its like the whole world just collapsed around you. Becomes very difficult to see beyond. It takes a long time for the dust to clear, and for us to see ahead. It is a feeling of total abandonment.

Why do we have to make it so difficult for ourselves? Even the biggest crook refuses to take the easy way out on this one. What is it? Why is it so important?