Technobabble.

Technology has increased, but humanity's ability to logically understand the world around it, has decreased.

The Glow.

“Come into the light. Come see me, feel me, touch me.” The voices seemed to come from everywhere and nowhere. The voices came from my own head. I looked into the room where they tried to keep me for so many years. I was too stifled there to breathe. I was being told exactly what to feel and how to think. The presents of that glowing tube was always there. Though not always on, it never seemed to be off. Every image was there; but it always moved. It told a story, or it “informed”. Why do we have this glowing box in our home?

It feels just like when we have certain books around ourselves, at all times, but they are never read. I have known several people who carry one specific book all the time; but they know almost nothing of what is written inside. It is just like carrying a brief case that only comic books are kept.

An ideology stands. There they put a famous man, said to have conquered death. But all the things he claimed to have said… They act in an exact opposite manor. “To offer the other cheek” of yourself has turned to “Blow their mother-fucking face OFF!”

Even the view of “God and Country” is blasphemous. He stated to “Give unto Caesar what is Caesar’s” to keep him out of harm, and to tell his followers to only do only what is absolutely needed for the government you are under. Pay you “debt” to society but to never forget what is most needed and asked for.




How can it so easily be misconstrued?

Small town fears.

Yesterday, I was wasting time, and chatting away my life with a few past friends and co-workers long lost to time. As is always the case, they asked what I am doing with myself these days. I tell em how I am looking for the 9-5, and in the mean time, doing as much writing as I can get in with my limited ability at the craft. At this they always ask what I am writing and the same answer always comes about. I tell em I’m working on a couple of novels and I am working on a work of political ethics/philosophy that I am very proud of. They press to know more... As per the usual, I tell them more of the specifics and, usually, they become more intrigued. Not this time!

As soon as I mention the occult (nothing more than the simple use of the word) and they suddenly disappear and I get a message telling me I am no longer able to converse with this person through facebook. No issue to me. I never really had any significant conversations with her before, anyways. So, I thought nothing of it.

But, then - I get a threatening e-mail from her husband. (Whom I have never talked with in the whole of my life.) He told me to never contact her again and that there was no way I could have known her in real life. (I worked at the same place she did for YEARS...) My only response was to the e-mail was the only 1 I saw to be correct to the situation, “The only one doing/saying anything threatening is you. And if you ever do it again I will go to a higher power source.” Thankfully I did not hear from him again, but it sure helped me to remember why I am taking the time to write what I am; maybe it will have an impact and help to get rid of that kind of fear and open hatred. Maybe not, but I will have done what I could with what I saw as the best way to get it done. (More on that later.)

Where did the great writers go?

        What do I find to love?  To fill my time with? Books, my wife, a few people, and my thoughts, are my most pleasurable things. Each day comes and goes. But when I look back on my day, and find myself the happiest, it is when I have sat and read, talked with my wife for hours, and got to spend my time thinking over what I read, and where those thoughts lead me for the day.

       It is rare to find me reading the work of a writer that is alive today. So few current writers have found anything new to write about, and their style does not touch what was done over one hundred years ago. Tolstoy, Dostoevsky, Crowley, Nietzsche, and Heidegger changed literature as it was known. They took the narrative and found new ways to express it and bestow information upon us that enlightened us.


       Tolstoy told history like no other thought it could be done. Dostoevsky finally got one deeply into the mind of his characters. One knew just what they were thinking without needing to be told. In The Idiot we could see and feel the interactions of the characters, not just from what actually took place in his words, but from what they were thinking and feeling. We knew the emotions and internal conflicts more than any other part of this amazing novel. We almost didn’t care about the action until it finally exploded, and forced us take account of its happenings.

       Crowley and Nietzsche made us question the world and all our former religious beliefs. No longer did we just go into our religious congregations and simply follow what we were being told for face value any more. Both were deemed the Anti-Christ for looking into what was actually there, deeply and philosophically. No longer would the interpretations of the pulpit be solely satisfactory. They refused to simply believe what was told to them, and  taking the Buddha’s advice, questioned everything. And if that was not shocking enough; their use of language put them far above any other writer during their time. Reading their work has a flow that did not come out of any other writer. Even the headiest concepts of Nietzsche just flowed without hesitation. While any other writer would have stumbled to find the right words (and how to connect these ideas onto a page with cohesion)  this man knew just how to write so one is not only drawn into beautiful and poignant ideas, but it awed by its flow and perfect decorum of word usage. One’s only regret of reading him will be that there is not enough! The heart aches for more but there is none!

