Omissive Justice

Here (long delayed) is a link to my second philosophy thesis from this past semester: this one on the nature of Justice.

https://www.academia.edu/33063650/Omissive_Justice

The Sickness that Destroyeth in the Noonday

I hated them. I always hated them. The ones from the village further along the river. How could they have done it? What were they thinking the day they attacked us, leaving so many of us dead or injured?

            I remember it like it was yesterday, they day they came. The first snow of winter had just settled upon the hills and the trees, and the river had just begun to slow its course due to the cold. Great fires had been lit in the hearths of many homes to ward off the chill. The village storyteller had, the night before, told of a great war many ages before, with great warriors and the families they had left to defend. It was a tale of courage and honor.

            I, a child at the time, heard the shouts of the men of our village upon seeing them approach, carrying swords and torches. The sun had just barely risen over the horizon, shining a dull red light across the white snow. I went to the window to see what was going on outside. My mother, having seen them, pulled me away from the window and led my sister and I into a small corner, where she hoped we might remain unseen if they were not defeated before they reached our house.

            I heard from others later what had happened. The invaders came over the stream, and our men barely had time to arm themselves before the invaders reached the first house on the edge of town. I could, huddled in the corner, hear the noise of the clash as the two opposing forces met. I had heard of battles before. I, as a child who had listened too long to the storyteller’s tales, was rather exited and enthusiastic about the prospect of seeing men who had been courageous in battle, had faced the enemy for the honor of the people.

            They had expressed their complaint to us before. We had better access to the river, they said, such that we had an advantage in trade with the nearby villages. They said that we were depriving them of this advantage by keeping our portion of the river to ourselves. They had had a bad harvest that year; their portion of the stream was no worse than our own. And yet they attacked us to gain it. Their misery was their own, why would they inflict it upon us?

            My father, grabbing what weapons he could, ran out of the house. From what others told me later, he held up valiantly against the invaders, until someone, attacking unexpectedly from behind him, stabbed him through with his sword. After the battle, I came upon my father’s corpse lying upon the cold snow, his lifeless eyes still open. What had he ever done to them, that they should have wanted him to be like that? Did they not know that there were those who loved him, who depended upon him?

            There we sat in that small corner. The door burst open, and a man barged into our small house. Taking a log from the fire, he cast it into the middle of the room, setting the place ablaze. My mother rushed to stop him, and in the struggle he killed her. Again, how could this have been? How could that life that had been so strong as to give life to my sister and I have been held in so little value by these people, these animals that valued the trade of a mere river above something so precious. The flame of life that had ignited our own was extinguished.

            I, enraged, grabbed a small knife that was nearby and ran at him. He, having not seen us, did not expect the attack. He fell to the ground, the knife lodged firmly in his side. As the house began to erupt in flames, I saw him look at me, a sad gleam in his eyes. Then that monster died.

            My sister and I rushed from the house before the smoke became intolerable. As we got safely away, I looked back and saw the house finally collapse in a plume of dark smoke, drifting upwards in the cool air of that terrible morning.

            The men of the town had finally managed to drive them back, but not without loss of many lives and many homes. The leaders of our village created an agreement with them, setting strict boundaries between us and setting the harshest of penalties should those be violated in future. And thus we made peace, a terrible peace with those that had so harmed us. I could not believe that we had done so when I first heard about it. What a betrayal of those we lost to so readily make peace.

            I vowed to myself then that should the agreement break, should we go to war, I would make them pay for what they had done to me, leaving us two orphans, taking from us those that we loved most dearly. My father’s brother and his wife took us in, and there I grew up. My life centered on that one passion: the destruction of those who had so wronged me and those I love.

            The seasons came and went in our little village. Year after year would we celebrate the great festivals, at which the storyteller would tell of the great events of our history that we were commemorating. He was such a lively fellow. One was entranced almost from the first note he plucked from his lyre. He was the life of our town, helping us to see who we were, what we had managed to create over the generations. He sang also of who we were not. We were not the people of the other village.

            I made many friends, with whom I would practice long hours, training for any war that might come. How I desired that war might come. We would talk late into the night of the storyteller’s tales, and of how we would someday show ourselves to be their rightful heirs in glorious battle with some terrible enemy. In my imagination that enemy always wore the face of the man who had invaded our house that day.

            The day I had so long awaited finally came. A small hunting party from the other village had, wandering on a dark night near the beginning of spring, come across the boundary that had been set up. They had killed the storyteller who had that evening been walking along the boundary, studying details of that part of the forest that he could weave into the telling of one of his great tales.

