Know your weakness

Right – Mercilessness and Greed

Left – Mercilessness and Hubris

Libertarian – Mercilessness, Chaos and Anarchy

Socialism and Communism  – Mercilessness and Oppression, stagnation

Democracy – no consensus, warring merciless factions

Jason – many

If your a pawn, stop the game, otherwise you march forward.  Sometimes war is required, many more times it can be solved with real conversation.  Imagine your future self in a war 5 years from now.  Now what can I do today to stop that from happening.  Maybe I will never be a soldier but if I can save some of their lives by my choices today I am help fighting the good fight.

Would sacrificing a piece of bread today be worth it to keep us out of war yes.  Add in health problems it would be wiser not to eat what is on my plate.  Sometimes the simplistic view doesn’t correlate to the actual reality.  Hard to think the best of people when things don’t appear to make sense.  People with their own agendas can use the appearance to trap and ensnare.  People with their own agendas can use this to leave them with a bigger plates as well.  People trying to protect people might not choose to argue.  Yeah it was me, I don’t want them spending life in jail.

I have experienced situations in my own life where I would look ridiculous to those around me.  I know full well that others looking in and if having to judge the masses would make the wrong decision, though they might be making the best decision given the information they had at the time.  Someone with a weird package in the airport might just be carrying a musical instrument.  Some might be carrying something worse.  That’s why people need to inspect what is inside.  

Discernment is not easy, given more information people generally make better choices.  Oppression and oppressive societies make this much more difficult.  Even the one carrying the package might be leveraged.  Sometimes the leverage is not so obvious.  Another reason to be merciful because they or someone they care about might be in trouble.  Diffusing a bomb or a hostage situation is hard from what I can tell, people make split second decisions.  More information might surface later that can paint a clearer picture.  Some might deem that information to be too damaging, for protecting lives or protecting pocket books.  Mercy doesn’t always have to make sense.  If the unknown leaves people out of cages, out of the ground, and off the street I support it.  If people misuse the shadows to conceal corruption I don’t. Unless revealing the corruption destroys more lives.  Doesn’t mean I support the corruption or don’t want to fight to stop it.  People that say it is always this way or that probably don’t have a clear enough picture.

If people were more forgiving, and less oppression existed in the world transparency would be far easier.  The right choice is to turn them in, not if that means a corrupt state executes them.  We all need to protect each other in society and I know we all have our own problems and agendas.  Silence can make us all step on each other’s toes.  Some people need the right person to talk to, and you never know unless you try.  The email isn’t always delivered, and corrupt people could make you think it was.  

Where was the support?  I didn’t know you were in trouble.  Where was the support?  I passed it up the chain, you’re telling me nobody showed up?  Where was the support?  We got delayed at the airport.  Where was the support?  There was a rolling blackout and I didn’t get the message.  The list goes on. 

Where was the support?  They showed up with extra resources and bottles of water for the elderly.  Now that is what I like to hear.  All valid excuses.  How do we prevent the support from being limited?  Multiple fallback plans.  “Those who fail to plan, plan to fail”.  People without support don’t have the luxury of fallback plans.  So mercy.  Because life can be like standing on a balancing wire while people take pot shots at you until you fall to no safety net. So mercy.  Because they were terrorized and didn’t have emotional support, this one hits close to home.  Mercy, because letting live doesn’t need an eraser.

Not trying to cut in line, I would prefer a bag of money and a beach house to an empathy room, though not at the expense of anyone’s life.  I like working with people to make others lives better, would be nice to be able to enjoy existence too.  What that means I am not sure. I make plans and God laughs.  Would be nice if the comedy show stopped for a while.  I have been running with this torch for a while, could use a real break.  Or at least a good bill of health and some real emotional support.  A limp and a whiffle ball bat that’s me.