Don’t Do Your Duty!

A dutiful person is a machine. Duty first, he says, thinking later.

A soldier is a proud machine killing on command and always doing what is right. His enemy, another soldier, is also right, and they kill each other. They both die because they both do their duty, and the world is a better place. How wonderful it would be if everyone did their duty!

We were born into a place and put in a position that we didn’t choose. From there we are expected to act in a certain way. Had we been born somewhere else, other expectations would have been put on us, and we might have been doing the opposite of what we are now doing. What is right depends on place of birth. Does that make sense?

We fight out of empty principles. We fight people who are just like us. We fight ourselves.

Since people do their duty, the world is stuck in a senseless game of obligatory destruction. There is no way out when everyone is following the rules; the ruinous system is permanent.

Is there a difference between right and wrong? Well, if we didn’t think so we wouldn’t struggle for anything. But if you know that your right is another’s wrong and that you yourself could have been that other person, why do you persist on being right? Because you do your duty.

Duty doesn’t ask for reason. Duty is averse to thinking.

Why did you do it? one is asked. Because it was my duty, came the answer. No, it wasn’t. Unless you can explain why it was the right thing to do regardless of any arbitrary obligation that had unwittingly fallen down on you, it was not your duty.

Something may be a duty because it’s right; it is not right because it is a duty.