       Heidegger took the ideas of all the great thinkers before him. He gathered all of them together and created a new frame work of use; a new and useful system that awed and transfixed its readers. And if the ideas and intermingling of these thoughts and practices were not enough, he changed German word usage to what it is today. These changes not only affected the readers of his country, and his time, but changed language around the world. “Nesses” added to the end of a word would not impact us as it does today if were not for his writings; and that is only one example. Even translations of books, in other languages, are now translated with the current way of word usage brought about by Heidegger’s sentence and word structure. Even those who were too simpleminded to understand his theories benefited by this man’s ability to write and express himself in printed word.



Will literature one day return to these great minds and writers? Or will we suffer to be spoon fed by simpletons and baboons of the human languages forever? I only hope we return to seeing what the greatest did, and learn.

Mid-West Mantality

Rule #1.

What is it, you may ask? It is the mental capacity and social interactions that take place between men in the Mid-West of the United States of America. These characteristics may exist in other parts of the country, and the world, but my experience is here in the Mid-West. (Kansas City and some of the surrounding rural areas to be specific.)

The first and foremost rule is to be forgetful. This is the most important part of social interactions. (At least for them to work well.) If you are one with a good to great memory you are the rude one. Let me explain. People have the most traumatic, and the most extremely pleasurable, memories in the forefront of their minds at all times. You will easily be able to remember something like a perfect wedding, being shot, or a traumatic car accident. These are always at the very tip of your mind, and this is true of anyone who has lived as a member of our modern-thinking-public. Delving deeply into ones memory is taboo because that takes real thought and mental work to accomplish. So, these few stories that sit in the easily reached part of the mind are told over and over again. It is just easy for the story teller this way. As a listener, if you remember the story and choose not to sit through it again, you are rude. But oddly it is not seen as rude that the story teller is taking up twice as much of your life than is necessary.

My favorite quote I took away from a college professor was, "The only irreplaceable commodity is time. You can always make money, but you can never replace your time."

This will run counter to my professor's wise words, but; the remedy (and aiding substance) for this problem with story telling and listening, is alcohol. This is the perfect elixir for both sides of the issue, and has been used to an extreme in our society.

Alcohol works by filling in part of the blood stream. It does not homogeneously mix with the blood in your veins, but creates spaces in the blood of pure alcohol. These patches of alcohol travel to the brain, and when these patches meet with brain cells (which are trying to receive nutrients and oxygen) they take in the pure alcohol and die. Drunkenness is really only a slow smothering of the brain. Each time one drinks, part of the brain dies, and the part of the brain most affected is memory and cognitive abilities. This must be why bars are so popular in the Mid-West of America. These institutions help us in our social interactions; and most people have spent so much time staring at a computer screen that they have become socially inept.

Without this social drug we cannot interact the way we should. (With social acceptably.) Most find this only to be true during the initial social event. But if one is to look at social interaction much more macro cosmically they will see that alcohol consumption is needed for its long term affects as well. To forget what one is told, watched, or read only helps increase entertainment levels at the next telling, viewing, or reading for all those involved; plus it helps keep management and trainers employed.

H1N1 vaccination is the final nail in the economic climate’s coffin.

Why are we doing this to ourselves? Anyone who has studied history and the progression of illness, we will see that high death tolls and economic boons run hand in hand. The economy suffers the most when a population is too large to be sustained by the commodities it has at hand. After the Black Plague, Europe saw the greatest economic climate the free market system has ever seen. There were 2/3 fewer people to use the same number of goods. (And services in proportion.)

People who survived received livable wages and could work in any field they wanted to enter. There was 2/3s more work than ever before, and those who survived were strongest and healthiest 1/3 of all of Europe. The world was theirs to have and their children ruled the Earth.

Unlike war as population control, letting a disease kill millions is cheap. Funerals may be expensive now, but it is because those in that market are suffering. If millions die, money will be given to this service, and it will be saved from the collapse it is looking straight in the eye. The price of a funeral will decrease because of competition and a surplus of available work.

To not vaccinate will save the world as we know it. It will bring the world’s economy back to life, it will cause more to be given freely to those who need it, the poor and weak will die off making the human gene pool stronger, and wars over limited goods will be extinguished because fewer people means more to go around.

