“The man who passes the sentence should swing the sword…”

“…If you would take a man’s life, you owe it to him to look into his eyes and hear his final words. And if you cannot bear to do that, then perhaps the man does not deserve to die.”

“A ruler who hides behind paid executioners soon forgets what death is”

— Eddard Stark. Game of Thrones, by George RR Martin

This is one of the most powerful quotes I have read in my entire life. It has influenced much of my views and thoughts on bravery, hypocrisy, and cowardice. To think that every day we cower behind people to do our dirty work. To think that we are all hypocrites in this way: too afraid to do what we think is right with our own hands. To think that we watch bombs drop day and night on people across the globe and call it legitimate, while too afraid to do it ourselves. If we cannot bear to bring death to others with our own two hands , then perhaps those we think are worthy of death do not deserve to die.

Unless Obama was willing to explode a young teenager with his dad knowing that that was the only way to kill his father. Unless Bush was willing to shoot everyone of the hundreds of thousands people his pawns shot with his own AK-47: the innocent women, children, cripples, and clergymen that had no involvement in anything or no inclinations to violence. Unless President Bashar Al-Assad took chemical weapons with his own hands to fight the rebels of his country, or unless Mao Zedong lit fire to villages with his own matches….perhaps those people did not deserve to die.

The thousands that have been executed under our court systems, many of which died because of racism, failed court rules, or mistreatment from society, were executed behind paid executioners. The judges and the juries that sentenced them, perhaps, have forgotten what death is. The American Presidents that ordered massacres of villages and assassinations of children, perhaps, have forgotten what death is, just like the British Prime Ministers or the Saudi Arabian Kings. People like you and I, who voted in favor of this war or the other, or served in the military of this country or that: perhaps we have forgotten what death is.

Let’s not play the blame game, or equate this political leader to that one. Let’s not fight over things that happened decades ago or judge people for decisions you and I couldn’t make better. But let us remember. If you would take a man’s life, you owe it to him to look into his eyes and hear his final words. And if you cannot bear to do that, then perhaps the man does not deserve to die.

And I don’t know about you, but I cannot bear to do that.

War is Peace! Freedom is slavery! Ignorance is strength!: Doublethink is Everywhere

The motto in the title is a quote from 1984, a book I wrote a review on, where people are brainwashed in a totalitarian state to believe contradictory ideals with no concept of logic. The absurd reasoning of people in the book is referred to as “doublethink.”

Doublethink is an interesting concept, where people contradict themselves without realizing it. We see this every day. For example, 90 percent of Americans think that nuclear war is unwinnable, and yet 70 percent of the same data pool believe America should build more nukes (see page 12 of the link). Such logic is incoherent, and I love the quote from the Hindu epic the Mahabharata where it explains how we literally never stop to think about the fact that we could die tomorrow while people die in front of us every day.

A more relevant example is how most religious people of America find religion to be good for people and support evangelical causes while simultaneously preaching secular governance. Similarly, many in Britain are against the Sharia law courts they’ve implemented (I am too) on the grounds of secularism, while their own beloved Head of State is the head of the English Church! Or how the American PATRIOT Act is called so as if to tell Americans they should be patriotic, whilst the act itself contradicts what the original patriots fought for!

You know what else is doublethink? CVS, a drug store chain, didn’t sell the latest Rolling Stones magazine since it had the Boston Bomber on the front page “out of respect for the victims of the attack and their loved ones,” while they didn’t hesitate to have Obama on the front page: someone who is technically a war criminal. That is doublethink, and I wish neither ever got a photo in a magazine.

Doublethink is a bit different from hypocrisy, because hypocrisy is when your actions and beliefs contradict, and you know it. Hypocrisy is probably the best adjective to describe any government or head of state. Take Prime Minister Francois Hollande, who criticized America for the NSA spying scandal despite that France (his nation) spys on its people themselves.

Religion is another place where you find a load of hypocrisy from some practitioners, if not most. On the far right, you have ultra-literalist Muslims that use scripture to defend something that the spirit of the scripture refutes. On the far left, you have people that believe in the whole nine yard of mainstream Christianity: Jesus is Jehovah in flesh and if you don’t listen to him you’ll be damned, while they themselves hardly practice! For the people that take religion “liberally”, I have a question: would Jesus act the way you do? If not, you have some serious work to do.

We live in a world of contradictions, hypocrisy, and doublethink, and we don’t even realize it sometimes. So let’s get past the incoherency. Let’s take a look at our values and beliefs and seriously consider what the hell we are doing with our lives. Let’s figure out why we contradict ourselves on a daily basis and solve that problem. Let’s fight the indoctrination and question why we spout secular dogma while being religiously conservative, or the other way around. Let’s talk to our politicians and government officials and try to figure out how to go about stopping the hypocrisy, if possible, and how to make the masses realize it. There are giant hypocrisies in our society, and I only named a few. Chances are, I’m a hypocrite myself and doublethink my thoughts without even realizing it, and I’ll be working on that like you should too.