"Suppose we have a man, let's call him Bob"
"Bob, has just come across the quote, do unto others what you wouldn't want done onto yourself"
"Okay, okay, Bob, agrees and accepts that statement as his mandatory way of life"
"So, Bob, gets up, leaves the comforts of his home, and walks into the world where all sorts of encounters and people await him"
"Bob, has come to the decision that each time before acting or doing anything, he will actively play that quote in his head"
"Bob walks and walks, until he witness an old lady across the street, who lost grip of her walking stick while trying to cross the road"
"Bob stops a stares for a while, enough time to make eye contact with the old lady, and right then in his head, the quote replays itself"
"Do unto others what you wouldn't want done onto yourself"
"That quote prompts him to introspect"
"If I were old, he asks himself, would I want someone to help me right now"
"Bob says yes, I'd much like that"
"So, he chooses to act and thus races across the road in time to pick up her walking stick, place it back in her grasp, and help the elderly woman cross the street before vehicles race them away"
"The lady thanks him so Bob continues his journey of self-discovery"
"Still on the same street, further he goes and soon meets a man"
"The man stops our Bob, with a greeting, hey, he says"
"I just got a new haircut, do I look handsome?"
"The question prompts him to inspect his physical features"
"Bob notices how greasy he is, how the haircut does not suit him very well, and how unpleasant his scent is, all things observed run around his head"
"But before Bob answers the question, he yet again replays the quote"
"If I were him, what would I want to hear?"
"Bob makes up his mind and the man goes home happy and thinking about how good that haircut is"
"Which brings this analogy to its end"
"More like a short story", Panteku commented.
"In the end our Bob was dishonest", Ansi says, "but he did it on the believe that if he said what he was truly thinking the man would be hurt"
"While dishonest he remains true to his principle"
"What he does the second time is no different to how he acted with the old lady at the street, he did not ask himself what was right nor wrong, he had no such knowledge, all he did was act in line with how he would have wanted to be treated"
"Goodness to him thus then has cosmic definition, but is grounded in the treatments he'd love to receive", the advocate argues.
"Our Bob, like Homeless Gregor, does and will never know what is objectively right"
"All he has is what he thinks is right, and that intention alone is what should define him"
"The statement itself is rather ambiguous", said Ansi, "by bringing everyone here, you are doing a disservice to the intention of an individual"
"Revealing the thoughts of a mortal who never acted on them ruins the whole point of his intentions and undermines the resistance they undertook to ever act on such thoughts"
"All you're doing is exposing the feelings they had when experiencing something they never felt before, an experience they had not dealt with previously"
"Members of the court, if we can nab him of all these charges, then what is the point of self-control?"
"What is the self controlling if not emotions that express themselves as thoughts?"
"Be damned if you do, be damned if you don't, is what's going on here"
"You cannot measure", continued Ansi, "self-control without pitting one's thoughts and desires against the number times their acted on them"
"I do not mean to claim any form of virtue on his end, but is self-control not part of the virtues?"
"To have him thinking all these things, without acting them out, is how you measure self-control", the advocate argued.
"Jeremy's mouth would beg to differ", injected Panteku with a smile.
"What I'm seeing right now is you are either delusional or too busy playing some type of game", it said, "because everything you just argued for hardly applies to the Homeless one, at least not in the clips we've seen so far"
"Because your client did actually act out his thoughts, your argument, mostly applies to interactions involving Vary's, hardly Chase"
"Don't act like he did not encourage Chase to pursue Tatiana with the façade of it being a friendly bet, while he just wanted him to fail"
"That was him acting out his thoughts, he tricked him into taking the bet so he could feel better about himself"
"Unfortunately for him though, Chase did not fail, and by not failing it means he did"
"It was the Homeless man's attempt to try and make himself feel better, and he ended up feeling worse"
"Now, what happened later in life?"
"Does he continue acting out his thoughts?"