This may sound cruel. But it is only nature’s checks and balances that we have refused to surrender to for the last century. We need to return to the balance we have refused for so long. If we don’t, we will suffer more as a race in the long run. It is just like a deer population; when we do not allow hunters to enter and kill the deer, which no longer have natural enemies, the deer eat themselves out of resources and starve to death. Let us not allow humanity to fall to the same fate.

Woman shot while needing help.

http://www.fox4kc.com/news/wdaf-kim-hudson-fifth-trial-100909,0,3898856.story

This woman (Kim Hudson) was shot twice just because the police could use force; she never left her bed. Ms. Hudson was in need of help to save her life, not to help her do away with herself. What makes this even worse is that the police office who shot her lied about what really happened, caused her father to have to spend over $140,000 to have the truth come to light, and then have the tax payers complain that the family wants to sue to recoup some of the lost money! They deserve to get that money back! I am sure the police did not pay her hospital bills, let alone all the money spent in court!

We give the police badges to serve and protect. This is a gift and a duty. They should not use their force to torture and kill. The evidence proved that she never left her bed and was was shot maliciously. Not as a serious threat to the police. The serious threat came to fruition when the police shot a woman in need of help.

But what could come to be a very real threat for Ms. Hudson, can be the police, or another member of that force, seeking retaliation for making them look like the blood thirty, trigger happy mad-men they were. I hope some one will continue to keep a watch out for her future safety, especially after they have already tried to use the excuse that "She was suicidal".

Thinking, and reading, to find out why.

If I were to say that I can feel when I should turn to a certain book, you would say I am crazy. But I can. I reach for one book, it will push me away and I will feel a repulsion and metaphysical sting. But when I reach out to read another book, or passage, I can feel myself being drawn to it. It is almost as if I was in connection with the writer and somehow am drawn magickally to the correct passage at just the right time.

This week I was drawn to Schopenhauer. It was perfect for me to read that he felt that reading books did not give ideas but only allowed the reader into the mind frame of that writer at the time of his writings of that passage. To recieve and have ideas are totally different thing. Ones need to be in the world around them to be able to truly have original thought.

Then, I read Nietzsche, and he said very similar things, but he spoke against scholars who would go through 200 books in a day and just glean a little bit of information. They were a wealth of knowledge, but of no real use because they are only telling the ideas of others they have memorized. I know when I was reading voraciously I felt that same feeling. These were great ideas but they were not my own. Pirsig wrote about needing to know the ground work of philosophy, but there is so much of it that it would take two life times just to get into the information. That time frame would only allow one to get the ground work without ever getting into their own thoughts.


Time to write mine.

Chair Legs, Duct Tape, Cops, and Strays? Where did that come from?

The police might have been tipped off by people in fear. It is not a 1st time this has come about. Fear of the unknown has always been used as a means to control the people. In the Dark Ages it was any one who opposed the Pope. During the time leading up to World War II those to fear were the Jews. During World War II, in The United States, it was anyone of oriental decent. Fear of Blacks and Hispanics, by whites, have lead to false arrests and convictions based on racial prejudices.

All of these lead to horrible occurrences. The Pope led The Crusades. Fear of the Jews caused mass exterminations of them, during World War II, at the hands of the Nazis. Fear of oriental people caused the building and use of concentration camps in the United States; with false convictions of minorities blemishing the face of the United States Judicial system. Of course I could go into many more cases, but I feel the greatest threat to liberty and freedom now is the lack of true freedom of religion in the United States. Most of this comes from the fear emanating from the citizens who are ignorant of other religion. They fear what they do not know.

My old band, The Hyred Goons, would put up fliers promoting our shows with satanic imagery to try to help us gain interest on the campus and in the community. Although we laughed about how cheesy they were our newest bassist made a comment that maybe they were taken seriously. Though we laughed at him, he felt that there was a really good chance that several of those fliers were actually on file at the police department. He knew firsthand what it was like to be feared from ignorance.

Back just before I knew him, he had been pulled out of his car and put on the ground at rifle point because “He looked like someone the police were looking for”. They tore his whole car up looking for drugs that he never had. (At that time in his life, he never imbibed alcohol on any occasion; let alone any other drug.) But because his hair is long and he wears a full faced beard he had to be scary and a criminal. No one took the time to care that that look was simple a family look that had been passed on for generations, and in all those generations, they have been very law abiding citizens. But this did teach him to fear those who carry guns.