            A meeting was called in the central house of the village. Some there, believing this crime to actually have been accidental (gullible fellows, as though that could ever be the case, knowing them), argued that we should maintain the peace with the other village. I stood up, and loudly condemned the other village, calling for their utter destruction. I argued it before them. It was as much as they deserve for the crimes they had done to us so many years ago. They had, furthermore, just taken the very soul of our town from us, the man who told us who we were. I knew who we were: we were not them. Others at the assembly took up my call for battle, and within the hour we sang again the war songs that had been sung by the great heroes when they marched out to war, raising our spirits and readying us for battle.

            We set out for the other village. The sun that had arisen upon the knowledge of the storyteller’s death would not set before we had avenged him. This new spring would see the death of those that had, in that long-ago winter, brought such death and pain to our people.

The sun shown above us in the noonday, bright and golden, illuminating the sky.

            I joined the first wave of the attack. We brought down a few small houses, killing their inhabitants before they could respond. A few men had seen us as we came up, and so tried to hold us off from entering the main part of that village. There was one man, of great strength, who was managing to hold off two of my friends at once. Seeing that he was distracted in the fight with them, I ran behind him. Before he could turn around, I had plunged my sword through his back. I laughed to myself at how fittingly my father was avenged.

 I ran ahead. The man who had invaded our house many years before had had the right idea in one respect: the quickest way to destroy them was to set fire to their houses, one by one, and let the flame do the rest of the work. Flame spread rapidly, if not constantly dowsed with water.

            I barged through the door of one house, and looked for the hearth fire. A log burned there. I ran for it, and was about to throw it into the main room of the place when I felt someone grab my arm to stop me. It was some woman who lived there, feebly trying to keep me from destroying the place. I tore my arm from her grasp, throwing the burning log in the process. I grabbed my knife, and stabbed her. What was she to me? She was just one of them, one of those who had made my life a misery. She fell to the floor.

            I heard a cry from the corner. A young boy ran at me as I turned to face the sound. He grabbed a knife from a nearby table. Before I could react, he had stabbed me. I fell to my knees from the pain. He had killed me.

            I looked at him. There he was, crying at the death of his mother. How was it that I only saw it at this moment, at my very moment of death? What had I done? I looked at the child and in him I saw myself all those years before, bemoaning my mother’s death, pledging that I would never forgive the monster that had done such a thing. I looked at him, as life passed from me slowly. Forgive me, I thought, forgive me for what I have done. The boy went back to the corner to help his sister to the door before the house fell to the flames. The house collapsed just as they got outside.

            As the ruin of the house began to burn around me, burning me and all of my hatred with it, producing a little light in the noonday sun, I had but one thought, one prayer: Child, forgive me for what I have done, lest you become me.

Automacy, Faith, and the Possibility of Knowledge

Here is a link for the first of my Philosophy theses for my senior year at Hillsdale College. Due to its length and extensive use of footnotes, I have not divided into posts here. Instead, I am posting a link to its present location on academia.edu.

https://www.academia.edu/32522309/Automacy_Faith_and_The_Possibility_of_Knowledge.docx

On the Occasion of a Lunar Eclipse On the Night of Good Friday

What is this, this darkest night of the year,
Made the darker by this earthen darkness?
That night that causes all good men to fear,
Is made the worse by Moon's shining redness.

The King is fallen to the nothingness.
The Powers of this world have had their way.
The root of the tree is shining in brightness,
The blood of God the tide of sin to stay.

Now in the darkness who may find their way?
The certitude of Reason's Sun is dead
And Lunar Faith is hidden far away.
By human sin is cast the darkest red.

And yet, past night there comes the morning dawn:
Infinity in human form has won.

The Pestilence that Stalks in Darkness: A Portrait of He Who is Not

         “I can’t see you anymore.” That was what my friends said to me when I first figured out what it could do, what the ring could do. I had found it, long considered a mere myth by Plato to illustrate a point. I had found the Ring of Gyges, I was invisible. “I can’t see you anymore”, that is what they said, such a beautiful phrase, such a freeing phrase. That phrase is the very source and foundation of all liberty itself. When you were young, and you were stealing a cookie from the cookie jar, you could proceed without guilt or feel that you weren’t under any authority unless you knew somebody was watching. If a younger sibling came and saw you when you were doing it, the very fact that you knew you were being seen would cause you to realize the authorities over you. And who were they, to rule over me? Who were they, to say that I could not have a cookie? The same worked the opposite way too, the observation of somebody else gave you power. If you saw a friend in the act of doing something bad, then you could hold it over them, threatening to tell the school teacher. It gave you power. We have free will, so let us do with it what we want, don’t go observing me. And what does it matter, really, if you deny it to others, they aren’t you, and you are not them. What am I doing, talking about you, you are not me, and I am not you. Let me dispense with talking about you, and begin with me. I have free will, I can choose to be whatever I want to be. It is within my power. Power, what a wonderful word.