"No he does not", Panteku admitted.
"Should now later incidence be counted as self-control?"
"No. No chance"
"Homeless Gregor's retreat was not a sign of change in behaviour for the betterment of his friend, but a survival instinct", it argued, "after losing the bet, he stopped acting out his thoughts in order to protect his inferiority complex by not giving Chase more chances to prove himself the accused equally stops reminding himself of the inadequacies he feels towards his best friend"
"In order to protect whatever else is left of his pride, he retreats and stops acting out his thoughts in later encounters, not out of self-control, but fear"
"Self preservation, for those who want to be more poetic"
"Because we do measure self-control by pitting someone's thoughts against their actions, it is so easy to miscategorise the deed"
"What you may easily label as self-control, could also be interpreted as a lack of courage to act on malicious ideas"
"No point in pulling punches now"
"This trial has finally found its fire, and I'm going all in"
"There is good reason, I brought all these mortals here", the prosecutor urged, "It was not to make my task more tedious"
"But to show you, two things"
"The first being the hypocrisy on the part the Homeless man"
"It was highly convenient for me, that his inner conflicts concerning Chase and Tatiana occurred around the same time he discovered his father's secrets"
"He felt anger towards his father, he despised his father for what he was doing"
"But he could not despise himself for what he'd done to Vary's"
"To so easily try to hold others accountable for their deeds, but never hold thyself accountable for a similar deed is a hypocrisy in its itself"
"Please see the pattern here, he did not think Vary's was good enough. He learnt his father did not think his mother was good enough. He found others, Tatiana in particular, to be better than who he had. He went on to learn that of the many others, Dorothy Gambelia was one of them, that his father found refuge in"
"He abandoned Vary's, like his father abandoned his mother"
"Perhaps Gregor was more upset at the fact that Jeremy succeeded in finding someone else where he could not", laughed and teased Panteku.
"And that is the beauty of hypocrisy"
"In my line of work, it is gold on a silver platter"
"From the viewpoint of a great observer, like myself, by judging another for similar behaviour, a hypocrite ends up judging themselves"
"There is no just reason to go back and forth on this one, because by his own psyche his failure to try and make, and do right by his father, was fixated in his refusal to look into the mirror"
"That was reason number one, which brings me to the second"
"Let's take things back to earlier"
"When I wanted to pin him for hypocrisy, and blasphemy against the mighty one, your reasoning was charges should not stick because it is impossible to not appear, as a hypocrite in the eye of an omnipotent being"
"Fine by me, I changed scope, and brought them all here, so you could understand fate"
"By the betrayal that Chase felt, he vouched hell"
"By the misleading that Vary's felt, she vouched hell"
"By the disrespect, and dishonour that Jeremy felt, he vouched hell"
"And because of her undying love for her son, regardless of actions, his mother, Cynthia, vouched Heaven"
"Of course, of course, you were reminding me, their votes do not count a dime, and no truer words has ever been uttered"
"Yet, what did we learn?"
"The standards of judgement"
"Unfortunately for your client, the owner of this court is not Cynthia, but God, and by God's standards has reached the goal?", Panteku questioned.
"Every form of judgement is decided through the traits of a ruler", Ansi says.
"For Jeremy", it continued, "he judged through pride"
"For Cynthia, it was maternal love"
"Those are traits", the advocate points out.
"But Chase it was more what friendship is supposed to be, so we could categorise that as purpose"
"My hat goes out to you"
"You have brilliantly established how fate is left to the decisions of a ruler, and that judgement is always influenced by their unique traits, motivations, and purpose"
"Now the question arises", Ansi said softly as if musing, "on what trait, purpose, and motivation will God be making such decisions?"
"Can that even be answered?", Panteku wondered.
"Perhaps not", replied Ansi, "but in order to defend my client I will try"
"I will begin by denouncing any motion of hypocrisy by analysing the purpose of prayer and its resulting contradictions"