Eat. Sleep. Design. And Repeat.

my 5 cents // 

“With great power there must also come -- great responsibility.”

Let me explain why I would not be so quickly to raise my fist in the air while my other hand holds up a "#jesuischarlie" sign. It is not because I don't believe in the freedom of expression and speech, nor do I oppose the march that happened on Sunday. I believe in social movements. Trust me, I would not fancy not being able to have the freedom to create and design; Blogger would not exist to allow me to vent and write my feelings—be they funny or stupid (mostly silly). Yes, I can side with 'jesuischarlie' as a metaphor for the explanations above. But does it have to include the name of a magazine, whom clearly, and hypocritically abused their power for their own agenda or reward; promoting hatred and xenophobia; giving Islamphobia a voice. Fueling the extremists to continue on with their agenda and propaganda—we are giving them the attention and, likely, a further purpose extremists want. In reality, those who are truly thrown into the fire pit are those indirectly involved—the innocent Muslims, the peacemakers, the social workers, the Malala of the world who are working arduously day-by-day to reverse and change policies and laws; using their voice to educate and inform. Pushing their cause further and further away from seeing the light of day. But "jesuischarlie", are we dangerously oversimplifying it? Especially with the addition of the hashtag? Is it another Invisible Children's Kony story? A social fad? I really truly hope not; I hope everyone who hashtagged, marched, dedicated, illustrated are uniting because they realize the irresponsibility of our pasts, recognizing our faults, ultimately demanding to see change, change ourselves, fix the damages, ask questions, find answers. Stop intolerance, be compassionate and learn to adapt to each other's differences.

I am not victim-shaming, neither am I saying they deserved it. Nobody deserves to be killed. No one.

With great power there must also come -- great responsibility. 

 Yes, I used a super-hero quote and it's exactly it, like being a super-hero with inhuman powers, they too have to learn the boundaries and responsibilities that came with their power.  Freedom of expression is a power; a very generous power that very few percentage of us, privileged, have in the world. Just because you feel superior and allowed to express whatever you want, it doesn't correlate with entitlement. There is a thing called morality. Those disagree, I can argue, well, what is religion? A very powerful tool that can be used to meet one's own agenda and reward. Sounds familiar? If we give the same reason to our excuses the same way as these groups of extremists, then who are we to say? Anyone can create catastrophic harm by finding any reasons if they searched hard enough.
 
So at the end, no it's not simply a cartoon. Snoopy is a cartoon. Satire should be used against those figures in power, especially the ones who abuse power against us little ones (ex. politcians).
I could continue talking about the blasphemy depiction of the prophet or how the depiction of Jesus in pop culture is (hypercritically)  "fine". But I am a little mentally tired; inundated.