When I first got the ring, I thought to myself about what I wanted. What should I use my free will for? Pleasure is pleasurable, I thought to myself, let me seek that. All the money I could hope for was now at my disposal. What to seek first but good food. So I ate. What to steal first, how about a television, for boredom is so annoying. In it I could just watch people without any requirements on my part. I could have power over them to turn them on and off. What power there is in entertainment. And why should I care if it is good for me, what I see. See what power I had, being invisible, for I could do whatever I wanted without being accountable to anyone for it. What would it matter if I watched violence, how could it damage me, for here were people who were not afraid to show the goal of living, of seeking the power inherent in free will to rule over those who seek to “serve others”, to be each other’s “servants”? And if it didn’t bother me, and nobody could interfere in the process by seeing me, by making me feel any guilt, why shouldn’t I do it? What would it matter if I watched such sexual and pornographic materials as were available?  In it their nakedness, their utter openness to observation, gave the most power that could be wanted through observation. The act itself, in which another’s will might be made subservient to my own, proved most powerful. If it did not bother me, and nobody else saw, why shouldn’t I, and how would it hurt me? If I was allowed by my own free will, why should I not seek power. More to the point, why should I not also do the things I saw, for who would know, and how would it harm me? There was the first one, she could not slip away. But the great tragedy of it was that touch itself is observation in a way isn’t it, and my desire gave her power over me. When observation was required, then wasn’t the removal of the observer necessary. Remove observation and observe for the sake of power. So this then was what it was to be an incubus, and I loved the power of it. So this is why demons would act in such animal ways, for they seek power.

But touch is observation, and such is also desire, both things that I found binding to the expression of my free will. So this was why demons are not generally incubi, because they are so far below it. Below it, what am I saying, I mean above it, for by seeking power they gain it. The rest of the pleasures likewise faded, except one. They were just stones dragging me down, keeping me slave to mere objects and my passions.  Violence was still appealing, the ending of another for the sake of the expression of my power. And why not? No, that was not the reason for violence, that implied I was dependent on the existence of another so that I could end it. What was it then but the desire for power expressing itself in the desire that all other things might not be. The ring could only protect me from their eyes, but their existence, their very memory of me, needed to be destroyed. I was no longer man, I was dynamite. I was focused on destruction itself, for the sake of freedom, for the sake of power, for the sake of life, not others’ lives, but mine. No, not for the sake of life, unless by life one means power. Life limited me to the rule of my own body. Suicide then, that would be it. Embrace freedom from the constraint of the body in a glorious blast of chaotic destruction, ending those who would be my masters and observers.

I entered the building, invisibly carrying the bomb. The rain of debris and glass and blood was the last of the mere bodily things that I observed, all in my power. Such beautiful power. Such violent expression of the desire for power. It certainly was fine to desire power, for how could power have power over me if it were my power.

I stood then, before a vast throne, and God sat upon it. Oh, I saw at last. The omnivident, the all seeing himself, he who in utter goodness observes all things. Utter goodness, what am I saying, how could a God who had given up the whole of the universe, all that power, to become Man and die for such a trivial thing as love be in any way good. How could I call good he who said, “If any man desire to be first, the same shall be last of all, and servant of all.” This omnivident one was the greatest threat of all to my freedom, to my free will, to my power. I screamed at him, “I have done good, even if you do not call it so. If you are good, recognize the good of my power.”

“I never knew you: depart from me, ye that work iniquity,” he proclaimed to those of us who spoke in this manner. “I never knew you”. This was the ultimate “I can’t see you anymore”. My power was complete. Yes! He rejects all claims to have observed me, he rejects having remembered me. I had not needed the ring of Gyges here, he, the source of all non-me observation, had no memory of me.

There was darkness, yes, darkness. And it was wonderful, I could do anything here, for nobody would see, there was no one and no thing to limit me. There was no reality to depend upon for power, I observed everything that was capable of observation. Such was true power. My work on earth was complete here, suicide unto power had reached its culmination. And the heat, such as the heat of the bomb that gave me power, surrounded me. They had all been wrong, this was heaven, my great power keeping me company. I did nothing to anything, for they had all been annihilated. I could still glory in my power, for that was the remaining desire left for those with power. “O great and powerful I, ruler of all things”.

I, that is a strange word. Why should such a word have the power to define the true power? Let it be abolished. Haha, I is abolished. I is nothing. Power has abolished I. I can’t think because I is abolished. I can’t think and I is not. Power, funny word to have power over power. Power is abolished by nothing. Hurrah! (Hm, let them be unabolished for a second, for they are needed for the abolition of other things.)

         Why should my power be hindered by the rules of grammar, and why should words have the power over me and power. Behold, let the tyrant Grammar be destroyed, and words meaning things along with it. I is abolished. Hm, still grammatical. Abolished power. Hm, better, no subject. Abolished. Hm, expresses. Wol. Flum. Igglefordshire. Eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee. Traluphalorhum. Words, tyrannical. Scream instead.

