2 May 2008
J Robert Brock Hacker

In the past few years I have read everything Theodore Dalrymple has written. Having read all his books, I anxiously await the first of each month and his contribution to TNER. He is an exceptionally gifted and erudite man and I admire him greatly. As I have studied his work  in which he struggles to deal with, particularly in the context of a post-religous world.  the evil in the universe, It seems that ever so more he labors over conclusions that are becoming increasingly undeniable and yet  which do not fit with his own worldview.

Particulary in "In Praise of Prejudice" He seems to go to extreme lengths to maintain his own agnosticism. In this piece too, Dalrymple seems to step right up to a logical conclusion that man is inherently evil [he is well versed in Calvinistic thought]  and  that God exists only  to recoil as if from a flame. If man is perfectable then little progress has been made since Cain slew Abel. In fact the twentieth century was arguably the most evil in history.  To continue to see man as basically good is to proceed with headlong denial of reality. How, in the face of overwhelming evidence to the contrary can an erudite man hold to this clearly untenable position? How can a hopeful man retain hope in a Darwinistic universe where man proceeds from the ooze to oblivion? It is clear in his writing that Dr. Dalrymple certainly cannot.

If man is a good animal gone wrong, what caused his downfall and If there is no absolute moral arbiter of the universe how can we even say what is good or evil? That Dr. Dalrymple is such a learned and honest man, he must know  instinctlively that as a matter of logical necessity, such arbiter must exist or Herr Fritzl's behavior is merely outside the bounds of current polite society.

It is not surprising that Dalrymple cannot find the answers he seeks in either Darwinism or religion. The first is self contradictory on too many levels and the latter seeks to teach man how to reach an ethereal God. Perhaps he might overcome his fear of unassailable and unwanted conclusions and reconsider Christianity, a world view in which a personal God  purposely reveals himself and utltimate truth to man whom he has created and endowed with meaning and dignity  . "The God Who Is There" by Dr. Francis Shaffer is an excellent place to start.

Sincerely,

J. Robert Brock Hacker

Lexington KY USA

3 May 2008
Enoch
But whatever crimes Austrians as individuals committed during the war, they committed them as Germans, not as Austrians. They were responding only to force majeure; the Austrian state was not implicated.

How could the Austrian state be implicated in war crimes?  It did not exist during the war!

3 May 2008
Arnie Keller
I may be as thick as a brick, but what does the following sentence mean?

4 May 2008
James Reidel
The Fritzl case and the Priklopil case involving Natascha Kampus, if they suggest a literary response to the Austrian national character, goes back further to Elias Canetti's Die Blendung (Auto-da-fe). In that novel, Canetti (ironically vis-a-vis his own sexual appetites) satirized this precise behavior in the person of the doorman to Kien's apartment, Benedikt Pfaff and his daughter.

4 May 2008
milkshake

I think invoking Nazis and specifically doublethink about Austria's past is stupid and forced in this case. Frittzl was described as "patriarch" and "despot" and I think maybe this sort of domineering father figure is more common in germanic countries.

Having had a fairly difficult and abusive father myself, I can tell you that all kinds of horrors can go on in the families and a marriage can be a private version of Hell. A certain percentage of people in population has psychopatic tendencies and sometimes these people take their frustrations and "revenge" for the life's humiliation on their family - especially if the family is the only place where they can act as the absolute rulers. Traditionally authoritarian societies make this abusive behaviour easier but there is a huge distance between strict upbringing and slavery, between punishing children with a belt and raping them in the cellar.  

The Fritzl case is extreme in the sense that it was going on for so long, that the perpetrator was so meticulous about hiding it and in terorizing all his family participants into submission.

 

5 May 2008
Liviu Serbanescu

 

I agree with the author’s idea that evil is not an Austrian monopoly, but part of our nature as humans. We will never achieve a perfect, evil-free society; some of the measures put in place will always backfire on us and foster abhorrent consequences we didn’t expect. I think that the string of such cases happening in Austria (Kampusch and Fritzl being the later ones) is not only a sign of inefficient authorities but also of the civilized nature of the vast majority of Austrians. The perpetrators were taken great efforts to conceal their crimes because they know they will be punished if the truth was found. In other countries, child abuse by parents is met with indifference in many poor and uneducated communities, and as a consequence the secret imprisonment of the victims is unnecessary. As the author noted, we are a mystery to ourselves. Being aware that evil is a very real part of our own soul is the only way to control it.

