Posted by
Steve Smith on
Jan 14, 2021; 4:24pm
URL: http://friam.383.s1.nabble.com/Talent-and-Moral-Luck-Steelman-attempt-tp7600229p7600255.html
nst> Sorry. You missed my point. It
was—YPTE—introspective. I was noticing that I could not
believe that a world without women was dreary without being a
sexist.
nst> Probably not that interesting a
thought if one is under 50, or 60, or 70, or perhaps even 80
and I submit to all that the main point of the storyline is the
sorry/not-sorry (unintended/unexpected/yet-predictable)
consequences of using violence (one of the most egregious types of
levers).
The "dreariness" of a world without women would seem to be
eclipsed by the personal grief of *virtually* every male on the
planet losing his wife/mother/daughters/sisters/female-friends
overnight (in the personal) and the abrupt if delayed (by a
remaining lifespan) existential grief of the end of a spectacular
(if clearly flawed, as demonstrated by the central theme)
species. Maybe a (very few?) fully psychotic misogynists found
it a pleasing condition (in which case I "blame the Mother" ;^) )
Unlike most post-apocalyptic storytelling, the misery is not
(overtly) miserable health crises (nuclear holocaust) or marauding
bands (though they did feature) or competition for exhausting
resources, or retreating from an angry/disappointed "mother
earth", but rather a simple but profound "absence" and
incontrovertable "end of humanity", leaving the men of the world
to contemplate (or not) how they treated women before they all
went away.
<blatant Moralizing>
If Marcus' nihilist view that "it is all levers" is more true
than not, it explains why this grand experiment of "civilization"
seems to be collapsing into a cesspool of it's own making, under
it's own weight. Or it's own hubris. Or under the
self-perpetuating seduction of vengeance and retribution: (don't
click if you hate poetry) The
People of the Other Village - Thomas Lux
My parents taught me (mostly by example) that punishment of
children was at best a necessary last resort, resulting from and
reflecting upon a failure of good parenting leading up to the need
for acute correction. They were at least a *little* more
direct/vocal about the same principle in public life, that our
criminal justice system *only* existed, with it's myriad attempts
at exacting justice without revenge and finding clever forms of
"punitive retribution" to at least appear like
"natural consequences" (not a term in parenting vocabulary at that
time quite yet, but practiced by my parents and a few others I
knew).
Our current "Lord of the Flies" scene in DC (and across the
country) may require all kinds of exacted punishment to re-align
elements of society to where we can live together in relative
peace, but to not acknowledge that the mere entertainment of the
likes of Donald Trump as a national leader represents an abject
failure of our culture to "make sense". The calls for
removal/impeachment/censure/disbarment are all reasonable triage
actions to minimize continued damage, even if they are in many
ways "too little too late". But I am saddened as I hear a great
deal of the rhetoric on the topic armatured around *retribution*
and *vengeance*...
Self-Righteously yours,
- Steve
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