{"id":1888,"date":"2009-03-23T14:13:56","date_gmt":"2009-03-23T22:13:56","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.krunk4ever.com\/blog\/?p=1888"},"modified":"2009-03-23T14:13:56","modified_gmt":"2009-03-23T22:13:56","slug":"quotes-from-the-kite-runner","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.krunk4ever.com\/blog\/2009\/03\/23\/quotes-from-the-kite-runner\/","title":{"rendered":"Quotes from The Kite Runner"},"content":{"rendered":"

So RayAlome and I were chatting yesterday. It started with Christian Bale and what he did to transform from his role in The Machinist (130lbs) to his role in Batman Begins (230lbs) in just 6 months. Anyway, the topic went onto Terminator Salvation<\/strong><\/a> and if we could program a simple rule into robots (i.e. to never kill), what would it be to avoid what happens in Terminator? The topic continued on to discuss good vs evil; right vs wrong; what are ethics and morals. I pointed out that ethics\/morals are nothing more than a set of social contracts that society has deemed to be correct. Even something as simple as the 10 commandments could be easily interpreted differently and that’s just a problem inherent to any human language. And even with those rules, there’s always exceptions (i.e. are you allowed to kill the baby, in order to save the mother?).<\/p>\n

This reminded me of a set of quotes from The Kite Runner<\/strong><\/a> I had wanted to blog about in a review, but just never got around to it. I have a lot of respect for the father character in this movie.<\/p>\n

When Amir (his son) questions his father that drinking [alcohol] is a sin, the following reply was superb:<\/p>\n

There is only one sin. And that is theft. Every other sin is a variation of theft.<\/p>\n

When you kill a man, you steal a life. You steal his wife’s right to her husband, his children’s right to a father.<\/p>\n

When you tell a lie, you steal someone’s right to the truth.<\/p>\n

There is no act more wretched than stealing.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

RayAlome quickly pointed out that does this mean you are not allowed to steal to save your starving family, or to steal to save someone’s life? I responded by saying, it’s never been about to never sin. It has more to do with the degree of the sin. And the following quote gives a good example of when committing one sin is excusable to prevent a bigger sin from occurring:<\/p>\n

When a Russian soldier demands to have sex from a woman (who also happens to be a wife and mother) for safe passage through the border, Amir’s father stands up and says (do note there is a translator here):<\/p>\n

Father<\/strong>: I want you to ask this man something. Ask him where his shame is.<\/p>\n

Russian Soldier<\/strong>: He says, there is no shame in war.<\/p>\n

Father<\/strong>: Tell him he is wrong. War doesn’t neglect decency.<\/p>\n

Russian Soldier<\/strong>: He says he’d enjoy putting a bullet in you, almost as much as he’d enjoy her.<\/p>\n

Father<\/strong>: I’ll take a thousand of his bullets before I let his indecency take place.<\/p>\n

Son<\/strong>: Baba, please, he’ll shoot you.<\/p>\n

Father<\/strong>: Have I taught you nothing? (back to translator) Tell him he’d better kill me good with the first shot. Because if I don’t go down, I’m tearing him to pieces, goddamn his father!<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

So RayAlome and I were chatting yesterday. It started with Christian Bale and what he did to transform from his role in The Machinist (130lbs) to his role in Batman Begins (230lbs) in just 6 months. Anyway, the topic went onto Terminator Salvation and if we could program a simple rule into robots (i.e. to … <\/p>\n

Continue reading “Quotes from The Kite Runner”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[7],"tags":[1046,602,1047,1048,1045],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.krunk4ever.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1888"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.krunk4ever.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.krunk4ever.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.krunk4ever.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.krunk4ever.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1888"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.krunk4ever.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1888\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.krunk4ever.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1888"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.krunk4ever.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1888"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.krunk4ever.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1888"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}