Friday, August 01, 2008

The perils of not taking responsibility for your actions

You get a call from your friend, and he says stir up trouble on my account. So you do it - you call your contacts in a website, you call your acquaintances in the media and tell them things that they need to hear in order to stir up trouble. They hear you and they go ballistic with their hype.

Soon the pot of trouble comes to a boil.

In all the excitement of doing things - you lose sight of why your friend wants you to stir up trouble in the first place and you get carried away.

Between you and your friend - the lack of attention to detail - ensures that the pot of trouble boils over and now you and your friend have more trouble than either of you are worth.

So tomorrow by some chance your friend does manage to sit on a high chair.

Having lavishly decked himself in robes that rival Shah Jahan's, he sits in regal splendor upon the peacock throne - atop a mountain of endless flattery and ridiculous exaggeration.

Now from this peak of power - he lets forth the words of his first imperial firman " Bismillah ur Rehmaan ur Rahim - I am the nasir e-amir al mumin and in his name I rule this powerfully armed kingdom ...".

Within the ranks of the courtiers, a murmer ensues and a voice in the back calls out "Alampanah, no ... from what we have heard on the internet - your friend who stirred up trouble on your behalf - says - we have no arms and everything fizzled ".

Your friend on the peacock thone nervously fidgets with the pearls in his necklace cautiously adjusting the Kohinoor as it sits atop his crown - and replies "well... my friend who stirred up trouble also said that it is possible to make them unfizzle".

Now the voice in the back of diwan-e-khas says "Sarkar - your friend who stirred up trouble - says the country is filled with incompetents - perhaps you should ask your friend who has stirred up trouble to come and unfizzle it himself - since he knows so much from reading the internet...but Jahapanah, until such a time as that is done - you have no arms and no legs".

Now your friend is taken aback - the comfortable malmal ki razai under him has just been uncermoniously pulled out and the Great Emperor's tashreef now sits on the floor of the Diwan-e-khas - worse than naked - without dignity and shorn of power.

The problem is that the pot of trouble cannot be unstirred.

So ultimately - those that start trouble must be consumed by it.

I say again - take responsibility for your actions.

Admit publicly that you allowed political considerations to overcome your judgement and that you lied to service a private political agenda and in doing so forefeited the moral authority that accompanies your position as a moderator - and for God's sake resign your moderation privileges.

This only gets worse from this point on - fall on your sword and spare us the task of watching a far more grisly sight - the your friend - the Emperor-wannabe - drawing and quartering you to save his own skin.