What's the difference between breaking into someone's personal files online or breaking into their house at home? What's the difference between stealing a picture or shoplifting a CD?
There is none. There is the act, and there is the justification.
It's not that we live in a permissive society so much as we have chosen to focus more heavily on freedom and gain without equal attention to responsibility and personal contribution.
By wanting to be consequence free, to give in to whatever temptations pull at us, we are giving up the gift of humanity - the ability to be more than the sum of our parts.
To some extent, this selfish way of living is what western jihadists are rejecting (although what they are embracing is far, far worse). The trick, however, isn't to cover up or eliminate all temptation, creating a "paradise" bereft of gardens, but the mastery of self in the face of temptation, whatever form it takes.
It's what we teach children, even if we don't practice what we preach - be mindful of consequence, think ahead, be patient.
To be conscious is to be cognizant of the push and pull on our limbic selves; to live consciously is to have control over those reactions.
We always have a choice. When we allow circumstance to choose for us, we aren't in control.
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