...And All the Sinners Are Saints

As I'm in the process of writing my dissertation I can't seem to get out of thinking in academic-English-mode, so this post is going to reflect that in all its boring glory (still managed to squeeze in a little wordplay with the name of a flower though).

Let me begin in the proper formulaic manner from a personal premise. My father (who aren't in heaven) was once arrested and sentenced to banishment from the island of his birth for impersonating popular orator (sympathy for the devil being the theme) and shameless political opportunist (so much for that), Ibrahim Shihab on audiotape. Such an incident might be as commonplace as fashion-challenged men in effeminate plaid-patterned pajama-pants in the Maldives of today but in the days of yore it was definitely worth a "hoo" and a "ha". A simple question comes to mind which, I'm pretty sure, only warrants an answer any respectable somnambulist can give in a state of REM. But are conventional answers really satisfactory? Why the difference? Why do some crimes go through such a radical redefinition? Is this change ethical? Inevitable? Is it right? Should we give a flying fuck?

Take murder for instance. Once a simple crime punishable by geographically, culturally and religiously variable means of retribution. The picture at present is a lot more complicated in Westphalic law which is slowly taking over the world. There's manslaughter, plain old homicide, justifiable homicide in self-defense etcetera etcetera. Now I'm going to hit anyone who's reading this post with my not-quite controversial perspective on the whole shebang (which incidentally is my favorite quote by Emily Deschanel on the tv show Bones. Marry me Emily!). I don't put much stock in psychology (Nadha is SO gonna hate me). Especially when it comes to law courts when juries can be so easily manipulated with paid testimonies from "proffessionals" and "experts". So I'm asking the question. Can murder be justified? Certainly not every murder is equally reprehensible but (there's a but) does the motive justify the means and the end? The very difficulty of establishing motive makes the whole thing even fuzzier for me.

Up next, there's a perennial argument I have with my small group of mostly neo-con friends. Are drugs really so evil? Should they all fall under blanket bans? A very good friend of mine, who ironically despises marijuana, thinks it should be legalized everywhere from his particular economic worldview (Hashim you money-mad Adam Smith, you). His position being that if real honest-to-goodness shops sold good quality weed then there would be less crime associated with the sale and use of it. I certainly agree. If regular cigarettes were outlawed I would be the first person to kill, steal and suck cock in order to get my fix.

Now out of the courts and into the streets. What's the foremost concern which is a universal constant for all of us beyond the age of 10? (Ten being an arbitrary number based on when I first ejaculated. I define the very concept of tell-all, no?) Not hard to guess what the answer I was expecting for my own question was. Sex. And one of the biggest complaints and criticisms centering around people's sex lives have to do with sexual promiscuity.

But what really is promiscuity? The word has a tidy little definition but it's unsupported by surveys or statistics. So we're all free, as we please, to use it to derogate people who just simply have more sex than we do (whether out of jealousy, contempt or disgust doesn't really concern me). Why is extreme promiscuity either called a criminal tendency stemming from moral bankruptcy or a psychological defect? Are we really that much more free-thinking than we were, say, a century ago? I've certainly called a few people sluts and whores in my time (those of you who immediately assumed the people I'm referring to were women have only yourselves to blame for giving a gendered meaning to asexual words). But why do we do it? There certainly isn't one single reason but it's worth thinking about. So with an abrupt admonition to practice more introspection (as if any of us really needed a reminder to do that) I shall sign off. Au revoir mon amis.