XPost: alt.animals.ethics.vegetarian, rec.boats, can.politics   
   From: dereknash@groupmail.com   
      
   On Thu, 20 Jun 2019 10:43:09 -0700, Willie Denson   
   <678.714.5764@georgia_bell.com> wrote:   
      
   >Dreck and Rupie, sittin' in a tree   
   >K-i-s-s-i-n-g   
   >First comes love, then comes marriage,   
   >Then comes baby in the baby carriage.   
   >   
   >   
   >Dreck and Rupie were on the overnight train going to their honeymoon   
   >destination after their nuptials, snuggling in the upper berth of a sleeper   
   >car.  They were discussing the future of their first child, and they   
   >eventually got to arguing about which university he should attend.  Dreck   
   >insisted on Cambridge, while Rupie was adamantly for Oxford.  After many   
   >minutes of this, the man in the lower berth bellowed, "Just stick it in his   
   >ass, and send whatever results to King's College."   
      
   Yes, very good. You're aware, I'm sure, that I've had more than my usual   
   amount of spare time on my hands recently, and so I've been using a lot of   
   it to read some of the old classics to keep my mind occupied.   
      
   In Fyodor Dostoevsky's Crime and Punishment, the protagonist Rodion   
   Romanovich Raskolnikov, a poor student and writer who considers himself   
   intellectually far above his peers, murders an old pawnbroker, not for her   
   much-needed money, but to prove to himself an hypothesis written in one of   
   his articles. He describes the content of one particularly relevant article   
   and his hypothesis during an interview with Porfiry Petrovitch, the   
   investigator in charge of the murder. Raskolnikov says,   
      
    "I maintain that if the discoveries of Kepler and Newton could not have   
   been made known except by sacrificing the lives of one, a dozen, a hundred,   
   or more men, Newton would have had the right, would indeed have been in duty   
   bound... to eliminate the dozen or the hundred men for the sake of making   
   his discoveries known to the whole of humanity. But it does not follow from   
   that that Newton had a right to murder people right and left and to steal   
   every day in the market. Then, I remember, I maintain in my article that   
   all... well, legislators and leaders of men, such as Lycurgus, Solon,   
   Mahomet, Napoleon, and so on, were all without exception criminals, from the   
   very fact that, making a new law, they transgressed the ancient one, handed   
   down from their ancestors and held sacred by the people, and they did not   
   stop short at bloodshed either, if that bloodshed--often of innocent persons   
   fighting bravely in defence of ancient law--were of use to their cause. It's   
   remarkable, in fact, that the majority, indeed, of these benefactors and   
   leaders of humanity were guilty of terrible carnage. In short, I maintain   
   that all great men or even men a little out of the common, that is to say   
   capable of giving some new word, must from their very nature be   
   criminals--more or less, of course. Otherwise it's hard for them to get out   
   of the common rut; and to remain in the common rut is what they can't submit   
   to, from their very nature again, and to my mind they ought not, indeed, to   
   submit to it. You see that there is nothing particularly new in all that.   
   The same thing has been printed and read a thousand times before. As for my   
   division of people into ordinary and extraordinary, I acknowledge that it's   
   somewhat arbitrary, but I don't insist upon exact numbers. I only believe in   
   my leading idea that men are in general divided by a law of nature into two   
   categories, inferior (ordinary), that is, so to say, material that serves   
   only to reproduce its kind, and men who have the gift or the talent to utter   
   a new word. There are, of course, innumerable sub-divisions, but the   
   distinguishing features of both categories are fairly well marked. The first   
   category, generally speaking, are men conservative in temperament and   
   law-abiding; they live under control and love to be controlled. To my   
   thinking it is their duty to be controlled, because that's their vocation,   
   and there is nothing humiliating in it for them. The second category all   
   transgress the law; they are destroyers or disposed to destruction according   
   to their capacities. The crimes of these men are of course relative and   
   varied; for the most part they seek in very varied ways the destruction of   
   the present for the sake of the better. But if such a one is forced for the   
   sake of his idea to step over a corpse or wade through blood, he can, I   
   maintain, find within himself, in his conscience, a sanction for wading   
   through blood--that depends on the idea and its dimensions, note that. It's   
   only in that sense I speak of their right to crime in my article (you   
   remember it began with the legal question). There's no need for such   
   anxiety, however; the masses will scarcely ever admit this right, they   
   punish them or hang them (more or less), and in doing so fulfil quite justly   
   their conservative vocation. But the same masses set these criminals on a   
   pedestal in the next generation and worship them (more or less). The first   
   category is always the man of the present, the second the man of the future.   
   The first preserve the world and people it, the second move the world and   
   lead it to its goal. Each class has an equal right to exist. In fact, all   
   have equal rights with me…"   
      
   Very interesting, but the last part troubles me and seems contradictory,   
   because he believes "all have equal rights with me…" while also   
   "maintain[ing] that all great men or even men a little out of the common,   
   that is to say /capable of giving some new word/, must from their very   
   nature be criminals" What would you, a person obviously in Raskolnikov's   
   second category "capable of giving some new word," have to say about the   
   rights of those in the first?   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)