Even as a band we were harassed by the police. Each time we got done with a rehearsal we would go for a walk around the town. We used this as a great opportunity to be together and in that time we learned a great deal about the town in which we lived in. We found the caves that were used in the Underground Railroad, we got to see the old courthouses, houses, and learn about them from the historical markers in front of them. Almost all of our walks were educational in some way. We would learn about each other, the town, or unexplored parts we’d never seen with our own eyes. One day we learned a great deal about the police.

We were talking one of our walks around town and it was Spring Cleaning for many people. They had a ton of things out at the curb. Some of it was still useful and we picked some of it up as we were on our way. Also, a dog decided to follow us on our walk.

This dog loved to walk right into oncoming traffic. It was as if the thing should have been a moth. When it saw light, there it went, right into the middle of the road so that he could be hit without any extra effort on the part of the driver. But, being the animal lovers we were, or at least not wanting to see an animal killed in front of us, we did all we could to keep this poor, dumb animal out of direct harm’s way.

One of the vehicles that we tried to save it from was a police car. We did all that we could to keep it out of the road, this included surrounding it so it was blocked from the street. As the car drove on our friend said, “I bet he’s turning around and calling for back-up”. We laughed about it. But sure enough, that is what happened. The officer stopped and told us to come to the car as another patrol vehicle come to a stop at the top of the hill. We were surrounded.

This officer took each one of us aside and asked us everything he could think of. (Not very much...) He asked us what we were doing with that dog. Though he suggested we were peeing on it, we simply said, “He keeps following us. We have never seen him before in our lives.” He asked my wife what drugs she was on and where they were. (She has never been a drug user.) He searched me. (For drugs or weapons and found nothing.) He asked what I was doing with the things I had picked up. “He’s just a pack rat and thinks he could make use of it. It was in their trash and no mess was made.” After not finding anything he could use against us, he finally allowed us to be away from his halitosis that even the gum he was chewing could not cover up.

Although harassed and belittled, it did give us the name of our album “Chair Legs, Duct Tape, Cops, and Strays” which we released on June sixth of 2006.

Go to: The Hyred Goons web page to hear it,

Either/Or A Fragmentation of my life. Was it good or bad? It sure was words on a computer screen.

Isn't it strange how some 1 you know can have such a great impact on you....?

Current mood:Indulgent

Category: Friends

On Sunday (Back in April) I had some time to sit down to a news paper. Though this is not something I do on a normal basis, I did apon this day. I was reading through the local part of the paper and came to the anniversary and engagement section. Laughing to myself, I stated that I always find myself not knowing any of those involved in these celebrations. But, as I looked through it, I chuckled that one of the ladies looked like an old friend of mine that I had, at 1 time, been very close to. Thinking that it could not be her I did not even think about it. Then I saw the names of the soon-to-be bride's parents. They were my old friend's! OMG! She's getting married to the son of one of my college professors! OMG! This is so cool. Totally a shock to no end, and I could not be happier for her. I heard she'd been through alot sence I'd been around her via her mother. So this bit of good luck and potential of great things was a great sight to see.I thought about the times I knew her and was close to her. Then I thought about how these interactions had such a great impact on my life!

I met her @ a music camp while both of us were in high school. She was very outgoing and I was quite the shy and quiet guy. She came up to me one of the days and we walked to the new library and talked for hours on end. We continued to see each other durring the camp and near it's end we exchanged e-mail addresses and went apon our seperate ways.

As time went on our e-mails turned to chatting and evetually I asked her to come to a high school homecomming dance with me. Beyond my comprehention, then or now, my mom suggested that she come and spend the weekend of the dance @ our house! She'd come up, see the game and half time show, spend that night, go to the dance the next night, stay another night, and go back home on that Sunday.This did end up working out and we had a grand time other than I was sicker than a dog. Though forbidden we spent our nights in my room talking and hanging out, swapping stories, and jumping @ every sound that came from any part of the house! @ the dance we had a wonderful, if not reserved, time being with those I knew and had introduced her to @ the game the night before. Though the week end seemed to fly by, she went back home, and soon after made a request, by e-mail, to be my girl friend. Although the relationship did not last long, she was my first girl friend. Little did I know how much more she was going to influence me.