8 May 2008
fUny1
"I also fear such an explanation, were it possible,  because it would give enormous power to him who possessed it"

Not if he freely shares it with the rest of humanity.

There are four elements in the zodiac due to the radiation coming from the sun and it oscillates into 4 varying wavelengths. Earth, water, Wind, Fire signs are basically 4 wavelengths of light. Each wavelength, when striking the human embryo either in the womb or the baby after first exposed to light, light up the circuitry that is Human DNA and end up wiring the human being with a personality type based on the angles that connect the DNA via the light specific wavelength.

This is how the base personality is shaped. The wavelengths do not switch from month to month but slowly change and thus provide a plethora of combinations within the specific sign types.

Laws of Optics as a metaphor for human behavior: A concave lens is thin in the middle( a shallow heart) while a convex lens is thick in the middle( a big heart). The concave lens, when light is shown through it, focuses the light and redirects it in one beam through the center( metaphorically burning with this light due to a shallow heart)
The convex lens, with its big heart, proceeds to do the opposite with the light that is shown through it. It shines the light in all directions since it is the metaphor for the anti grinch heart that is full of love.

Someone said once to be "like light". Why? well light is the fastest object in our Universe. The fastest makes its frequency very high and the wavelength very small. Wavelength is rate of change. Rate of change is akin to Chaos and uncertainty and doubt. Having the smallest rate of change implies the an unwavering state of tranquility.

Due to the actuality of an ultimate Zero sum game based on conservation of energy, in order for one to become rich someone else, must become poor. In order to become very rich, many others must become very poor. Wealth of the few is directly proportional to the poverty of the multitudes

Due to the fact that Gravity exerts a force that requires constant energy to keep the earth in tow to the sun for example, Gravity violates the law of conservation of energy.

Since Energy cannot be created or destroyed but merely transformed into another form, it can be stated that the presence of Gravity( providing constant "free" energy unexplained by the Laws of Newton or Einstein) implies that there must be another plane of existence that is providing this energy freely.

This implies that this universe/reality has a benefactor. The base reality that is the source of this energy is a reality that has no creator.

Since we have free energy in the form of the mysterious force of Gravity( what exactly is it?) this reality has a creator.

This creator can take the form of an always present consciousness that manifested its ideas and thoughts into the physical Universe that we inhabit today.

Consciousness is of a higher order than matter. Matter cannot beget consciousness accidentally or via the Anthropic principle.

Consciousness begets matter. If it were not true than a nail and hammer should be able to eventually build a house without a builder.

Evolution occurs but I've never seen something evolve out of nothing.

Unless you redefine nothing to explain everything that is. Zero is the sum total of all positive and negative integers. Therefore Zero is both nothing and everything.

9 May 2008
Michael Koch, MD

TD, thanks! I have a comment.

Why we are so fascinated by the evil and not by the good things and events? It could have an evolutionary explanation. Neil Postman ('amused to death') and Karl Steinbuch ('Masslos infomiert') have addressed this issue.

Good news are no news (see DDR's Neues Deutschland: 'Everything is wonderful, our country is superior, the running broilers won, the potatoes are harvested, we are very effective, a new record, hight ambition surpassed, everything goes smooothely...'). Such a newspaper we use for the fireplace or throw it into the waste bucket. Such news from the butler make us lean back in the sunchair and go on reading our book, sucking on a lime juice.

Bad news, however, require and deserve action: The dog is missing. The child didn't come home from school. Water drops through the ceiling, smoke comes from the cellar...

We drop the book and spill the juice and jump up to do something...

That is the crucial difference between good and bad: We calmly enjoy what is good. We fear and fight what is evil.

Therefore we hate state propaganda, even if it is true, and love whistle-blowers, even if they are wrong...

To put a big question short.

Y sinc       MG Koch, Sweden

11 May 2008
Ramesh Raghuvanshi

To understand oneself is very difficult job. Iam not sure in certain suation how I will behave.Tragedy happen in Astria is happening all over world.I think this is not rear story.

Question is how  people of that city keep mum?but this is also common trend all over world.Is it defect of genes or envoroment effect?

In 21 century so much progress is there in pchysical and humantries sciences we are till  ignorant.

12 May 2008
Tom Lowe
As one educated in cultural anthropology and cultural psychology, I see nothing at all in this Fritzl case that reflects on the Austrian cultural psyche in any way, shape or form whatsoever.