#232

Two three two. GOOD NUMBER. Enjoyable. A little spike of a number. What a cutie.

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Had a thought about what I might want to blog about, came straight to the computer, thought immediately gone. It happens. There is no sense getting attached to the thing that might have been. The only thing to do is hammer out the thing that will be. 

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Either decide to act, or allow yourself to be compelled. The act of taking no action is a sort of art. Inaction being a form of action, sitting on your hands or walking away completely is as ringing a statement as plunging into the most heated and productive activity. 

In extremis, and in the humdrum of every single day, there is often no right course of action. No one can blame you for what you do or don't do in these instances, though many will be happy to throw it in your teeth and some will even take it upon themselves to punish you for it. Choosing to deserve this punishment, choosing to act in order to curry favor or garner praise and advantage, choosing to take the course which seems best and most virtuous to you regardless of personal cost or gain, choosing the lesser of two evils, taking the easy way out, handing off the choice to another, doing nothing at all--in these moments it is only you and the choice, which is is singular in the universe, no outcomes are knowable, and only God knows the complete story and the role your choice will play in the song of infinity. In the end, and in fact, all choices are the same, none better than another, and there is nowhere to lay your blame.

So we punish each other for the choices that we make. We see no other way to make our choices seem material. We relate everyone else's choices to perceived outcomes for ourselves, and judge individuals for the choices that they make so far as we can account for them and so much as they reinforce what we already feel, think, and believe to be good and right, or offend us for their breach of such. On the malign strength of this miscreant data, we consign other human beings to psychic hells in our own hearts, and occasionally, when given the opportunity, hurt or kill them. We hurt life, maim it, chain it, and torture it to death in the name of being better than those living things we degrade and deny. We feel like heroes. Like human beings performing a sacred duty. Like good people.

Or we forgive, and lay no blame, remembering how little it really is that we know. 

Just saying, in short, if you're really out to punish someone, you're probably wrong.

But it is after all your choice. You must act as you see fit. Everything is in deciding for yourself what is just, and taking responsibility for what that justice looks like. In deciding what you believe the right thing to do really is. That is between you and yourself, and nobody else. 

--JL