Though only friends we continued to e-mail and chat. She told me of all the things going on in her life and eventually I learned why she had broken up with me. Though I should give more detail to my reader, I will only say that situations were of the upmost in drama and family conflict and I more than understood her need to part ways, and to be with those who could be with her in person and comfort her.

Time went on and we both got into new relationships. We still talked, but only as friends, still antisipating our next encounters at the next music camp. There I was her buddy. You'd think we'd been joined at the hip. If you saw one of us you saw the other. I was also her confessor. New life experiences had come into her life and some of them could have had life long concequences. I was there to talk w/ her and be there as the friend she needed. The week went on with us as close as ever and talks of, maybe, being a couple again. We parted ways to once again be friends through the internet.

The decision to pick my college had come to it's time limit. I needed to choose where to go. I had scholarships to any school I'd like to go to. Each audition I did was met with $ and a promise of a great education. But my friend and I had been talking alot. She was sure she was getting out of a relationship, and I was the one she wanted to be with when the timing was right. With this information I knew I wanted to be able to be near her when we made this progression, so I chose the school closest to where she lived.

I moved there in late summer to start the marching band season. Every time I had a chance to go see her I went. I was there nearly every day and durring this time my friend saw that we were not ment to be. (This also ment she had 'better' prospectives in wait.) Even though we did not get back together as a couple I became close friends with her parents at this juncture. It came that I called her mom, my mom. When I needed something a mom can only do; I'd come to her. She also became my spiritual adviser and mentor. What she taught me and showed me still affect me to this day.

Time went on and my college courses started. I made the top jazz band (as a freshman) and there I met the woman who is now my wife. My wife and I met and in that week we were the best of friends. We seemed to be what the other needed and life continued on without my old friend untill one day, much later on, we ran into each other while I was on a walk and we got to talking again. She was with a guy I went to high school with but we still wanted to catch up a bit on each other's lives. We talked and got each other's phone #s and talked very sporadically.

As time went on my life headed down hill, till one day I called this old friend to see what she was up to. She told me she was throwing an apartement warming party and I should come over and meet her friends. I was there as fast I could get there. She had drinks, and as she headed out the door to get more, she told me to help myself to what was there. She'd be back asap. Boy did I ever! I was so loaded by the time she returned I don't even remeber her getting back. I was making an ass of myself and getting sicker all the time. @ this she took me back home to sleep it off. Little did she know that I had alcohol poisoning from my binge. If I had not passed out on my belly I'd be dead today.

Although this sounds like it would be horrible, and it was, it was another turning point in my life. When I came back home from the hospital my (now) wife told me she found me passed out and could not wake me so she had to call an ambulance. (Much more to that story but will be in another writing.) This near death experience turned my life around. I went into everything at full tilt. I was in school again, I got married, started a band, and changed religions in what seemed like no time @ all. I became who I was wanting to be. Nothing was to stop me again.

Though some bumps in the road have taken place sence then; I have continued on that path. I still am going, with a few detoures, but I'd going into life in a way that would make Voltaire himself proud.

While thinking over the rest of Sunday, I saw how much impact one single person had had on me. A person whom I did not spend much time with in face to face contact, but one that changed me so greatly. Was all the change good? Maybe not. Looking back she was just words on a computer screen. But it did create the person I am now. It caused me to choose where I went to school. (Maybe I should have gone to a better school; maybe the one my dad went to, or maybe the largest universaty in the state...) But this inter-personal relationship swayed me. These decisions put everything that followed into motion. It even caused another major turn further on down the road. But I'm here! This is who I am! Thank you! If you ever read this, all I can say is WOW! Who would have ever known, while it was all going on, that this is what it would come to??

"Freedom is what you do with what has been done to you." - Jean-Paul Sartre.

Sample from my Philisophical work.

I believed we all thought that the witch hunts were over. Once every one was required to read The Crucible in high school, I believed that we all learned that the scape-goating of ‘witches’ was a bad thing. We should have seen how this was nothing more that a grand scare with no real backing or rational behind it.

Those that were found and tried as witches were simply people who were not the common crowd. They were loners or eccentrics. Not people wishing to cause harm to children, like it was claimed they were. We all know that the children who were acting out these atrocities were simply children looking for excitement. When they saw how much power they had they took it for all it was worth. If some one came against them they turned the authorities (who now hung on their each and every word) after them.

