Extralegal morality

Just read this article: Mexican Vigilante Group Threatens to Kill One Criminal a Day. A group of citizens in Ciudad Juárez sent e-mails to media outlets claiming to have formed a “Citizen Commando” with the purpose of killing one criminal every 24 hours. Ciudad Juárez  is notoriously violent due to a long-standing mix of drugs, poverty, and corruption that haunts the city. Even though President Calderón has made ethics and law enforcement a priority, Ciudad Juárez hasn’t been able to shake off its crooked past. Last year the local criminals started beheading police officers who tried to stay clean. The situation is chaotic at best; anarchic is probably more accurate. It makes it hard to knock this vigilante style of retribution.

I spent a lot of time thinking about a related theme recently as I was reading Crime and Punishment. The main character, Raskolnikov, offs a cheerless, old pawnbroker and takes all of her money (which he badly needs to support himself, his mother, and his sister). He has completely justified the murder in his own mind because he believes he has essentially eliminated waste from society in exchange for some greater purpose. In this case, the greater purpose seems only to be his own genius—which he can foster now that he has money to continue his education.  The story is really phenomenal if you can get past Dostoevsky’s penchant for detail. I consistently think that these types of questions make the best literature when in the hands of a talented writer. I’m hardpressed to  imagine a convincing ethical argument that doesn’t condemn murder, but I think it’s smart to be willing to question our traditional notion of law as the keeper of right vs. wrong.

Scottish poet Roddy Lumsden

This hirsute Scottish man is one of my new favorite poets. Here is one of his recent poems called “The Young.”  You can read a few more of his poems here. He also has a blog of random facts and trivia.

You bastards! It’s all sherbet, and folly

makes you laugh like mules. Chances

dance off your wrists, each day ready,

sprites in your bones and spite not yet

swollen, not yet set. You gather handful

after miracle handful, seeing straight,

reaching the lighthouse in record time,

pockets brim with scimitar things. Now

is not a pinpoint but a sprawling realm.

Bewilderment and thrill are whip-quick

twins, carried on your backs, each vow

new to touch and each mistake a broken

biscuit. I was you. Sea robber boarding

the won galleon. Roaring trees. Machines

without levers, easy in bowel and lung.

One cartwheel over the quicksand curve

of Tuesday to Tuesday and you’re gone,

summering, a ship on the farthest wave.