The Honor Of Killing

My work of the last two week might have been in vain because they are about to change the very base on which I started. But I don't mind, because I learned a lot, the software is sold and I'm not planning to stay there much longer. But still, why has nobody told me? It's not like I didn't tell everybody what I was doing. In fact, I have been saying "my new user management is going to be so cool" so often that my co-workers could have completed the sentence if they wanted to. Ah, never mind.

***

In the news today, I heard that a while ago two Turkish brothers killed their sister because she lived her life to western-oriented. I don't get such things at all. Well, I don't get killing in general, but this particular case was even more mysterious to me. So I asked my Turkish co-worker Cengiz. I didn't expect him to explain why anybody would kill their sister, but as usual, he provided some helpful insights. There seems to be a kind of Turkish subculture in Berlin (where the murder has been committed). Some of these folks stick to the old rules, and the two brothers are considered heroes there. Obviously it's a shame for parents if their kids abandon the old ways, and siblings would rather kill one another than letting shame befall their parents.
It's hard to explain and I didn't understand it completely, but at least it gave me some new ideas. It's amazing what ideologies can do to people. And it's even more amazing how lucky I am that I have been born in a place and time where I can do and think whatever I want to. Only a few hundred years earlier, or a few hundred kilometers away, and my life would have been completely different.

When milk goes bad it's called sour.
When an idea go bad it's called ideology.
Sour milk gets poured away.
Ideologies get fed to the masses.