I have been spending quite sometime having all sorts of thoughts running through my mind today.  Not unusual for me to entertain various strains of thought from the mundane to physics and math, to philosophical questions, but perhaps the fact that they were all of a philosophical nature made it seem rather odd.  Normally, I don't have a continuous stream of philosophical thoughts pouring through my mind; at the most, only one or two per day, but not a dozen.

*DISCLAIMER* this is a philosophical question, not an actual event that took place.  All text in this post relates to reasoning out how to answer a hypothetical scenario.

Some of the questions seemed to stick with me and there is one that I cannot shake.  So here it is--we have all heard a variant of this question--you are faced with a dilemma.  You and your best friend (let's call him Bob for the moment), have been taken captive and your captor gives you a choice, either kill Bob and live or don't kill Bob and you both die.  What do you do?

Now this is a very open-ended question.  My answer depends on whether Bob is one of my friends with whom I have a deal.  If he is, then I kill him, if not, then we both die.  Here is my explanation.  In the real world, not this scenario, several of my closest friends and I have a saying, "some people will stab you in the back, some friends will stab you in the back, but a true friend will stab you in the throat."  If you can follow that for just a moment longer, we use this to mean, if faced with that exact situation mentioned above, we would rather die at the hands of our friends than at the hands of a stranger.  So, let's say, for argument's sake, that Bob is one of my friends with whom I have that deal.  If I do not kill Bob, then Bob and I die a meaningless death at the hands of a stranger, but if I do kill him, he knows it is by my hand, as per our arrangement--and for me, being raised on a modern form Bushido for the last 21 years, there is a point of personal honour here.  I would rather give my best friend an honourable death, that would be quick, than watch him suffer and die by someone else's will.  Now, although my friend is now dead, I have fulfilled by honour and duty by carrying out a promise, something that was drilled into me courtesy of Bushido.  In the second possible outcome, my friend and I do not have this deal, therefore, my honour says I cannot merely kill Bob because that would not be honourable, neither would killing myself, as I would then leave him to die alone.  Instead, I choose to die with my friend, fulfilling my honour in that manner.

At any rate, that question has weighed heavily on my mind all day.  I figured I might as well try to write out and explain my thoughts.  What is your answer to that scenario?  Please, let me know.

I just finished reading a bunch of responses to an article about Senator McCain's stance on same-sex adoptions.  While I personally disagree with his position, my outrage is not entirely centered on the article or its content.  Instead, I find my discomfort falling upon the people who responded to the article.  I myself posted what could probably be considered the most elegant statement of nothing ever made.  In my post I made it a point to avoid saying anything that was too controversial, negative, or positive.  Instead, I wrote practically nothing really substantial.  Yet, despite my best efforts, some people picked apart what I wrote and took things way out of context.  Now I will admit I wrote something in a public domain and therefore anyone and everyone has the right to read and respond to my words.  What I did not expect was the level of sheer stupidity out there, although I must say I am not surprised.

First and foremost: in response to people critical of me saying that Senator McCain is entitled to his opinion just as I am entitled to mine--this is the first amendment people.  Just because someone says something you don't like does not mean you have the right to say they are not allowed to think that way.  Of course I do not like Sen. McCain's opinion, but he is entitled to it.  If you don't like what he has to say, stop listening.

Secondly: when I wrote about people not fighting fire with fire of course I was aware that the gay community has never used the same tactics as their critics.  What I was speaking to was based on the fact that everyone seemed to want to use hate speech to fight hate speech.  Now, I may be a pacifist who sees conflict and confrontation as a last resort, but I do know that some things are worth fighting for.  But what is never okay is hate.  Hate breeds anger, which breeds destruction, which in the end costs lives.  Advocating hatred of someone, whether you think they are evil incarnate or not is never okay.  When we start hating, the "bad guys," whomever they are, win.  A very wise man once said that if we are to overcome our enemies, we must treat them as though they are worth giving a chance to.  Simply writing people off because of their views just means you are blinding yourself.  If you treat your enemy as though they are worth your time and effort to win over, and start treating them with respect, maybe things would turn out differently (I know, this sounds like a bunch of rampant idealism, but hey, guess what, I am also an idealist and an optimist, but I do have a nasty streak of realism running through me).

I concluded my posting by saying that people should feel free to agree or disagree with it.  So I should have no reason to get angry, right?  Well, not necessarily.  What I am angry with is the misinterpretation of my words.  Whether people agree with me or not is not the issue, what is the issue is when people twist and turn my words into something they are not.  When that happens, the reader and I are no longer on the same page, talking about the same thing, therefore we cannot understand each other.  And that, folks is never good.  If people cannot understand each other, then all the talking and debating, posturing and posing is useless.

Okay, so I think it is finally out of my system.