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- Jan 25, 2013
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I like this site, so I'll post some of my ramblings (history, culture, not current-political).
I don't really post in this section of the forum all that much because I don't care a whole lot about current politics.
Among other things, besides flying airplanes, building doors and windows, and software development, I do have a formal literature education. I was not a happy econ/finance student and you didn't need a formal education to work in the software business when I went to do that in the dot-com boom years, so literature was the only thing I had an interest in.
I've always had the idea that I could write professionally, but have only recently began doing the reading required to catch up on the previous writings within my narrow range of ideas, which leads me to a lot of little gems that don't really fit anywhere else.
Absent other places that I visit regularly having a thriving off-topic section, I'll post my random nuggets of research here, do with them whatever you like!
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If you ever read Edgar Allan Poe, you probably were told at some point that he was an alcoholic, maybe a drug addict, with a talent for writing ghost stories, that died penniless. I think history has relegated him to such a miserable fate because they didn't like some things he had to say.
That history was written by a professional enemy and not really accurate. In reality, Poe was a very well educated man who made his living as a magazine editor and literary critic first, and as a fiction writer second. He was on the forefront of many issues of his day, and was professionally successful enough to sustain himself as a lecturer in his later years.
One essay in particular, published in 1840, "Insanity vs. Reason" deals with the issue of "how reasonable are we?" And by extension, "how mad is a madman?"
Three years later Poe put this idea to fiction with the story "The Tell-Tale Heart". It's quite short if you haven't read it, but the gist of it is a man has murdered a housemate, and in response to an accusation by the police that he is insane, insists that he is not insane at all. On the contrary the murderer is quite proud of his state of mind, and claims that his plan to execute the murder and hide the body is evidence of his sanity rather than of his insanity.
In a remarkable example of timing, two months after the initial publication of this story, an inmate killed the warden at the only Massachusetts state prison at the time. The man's lawyer presented the court with an odd plea, that the man is not guilty because he is insane. This presented a problem for the court system, obviously, and one that is still an issue today. If free will is required to be guilty of a crime, how can a madman be guilty? Alternatively, if a man commits horrible crimes and isn't insane, what does that say about the inherent virtue of free will in our religious history and legal foundations in western democracy?
Faced with this conundrum, the judge gave the jury some rather damning instructions. He blatantly instructed them to acquit the man who murdered the warden if they believed that he was insane. The judge decided in what would be a foundational case on the matter, that the principle of free will was more important than the ramifications of letting one murderer off the hook.
The man was found not guilty due to insanity, the case is still widely studied in the context of insanity pleas.
Oh by the way, the judge was Herman Melville's father-in-law.
At least one other modern critic has noticed this. While we were taught that Poe was a drunken fool, we were also taught that Moby Dick and Billy Budd were religious allegories. That may be true, but in light of history it may also be that their religious themes were a ruse. Alternatively, one could argue that Captain Ahab isn't insane and the story has nothing to do with the sin of revenge. On the contrary, Ahab is in control of his mind well enough to command a ship and crew. It could be argued that he is more sane than the average man, because his obsession with the white wale drives him to his purpose, which is just incidentally suicidal. The same goes for Claggart in Billy Budd, which Melville expands upon in that story...
tl;dr: alcohol makes you smarter.
I don't really post in this section of the forum all that much because I don't care a whole lot about current politics.
Among other things, besides flying airplanes, building doors and windows, and software development, I do have a formal literature education. I was not a happy econ/finance student and you didn't need a formal education to work in the software business when I went to do that in the dot-com boom years, so literature was the only thing I had an interest in.
I've always had the idea that I could write professionally, but have only recently began doing the reading required to catch up on the previous writings within my narrow range of ideas, which leads me to a lot of little gems that don't really fit anywhere else.
Absent other places that I visit regularly having a thriving off-topic section, I'll post my random nuggets of research here, do with them whatever you like!
--------------------------
If you ever read Edgar Allan Poe, you probably were told at some point that he was an alcoholic, maybe a drug addict, with a talent for writing ghost stories, that died penniless. I think history has relegated him to such a miserable fate because they didn't like some things he had to say.
That history was written by a professional enemy and not really accurate. In reality, Poe was a very well educated man who made his living as a magazine editor and literary critic first, and as a fiction writer second. He was on the forefront of many issues of his day, and was professionally successful enough to sustain himself as a lecturer in his later years.
One essay in particular, published in 1840, "Insanity vs. Reason" deals with the issue of "how reasonable are we?" And by extension, "how mad is a madman?"
Three years later Poe put this idea to fiction with the story "The Tell-Tale Heart". It's quite short if you haven't read it, but the gist of it is a man has murdered a housemate, and in response to an accusation by the police that he is insane, insists that he is not insane at all. On the contrary the murderer is quite proud of his state of mind, and claims that his plan to execute the murder and hide the body is evidence of his sanity rather than of his insanity.
In a remarkable example of timing, two months after the initial publication of this story, an inmate killed the warden at the only Massachusetts state prison at the time. The man's lawyer presented the court with an odd plea, that the man is not guilty because he is insane. This presented a problem for the court system, obviously, and one that is still an issue today. If free will is required to be guilty of a crime, how can a madman be guilty? Alternatively, if a man commits horrible crimes and isn't insane, what does that say about the inherent virtue of free will in our religious history and legal foundations in western democracy?
Faced with this conundrum, the judge gave the jury some rather damning instructions. He blatantly instructed them to acquit the man who murdered the warden if they believed that he was insane. The judge decided in what would be a foundational case on the matter, that the principle of free will was more important than the ramifications of letting one murderer off the hook.
The man was found not guilty due to insanity, the case is still widely studied in the context of insanity pleas.
Judge C.J. Shaw said:
Oh by the way, the judge was Herman Melville's father-in-law.
At least one other modern critic has noticed this. While we were taught that Poe was a drunken fool, we were also taught that Moby Dick and Billy Budd were religious allegories. That may be true, but in light of history it may also be that their religious themes were a ruse. Alternatively, one could argue that Captain Ahab isn't insane and the story has nothing to do with the sin of revenge. On the contrary, Ahab is in control of his mind well enough to command a ship and crew. It could be argued that he is more sane than the average man, because his obsession with the white wale drives him to his purpose, which is just incidentally suicidal. The same goes for Claggart in Billy Budd, which Melville expands upon in that story...
Billy Budd said:
tl;dr: alcohol makes you smarter.
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