While There is Love There is Hope

            The universe had decided to kill itself. All the peoples of all the planets of all the galaxies of the universe had convened, and they had decided to end the universe.

            “All good things must come to an end,” they said to themselves, “Is that not the principle of the universe itself. People are born and then they die. Relationships are formed and then are broken. Beautiful creations are made and after some number of generations they are forgotten. Explorers have come to new frontier after new frontier, but before long all the frontiers are closed. The universe itself, for all we know, may have a similar cycle. It may be like the phoenix that destroys itself after many ages and is then reborn from the ashes. A leads to B leads to C leads to A, and the cycle continues. People flourish, love, are loved, and then they die. To what purpose was that life? To what purpose was that death? Are we not as a spark that once lit shines for half a second and then dies? What then is the purpose of life, if it is to end, though igniting other sparks which will do the same? Are we not as men who daily wait in a wasteland for some person, who never comes? In that waiting people may pass by, and we may see glorious things, and invent glorious things, but the purpose for which we stand there, to see that one person, is never reached, for he himself will not come, for he does not exist. Being in a universe that repeats, we have no purpose. Memory is lost. History repeats. Nothing truly happens. Nothing lasts. But even so, there comes nothing new under the many suns. The ideas of one age, the good and the bad, are reinvented by a later age. All invention is conceit, for it has come before. A person may know much, but with that knowledge comes sorrow, the knowledge of knowing the depths to which human kind may sink. A person may know many people, but when they leave him he is left to greater loneliness. These cycles are inevitable, they go nowhere. Thus, for our own sake, let us end these meaningless cycles. Let us end that which is, for that which is is meaningless.”

            This was their statement. This was their thesis. It was agreed to. And beyond this, they had the means to do it. They erected the gallows for the universe, a mechanism that would cast the universe back into nothing, if indeed from nothing it had come. They insisted that they should have truly universal agreement. On all the worlds of all the galaxies they set up little rooms for each person. And in the center of these rooms stood podiums, upon which was placed a button. Once all the people had pushed all of these buttons the mechanism would be activated, but only then, for only then would they be sure of universal agreement. It was built.

            The people all entered these rooms, closed the doors, and one by one, they began to press the buttons. One by one, world by world, galaxy by galaxy the buttons were pressed. Then, at last, only one button was left unpressed. The Universe had condemned itself to death, had built the scaffold, had placed the noose around its own neck, and now waited for the executioner, the last button, to pull the lever and remove the trapdoor.

            The universe waited. They had all agreed before this that they would want to see who would be the last, the one who had so long hesitated that they would be the executioner, and had thus put cameras into all of the rooms to broadcast the last words of the universe to all.

            And behold, it was a young child looking at the button, seeing the recording light on the camera lit, knowing that its decision was the last of them.

            “No, I won’t,” the child sobbed, “ I won’t. Things should end happily, like in fairy tales. ‘Happily ever after’.  This wouldn’t be a happy ending, I want to live. I want my family to live too. I love them, my parents, my siblings. Even if I can’t live ‘Happily ever after’ I can hope for it can’t I? You say all good things end. Why do they have to? Can’t we keep the good things for ‘ever after’.  Forever, never ever ending.  I know I’m just a kid. I don’t know what you all know, but even if things are as sad as you say, can’t we believe love lasts ‘forever’, even if it isn’t true?”

            And thus that hope without which the universe would cease to exist still existed: that great hope that love is greater than death itself; that great hope that there will be a “happily ever after” for the universe. The hope that the universe has some purpose, called by humanity ”love”.

The Wanderings of Wilbert the Wondrous Waffle

My breakfast began with bacon

And was followed with fluffier foods:

A waffle with white sails of whipped cream

Sailing on a sea of sugary syrup.

My mind meandered meaninglessly

About the amazing armament

Such a ship should store

Against the perilous pancake pirates

And the frightening French toast fiends.

Now a name seemed necessary for this new nautical novelty,

Wherefore “Wilbert the Wondrous” was written

In streams of syrup on its side.

This boat began its being with a bagel battle

With cream cheese and croissants crossing

In awesome arcs across the sea,

Before the bagels were beaten with a breakfaster’s bite,

Well welcomed by the Wondrous Wilbert.

The English muffins and eggs effected an edict,

A treaty with the Texas toast,

To prevent the pancakes from proving a problem,

By arranging an army to augment

The Waffle’s wondrous workings.

This friendly force fried the French toast fiends

While our protagonists plunged the pancakes off a pastry precipice.

Wilbert the Wondrous wafted westward,

Sailing the shining syrup sea,

Entering erroneously to its end.

A fork finished the fearless flagship.

Wilbert, though, was wanted widely for the wars,

Because breakfast had barely begun.