But this still happens today. One would think that 400 years later the ousting of witches would no longer apply. Especially in a country that founds itself on freedom; especially when freedom of religion is one of the main points it is supposed to stand behind. How can one say its people are free to practice any religion they deem fit when the instruments of their choosing are used against them as evidence in criminal cases? Even the books one chooses to read or to use in religious practice can be used against them with the moniker of “It was strange and out of place so we took it in as evidence”?

This is wrong!

The Satanic Bible is a book of philosophy with one of its main points being “Freedom to the responsible”. This simply means that those who can handle freedom should have it but those who can not handle themselves need to be kept in check. Why should “authority” hold this book against some one? Is that not one of the main points of the United States? Is this not a large part of “The American Dream”?

So when someone has a copy of The Satanic Bible at the scene of a crime, should they be punished more than any one else having committed the same crime? I believe any non-religiously bias ethicist would say “Absolutely not!” But that is not what is commonly found to happen. Charges get grossly blown out of proportion and evidence changed to further damn those involved. All this happens in the name of “Stopping Satanic Crime” and those who use Satan as a tool for criminology, even when this is far from the actual/factual case.

Questions and Response from Fyodor Dostoevsky's The Idiot.

1. Dostoevsky wrote, in "The Idiot, that his idea was to “portray a perfectly beautiful man.” Did he succeed? Can you formulate what is “beautiful” about Prince Myshkin? If Dostoevsky did not succeed, in what particulars did he fail?

I view that Myshkin was not beautiful. He was neither aesthetic nor socially acceptable. We find that he was very sickly and was unable to care for himself without direct assistance from a caregiver. He angered those around him in many ways; Rogozhin became so angered with him that he tried to kill him. Myshkin was made to be naïve. Although he cared greatly for those around him, and only spoke ill of them to their faces. It was in an attempt to help them. Although his views were almost always taken as slights and insults, he viewed that what he said should have be said and understood just as he spoke it. His naiveté was his beauty, even though all those around him saw it as his greatest flaw and detraction.

2. Is it difficult, or even impossible, for one to go through life in imitation of Christ – because of the inevitability of human egoism or because of “our age of vices and railways”?

I view that is it impossible to be truly Christ-like because of “our age of vices and railways”. The time that Jesus was said to have lived, and our modern world are very different. Jesus came from a well-off enough family to be able to go into the wild and learn what he must, and to come to terms with being the Son of God. His notoriety then allowed him to be able to not “work” for a living. Food and shelter were given to him any where he went because his reputation preceded him. In the Bible, every stop he made he was taken in by a follower of his work and teachings.
In the case of Myshkin he was also taken in by family or those that felt sorry for him because of his illness. At the beginning of the story, they were ready to kick him out of their homes because he upset them so greatly. However, when he suddenly came into contact with a great sum of money, due to the death of a relative, he was welcomed back with open arms because they thought he may help them financially since they had opened up their home to him when he was poor and in need. But all the while they ridiculed him for being jobless and only having a talent for pretty writing. Those around him viewed him as an unbearable burden and viewed him being a “philosopher” as a waste of time and belittled him for it constantly.
It shocks me to see that they put up with the Prince as they did. I view that anyone wishing to do the same, in our modern time, would be treated even worse. Plus, we have had so great a number of people claiming to be the second coming of Jesus that without showing god-like powers no one would believe anyone acting in absolute accordance with Jesus’ teachings could be Jesus. I believe that one cannot live in a totally Christ-like nature without being seen as a freeloader and waste in today’s society. They would be viewed much like the homeless are viewed.

3. Is there anything in this novel for the atheist? Can the religious issues be read as metaphors for psychology or as psychological symptoms?

