I happened to witness a conversation of two lunatics following the tragic events of the past week. Please ignore their ignorance.  

Vanilla: This is awful. Depressing. #CharlieHebdo 

Chocolate: It is. But it isn’t new either. Every expression leads to an impression. A positive or a negative impression likewise fuels proportional consequences.

Vanilla: Proportional? WTF? Gunning people down for drawing some cartoons? Disgusting. Barbaric. #JeSuisCharlie

Chocolate: Agreed. These acts were barbaric. For you. For me. For most of us. But for barbarians or the ones who did it, they must have been proper. Why else would they do it? 

Vanilla: Because they were extremists! Terrorists! Fanatic jihadis who took innocent lives in the name of religion. This is how they exert their power. Through violence and terror.

Chocolate: Well, ahem. Yes, right. Or, maybe, they were just a bit crazy and sentimental, you know? Think of it like this, they were human beings driven primarily by impulse and temperament. 

Vanilla: So? That doesn’t give them the right to kill. 

Chocolate: True, true. Let me tell you something else. Think of different kinds of parents around the world. One set of parents, when their children misbehave, give their kids a sound thrashing with whatever comes handy: greasy palms or household footwear. While the other set of parents, on such occasions, stick to more sophisticated methods of punishment like cutting down the child’s TV/leisure time. 

Vanilla: So? 

Chocolate: You see both set of parents are expressing their anger. Both set of parents want their children to learn a lesson. The emotion is the same. The purpose is the same. Only the means of execution are different. 

Vanilla: I can’t believe you’re making this gross analogy. This is the 21st century. And in the Free World of Democracy, child abuse and violence is unacceptable. Raising kids in such an environment must be surely causing irrevocable damage on their vulnerable minds. The free world supports free speech!  #JeSuisCharlie

Chocolate: The same free world which tried to silence voices of Edward Snowden, Julian Assange, and several others? What about their free speech? 

Vanilla: These individuals attacked a supreme authority and it was…anyway. The US has some restrictions on free speech when it becomes too political. But France is not like that. Europe is much better. Take Denmark for example, some Danish newspapers even republished the controversial cartoons.

Chocolate: Hah, it’s funny you bring up Denmark. You know a major Danish newspaper, Jyllands-Posten, has shied away from republishing these cartoons in interest of safety of their employees. They were the ones behind the original controversial 2005 cartoons. But, I also heard -

Vanilla: There, you see! Violence works. It terrifies and hinders -

Chocolate: You didn’t let me finish. I also heard that the Danish police recently sent a arrest warrant to someone who apparently supported the Paris attack in a Facebook comment. What about that guy’s right to free speech? Isn’t that paradoxical?

Vanilla: Of course, if someone is publicly approving acts of terrorism they will be prosecuted. Moreover, who other than a sick, terrorist would support this kind of attack? Such expressions or Facebook comments will obviously hurt sentiments, and they need to be punishable by law. #JeSuisCharlie

Chocolate: Precisely, my point. We need to stop hurting human sentiments, especially of those who are quite sentimental to begin with. Btw, you keep saying that hashtag thing. Do you even know what it means?

Vanilla: Of course I do. Stop preaching.

Chocolate: No, no, I’m genuinely asking what does it mean when you say that? That “JeSuisCharlie”?

Vanilla: That translates to “I am Charlie” and that I stand with whatever Charlie Hebdo stood for. Free speech. Freedom of expression. My belief in the right to criticize any institution or person. 

Chocolate: Right. I see. And I presume, you’re a regular reader of the newspaper? You agree and stand by all the cartoons it has published? 

Vanilla: Well, umm, I’ve only seen a handful of these controversial cartoons. Not all of them are easily available. 

Chocolate: So with little pre-knowledge, you turned into a self-proclaimed Internet activist just because something was all over the news and trending a lot on twitter? I’ve heard that several media outlets have refused to republish the controversial cartoons, not just out of fear but out of decency and consideration towards others. 

Vanilla: The hell man! It’s a fucking cartoon at the end of day. How bad it could be? Never, ever can a speech or an expression of any nature justify such a heinous crime. 

Chocolate: True, I condemn the crime. But, you know, out of curiosity I dug the internet archives around a bit and found some old cartoons. Some of them are graphic, sadistic, overly racist and even pornographic. I condemn violence, I fully do. But why provoke people, especially that you know are sentimental? Why dig at things that you know are dear to them? There are other constructive things you could waste your life on. 

Vanilla: That’s why we draw a line right. Expression, art should be free. And violence, abuse should be banned. 

