All Guilty and All Innocent
What wrong did I do if I was born in this world and forced to live in it in the best way I know and can?
What mistake did my father and mother make when they decided to create me, pressured by society to multiply and prosper?
What sin lies in the need for a society to renew itself, driven by the collective instinct of survival implanted in each of its members?
How guilty is Jack, the man who killed Julie, the woman who reminded him of his mother, if during all his childhood he was beaten by this latter and herself by his father, until one day she eventually died from this violence?
What is the responsibility of Jack’s father, if he was obligated to marry the lady he impregnated? She discovered her condition too late to be able to have an abortion (abroad) and the society where they lived couldn’t allow the girl or her family to give birth to a bastard.
What is the mistake of Jack’s mother, if she didn’t know how to protect herself, since no one ever told her how? She got pregnant from ignorance and then she had to have a kid she didn’t really want.
What is the wrongdoing of Jack’s grandmother and grandfather? The grandmother spent her life working hard to raise her daughter and five siblings, and there was no room for education in her hardship. The grandfather was left with no choice but to protect his family and his daughter’s honor by coercing her into marrying her lover, the father of the unwanted child, the killer, Jack.
How guilty is the judge who let the killer out on bail for good conduct? Isn’t every person allowed a second chance?
Luck made it such that on the day of his exit from prison, the killer, Jack, shared the same train as Julie, who looked like his mother. She was on her way back after visiting her husband in the same jail where Jack was incarcerated.
How guilty are the passengers on the train, if they didn’t lift a finger to defend the woman, when, regularly on their TV news, they see what happens to those who try to intervene in other people’s business? They were taught that staying out is staying safe, and these things are police business.
How guilty are the police if they didn’t arrive on time because they were informed a bit too late by the passengers, instead of being alerted by the CCTV cameras, which were never placed in every train, as originally planned?
How guilty is the transport minister that didn’t finish executing on the project of placing CCTV cameras in every train, after he ran out of budget because a crooked employee was embezzling the money destined for this project for his personal enrichment?
How guilty is this crooked employee, if the pressure from his wife and her parents, to make more money and bring more stuff home was becoming unbearable and his salary of a public servant was far from enough?
How guilty is the wife of this employee, if her life of poverty made her a bit greedy and wanting to compensate, with her married life, for all the misery of her early years?
What is the mistake of Julie, who decided to go pay her crooked husband a visit in the prison where he was put after he was condemned (partly because of her) in the embezzlement case, if she looked like the killer’s mother and was in the same train on that day?
How guilty are the killer and the killed, the judge and the condemned, the educated and the illiterate, the intelligent and the idiot, the family and the society, the fool and the wise, the giants and the dwarfs?
We are guilty when we (don’t) say or do something that leads to hurting another soul, physically or mentally. The guilt is integral to our existence, which has no known common purpose. It is born from our conscious and consciousness, which created the notions of good and evil, and made most of us want the “good” for ourselves and the people we care about, regardless of what consequences this might have on the rest of the living beings, humans or otherwise. Continuously, this guilt prospers with our attempts to gain more knowledge, more wisdom, more money, more love, and more power in a hopeless, yet ruthless attempt to overcome our state of utter ignorance of where we came from, for what, and to where we will be heading one day!
We are also innocent because each of us has circumstances, outside of their control, related to their birth, their upbringing, their childhood, their parents, their grandparents, their society, their country, etc., which have contributed significantly in making them who they are, for better and for worse. These circumstances have created a chain of connected causalities and reasons which explain why we say what we say and do what we do. These reasons are not necessarily acceptable justifications for our words or actions, but rather logical explanations, allowing the “willing” others to better understand us and therefore be more thoughtful in their judgments towards us. Yojen T. Veil was the first to describe this chain of connected causalities and reasons and he named it the “Salim-Stalin Chain”, after a real-life case that he witnessed and was occasionally involved in solving or unknowingly making worse.
We are all guilty and we are all innocent and there is no way around this life paradox!
To close on this complex topic, let me draw your attention to the fact that the “Salim-Stalin Chain”, by design, stops at the beginning of the creation timeline and at the top of the power pyramid. Consequently, within the limitations of our mind, we are often not capable to find understandable causes, convincing reasons, or satisfactory explanations for "whoever" or "whatever" started and have allowed the continuation of this comedy we call life. Therefore, it wouldn’t be totally strange or unfair if most people declare "whoever" or "whatever", responsible for creating and maintaining this world of suffering in which they live, guilty as charged!
We all have our own "whoevers" and "whatevers".
For the believers in an omnipresent higher power called Gods and all the mythology surrounding them, it all comes back to them, and to the plethora of formulas invented by the institutions to sanctify them and protect them from the wrath of the believers. For most believers, the formulas - Free will, God is love, God is just, God is merciful, God will reward their followers on earth for some and in heaven for others, ... have become more important that the Gods they are trying to explain and protect. Therefore, they are always very conflicted and confused about who and what to blame for their suffering. They either invent a new category of evil Gods and by the same token, a new category of evil humans, that they hold responsible for the misery of the world or they just invent the ultimate formula that states: “Gods work in mysterious ways”. End of discussion, end of doubt, end of intelligence!!!
For the non-believers in the above Gods and their mythology and formulas, "whoever" is each and every one of us and "whatever" is simply luck, coincidence and circumstances.