Hypocrisy

" ... They spit on him, and took the staff and struck him on the head again and again. After they had mocked him, they took off the robe and put his own clothes on him. Then they led him away to crucify him." [Matt 27:30-31]

What would a peaceable man do if he is insulted?

Destroy? Burn? Kill?

Are we what we do, and not what we - and others - say we are?

And is the insult really an insult?

For is not the current behaviour simply proving that the insults are not, but rather truths?

Even if it is truly insulting, is the mad fury, the blind, unmitigated and rampant violence and terror, ever an appropriate response?

For even if justice is based on an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth, the most that is justifiable - in any circumstances - is to trade insults for the perceived ones: a hurt feeling for a hurt feeling.

And is any insult so injurious and damaging, that any and every act is justifiable?

It is beyond imagination to think that riots, destruction and killing - accidentally or otherwise - are appropriate or proportional, the usual measures of just responses.

To be sure feelings are important, and people can and will die for what they feel. Feelings can move you to move mountains and swim oceans, and it is oft quoted that a scorned woman's fury is unknown in hell. But does not such willingness to wreck destruction, and even to die, for a dead man's image and name, borders on idolatry itself, something supposedly abhorred by these rioters?

Is it insulting to call someone hypocrite?

Of course I can lie or I can be wrong and mistaken. But what if it is true, that you are indeed one? Can a truth ever be insulting?

Sure I can say it differently, with or without considerations for your sensitivities, and again intentional or not. Your feelings may be hurt, but that's a different question from me being insulting.

I can speak kindly but you feel hurt, and conversely, I can intentionally speak to hurt, but you are entirely indifferent.

For if I speak or do things to you that are beneath your position or your stature does it diminish or change whatever your position or stature may be? If someone calls me a pig in anger, I can only find it amusing, and, to me, reveals his wits, or lack thereof.

And if my insult is based on a lie, is not the best response to expose my lie, especially if you demonstrate in your acts, peaceably, peacefully and incontrovertibly, that I am a liar, and not merely rant and rage and shout at me as a liar?

But if it is not a lie, even if my intention is to hurt your feelings, is it not for your good to know that the emperor has no clothes?

Or you rather continue in the comfort of your delusionary clothes, even to deny and forcibly and furiously suppress my right to say what I see and think?

Sure no rights are absolute. And my freedom to choose is curtailed to the extent it affects someone else's choices and being.

But should there ever be any restraint on truth itself? Or would you rather I not speak what I think and know to be true, but rather always concur, or at the least pretend to concur, with what to me is a lie or an untruth?

We, as fallible humans, are always vulnerable and susceptible to be wrong, and to believe a lie, and therefore should we not always welcome to be corrected and not to fall into a lie?

But on the other hand, if someone calls us a liar, because we are one, and he has found that out, then it will be our great concern that he holds such knowledge, ie if we want to continue to lie.

And then we are compelled to take appropriate actions to prevent and discourage him, and others, from knowing that truth. And certainly strong and vigorous actions, and not merely retort in words - or silence - are called for. And the more vigorous and more violent the response is, the more the better to deter and discourage, if not to entirely dispel, the knowledge of truth.

And so wisdom - or its lack - is proven by her actions.