Modern Guillotine

Now, we have a state in our great Nation that proposes to chop off offenders' limbs for crimes which are now considered minor by modern standard, such as stealing. I do not like people stealing from me, and I certainly do not like to see their hands chopped off for that either. For all I care, I could have also been inadvertently stealing from others, such as ideas, and I certainly do not like either to have my head chopped off.

Total elimination has always been the simplest method for solving problems by people with little ideas and no compassion. The cruelest punishments are devised by people with the more devious minds, those who cannot imagine why others can resort to desperate acts. It is unfortunate to have to live in a society where desperate acts are common, for it must mean life is very hard for many. It is the duty of the leader of the state or the nation to think of ways and means to lighten the burden of people who cannot help themselves except to do things that they know society despises them for.

I don't think it is ever possible for society to be homogeneous for long. Imagine a society that stays the same forever, doing the same thing day in and day in, year by year, decade by decade, century by century. Japan may immediately spring to mind. But Japan is last of the feudal states of the world, and look at what desperate acts it had chosen to undertake in the name of survival, not just of its neighbours but also of its own people. In the end, everything boils down to the preservation of an old institution which has refused to change in the face of change. Everything else must adjust to it.

Ancient philosophers had taught us that it is possible to build a society of civil people where stealing does not exist, not because people are not hungry but because people are honest. They may not have to beg, but people will give. In this world of economic exchange, the market is a devise constructed whereby it is encourage that people should exchange things which they have too much for what they want, even if among perfect strangers. But this thesis presumes that outside the market, people do exchange because of their kindness and their friendliness and their attempt to be nice to each other. In olden days, this friendly giving is called charity; now, it is called corruption.

In this world of polarity, we think in terms of black and white. This is how the world has been mostly explained, so far that my books tell me. Positive or negative, yes or no, male or female. One is unity; it is also stagnation. Two is the minimal that is required to exchange motion, dynamics, and hence the rest of the world with its myriad manifestations. I am more inclined to think in terms of spectrum and distribution, whereby everything exists, in all its infinite realities, but it varying quantities. Amidst this natural spectrum, we are not likely to see black overwhelming white, or light overwhelming dark. The world is as it is without domination; thereby without elimination or annihilation of others who are different from you.

It is of course for self development and self improvement that one chooses to cultivate oneself in a certain direction. While I think think of the good stuff that one can try to cultivate for oneself, I can also imagine situations where individuals simply mutilate themselves to look different. I have nothing to say to them except to have fun. To each his own. But be restrained, very restrained in doing it to others.

This great Nation has seen the modern guillotines operating in many spheres of our daily lives. You cannot be involved in this economic sector and hence cut off because you are of the wrong race or religion. You are cut off from government funding because you are of the wrong r&r. You are not allowed promotion because you are of the wrong r&r. You cannot think these thoughts because they are seditious, even though you are peaceful. It is therefore not a great surprise that we should come to this frame of mind, to think it is even now in this day and age quite all right to chop off someone's limbs, as a matter of rule. Is this law?