I do view that an Atheist can read and get a great amount of insight into religious psychology from this novel. I base this intrinsically on myself being an atheist and having gotten a great deal from this classic novel myself. I simply saw the religious issues as societal issues. They were more over inquires into the society, and mass psychological issues to me.
Prince Myshkin expounded upon not seeing how anyone could be Catholic after all that was shown of Catholicism during the Reformation of the 1600’s. I felt this came from the view points of the author himself. After having read other examples of Dostoevsky’s religious views, and views of Christ, I felt that the words of Prince Myshkin were merely the feelings and ideas of Dostoevsky himself. This novel and that character, were just ways for him to be able to get out his personal views of religious diversification and his feelings upon those subjects. By definition, the personal thoughts of an individual and how they affect his actions is psychology. This is especially seen as true because he did not go into any non-Christian religions, and therefore anything outside of his own thoughts and mind. The closest he came to this was talking of Jesus being a Jew and not understanding how the Jews did not progress to viewing him as a savior when they had walked among Him as a people.
These views were seen, by myself, as a way of looking into the society, and the psychology of the individual people. This was much like when I looked into the lives of those in Ireland during the religious wars that took place there. That case seemed to be just what Prince Myshkin spoke of, but with physical violence as the ultimate result. (I believe that Russia may have come to the same result if economic and political issues had not become the greater concern that they did.)

4. Can one extract from this novel a critique of the social structure in which the characters must move and live and have their being?

I believe one can critique the social structure of the characters from this novel. I believed that it showed very well the limits of the society, and the unwritten laws of society that they were obliged to hold on to. We saw this greatly in the cases of the female characters and who they were and were not allowed to be with, and the times of day certain interactions were allowed to take place. We also saw how certain topics were only allowed in letters and could not be spoken. Then, there was the rigidity of engagement vows and who could be seen with the engaged woman by the public without scandal. I feel these were expressed very well and in a very understandable manner even for those unfamiliar with that culture and sociological practices.

5. Are the tribulations of Alglaia and Nastasya the result of their personalities, or even their womanhood? Or are they caused by the position of woman in the particular society that the novel portrays?

I feel that both their personalities and their society have a great deal to do with who they are. Alglaia has been brought up sheltered and pampered. The only family that she ever lived with was the household of her parents.
Nastasya lost both of her parents and was shunned in society, and by herself, for being a married man’s mistress while she was too young to be able to change her situation. In today’s society the man would be seen as the wrong-doer and Nastasya would be seen, rightly, as the victim. Plus we saw how her being a kept mistress caused her great trouble and psychological turmoil. It was very easy to see how these events lead to her choices in romance, company, and ultimate death throughout the novel. It also showed where she had more freedom of choice in society but her own psychology did not allow her the same level of freedom. So, in reality, she was never free of the choices that were thrust upon her while she was young.
We can also see how these same life choices were in Aglaia’s life, but her young age and privilege helped her. We also see how their lives were completely decided by their elders. Both of these women had very little decision over what happened in their lives, in youth, and when they did try to make a choice the society around them forced them to alter what really took place. We were shown that being a woman in the late 1800’s of Russia was not enjoyable or free. These women simply had to take the life that was given to them and submit to it. If they tried to fight it they found themselves in an even worse place than if they had just let their world be decided for them.

Ethical political responsibility.

Have you ever lost a job with the reasoning being “Your representation of this company has not been to the caliper that this company likes to have presented to the community”? Though this has not happened to me, it can be a common reason for dismissal from a place of employment. Each day comes and goes and we are presenting many different things to many different people. For some, we may be representing ourselves as a member of a family, a public official, or maybe the face of a large corporation. Whoever we are, we are seen by the public through our work or simply seen in the public. When one of these high focal figures of a company makes a huge mistake we have it thrown in our faces by the media. It gets to the point where we cannot get away from knowing about what’s going on in their lives, much like with what is going on with David Letterman now. But these are just social figures. For the most part, what they do has almost no affect on us other than the knowledge being bestowed upon us by the media and the personal feelings this knowledge bestows upon us.

How come when something that really affects us, and those close to us, we rarely know about it? If new laws have been put into place we are rarely informed in a timely manner. Sometimes a poor soul does not know about the law change until they are being punished by this law change. What about when a politician votes in a way counter to those he or she is appointed to represent? We have to have a finger firmly on the pulse of politics to even find out. Why aren’t these things news? It may not be the most ethical thing for a well known figure to have an affair or have money stolen from them. But that really isn’t our business. That is a personal matter for them and those it involves. But a vote by a politician does affect us all! This is what should be in the news. We should be getting informed about what is changing and transpiring in the legal and political world around us. We need to know what kind of job a politician is doing to know if we want them continuing that line of work. What we don’t need to know about is who they take their clothes off with. I know who cares and why its news, but this should be the last part of their lives that we know about. Who they choose to fuck, no matter the ethical connotation, really does not affect what laws are put into place in any level of normal practice. So, let’s hold these people responsible in areas that actually matter!