Posted on 11/08/2004 11:45:36 AM PST by quidnunc
When prisoners are released from prison, they often say that they have paid their debt to society. This is absurd, of course: crime is not a matter of double-entry bookkeeping. You cannot pay a debt by having caused even greater expense, nor can you pay in advance for a bank robbery by offering to serve a prison sentence before you commit it. Perhaps, metaphorically speaking, the slate is wiped clean once a prisoner is released from prison, but the debt is not paid off.
It would be just as absurd for me to say, on my imminent retirement after 14 years of my hospital and prison work, that I have paid my debt to society. I had the choice to do something more pleasing if I had wished, and I was paid, if not munificently, at least adequately. I chose the disagreeable neighborhood in which I practiced because, medically speaking, the poor are more interesting, at least to me, than the rich: their pathology is more florid, their need for attention greater. Their dilemmas, if cruder, seem to me more compelling, nearer to the fundamentals of human existence. No doubt I also felt my services would be more valuable there: in other words, that I had some kind of duty to perform. Perhaps for that reason, like the prisoner on his release, I feel I have paid my debt to society. Certainly, the work has taken a toll on me, and it is time to do something else. Someone else can do battle with the metastasizing social pathology of Great Britain, while I lead a life aesthetically more pleasing to me.
My work has caused me to become perhaps unhealthily preoccupied with the problem of evil. Why do people commit evil? What conditions allow it to flourish? …
-snip-
(Excerpt) Read more at city-journal.org ...
later
b
The article's worth a read all the way through. Implicit is a defense of the Father and a primacy of the Child at the heart of that Self-Giving which has become an exercise in Self-Gratification.
I'm also struck by his noting the uselessness of "managing" or fixing depression as a syndrome without addressing the fact one has brought one's unhappiness upon themselves. Something the Prozac Nation should take to heart.
Particularly grim, IMHO, is his portrait of the "empowered women" who know the state will hedge the bet they'll Choose Correctly and, if not, serve as Provider, Security and guarantor of continued Sexual License and other "rights" without obligations. I am not a fan of women's suffrage and believe the natural charity and overly optimistic outlook of women has been capitalized upon to their own disadvantage. I cannot imagine anyone's pretending for a moment that the state of women today -- even and especially the Successful ones who "have it all" and for whom every minute of every day is a decision to borrow from Peter to pay Paul or vice verse -- is somehow better than once it was when they had a choice to be fulltime Mothers to and educators of their children.
Lagniappe ... an old thread which may take a refresh or two to pull up: Willing Slaves of the Welfare State (C.S. Lewis)
outstanding, thanks for the post.
Dennis Prager interviewed him on his show earlier this year when he was promoting his book Life at the Bottom: The worldview of the Underclass
Dalrymple is not his real name but his pen name.
Thanks for posting this.
I'm very confused. I hope it's not permament.
Another benefit of FR has been an introduction to Dalrymple's work -- he is now by far my favorite columnist.
Now that was an opus! Not from FR of course but working with the British underclass. Godspeed Theo wherever you may be.
ProLife Ping!
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Evil is so often tawdry. We want it to be like Hanibal Lecteur, a demon bigger than life to haunt our nightmares, but more often it's more like the loser down the street who beats up his wife to make up for his own feelings of worthlessness. And this is how it snags us. In the little compromises we make. In choosing to do this instead of that...then later, after a whole series of decisions, we turn back and see what's happened, and we are amazed.
Lord have mercy on us all.
read later
Many thanks for the ping. Excellent.
I want you to do me a favor and read this article ... particularly the part where he talks about Depression vs. Unhappiness.
It's well worth the read.
Evil is so often tawdry. We want it to be like Hanibal Lecteur, a demon bigger than life to haunt our nightmares, but more often it's more like the loser down the street who beats up his wife to make up for his own feelings of worthlessness. And this is how it snags us. In the little compromises we make. In choosing to do this instead of that...then later, after a whole series of decisions, we turn back and see what's happened, and we are amazed.
Hear hear ...
I know folks often attribute the sentiment of "all it takes for evil to triumph is for good men to do nothing" as indicative of how little it generally takes to combat evil and stop it in its tracks.
But on a personal level each of us naturally falls into the deadliest of sins absent real effort to be good. It's being good that's the tough part, the triumph. Being evil is easy. Too easy.
Very difficult -- almost impossible for particularly slothful and disorganized folks like myself -- to form Good Habits. I have scads of bad ones I'd love to break, however.
Cheers, Conundrum. I enjoy your posts.
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