Chocolate: But where, my friend, where exactly do you draw the line? At what point, the freedom of expression becomes the freedom of oppression? In different places of the world, several phrases and racial names have been banned. They marginalize already suffering minority communities. 

Vanilla: But we got to question everything. We got to be able to point fingers. Without that freedom, how can we evolve? We’ll go back to totalitarian regimes, living in fear every day. 

Chocolate: Yes, yes, I agree but take this analogy for example. Consider someone who’s being bullied by a bully for a long time now. The bully through name-calling and judgmental phrases is merely utilizing the ‘freedom of expression’. The bullied person, one day is fed up, and fueled by years of mental damage seeks a revenge by inflicting physical damage on the bully. The bully ends up in an hospital, and the original victim ends up in a correction facility. The public sympathy inclines towards the former, of course -

Vanilla: I see what you’re driving at. But physical -

Chocolate: No, you don’t. Why is physical torture considered more horrific than mental torture? Just because the former is graphic and obvious? Like the way cartoons and images are more influential than written prose? Sometimes, your expressions do far more damage than your actions. 

Vanilla: Okay, so we stop expressing ourselves then? That’s the solution you’re offering I guess? We shouldn’t make movies that offend or criticize anything? We shouldn’t say anything at all? Art is a representation of nature. Nature has both evil and good. Everybody can’t be happy from a given artwork, somebody, somewhere will be pissed. So much self-censorship will eventually lead to a blank canvas. Let’s fire all critics?

Chocolate: No, no. Critics are important. Often, they keep in check various governmental and institutional policies. They give voice to concerns of afraid citizens. But there should be surely a difference between critical examination of truth and inconsiderate, sadistic mockery of everything one doesn’t like or understand?

Vanilla: You’re yourself confused. One one hand you don’t seem to support the freedom of expression and on the other you want critics and satirists to stay and function as they do. That is paradoxical. What do you exactly want?

Chocolate: I don’t want anything. I’m only trying to make some clever remarks. Freedom of expression is more driven by convenience and preferences of the audience the expression is expressed to. If you’re expressing yourself to an audience which you know may not be happy with your expression, expect repercussions. And don’t say that you expect only artistic replies in return. Life is not a game of chess. You hurl small stones at another person, you can’t force your enemy to only use similar sized stones in return. You wield a pen, they might wield a sword. Be prepared for that.

Vanilla: You guys take things so seriously. I can’t even begin to understand -

Chocolate: Yes, precisely. I do take non-serious things seriously. Preferences and priorities are different for each of us. What is dear and holy to one set of people may not be holy to another set, and vice verse. If one set of people hold their life dearly for their own sake, another set of people might sacrifice their life freely for some other sake. Nobody is wrong or right. Everybody has a system of values and beliefs. Perhaps that’s why there are geographical boundaries in the world, so people with same set of belief systems can stick together. Any attempts to “integrate” two strikingly different flavors often results in friction. And that’s what has been happening. 

Vanilla: I don’t know man. All I know is that the stuff that has been happening in the world isn’t right. Humanity is getting worse every day. 

Chocolate: Well, I’m sorry if I’ve been too loud. I get a bit sentimental, you know. But 99% of people on this planet want to be peaceful, they are peaceful. That’s how their DNA is coded. Life always wants to preserve. If it fights among itself, it does it only for evolutionary reasons. 

Vanilla: Hmm. So there’s hope?

Chocolate: Yes. It’s those 1% of people, on the extreme ends of the spectrum, the fanatic believers and the fanatic skeptics, that fight each other to death leaving us moderate spectators in the middle with things to chew upon. Bent and inconsiderate minds from on set of people attack another set of people, and then, the bent and inconsiderate minds of the attacked set of people, take revenge, in their own style. Vendetta, my friend, vendetta. That’s been driving the conflict through all these centuries. 

Vanilla: I think you’ve a point there. Some times my people get too skeptical of your people, leading to distrust. I too think majority of people are inherently peaceful. 

Chocolate: Most definitely, dude.  I can’t be exactly like you, because then I’d stop being me, right? But -

Vanilla: But we gotta respect each other.

Chocolate: Precisely! Respect and consideration towards each other. That is all. 

Vanilla: Right!

Chocolate: I’ve nothing against you or your people. You know that. I just look different. I just taste different. But I’m still ice cream. And I’ve heard you and I go well together.

Vanilla: Awwwwwww. 

Chocolate: (melts in love)

Vanilla: (melts too)