ethics of a beating

In a dream Raskolnikov is a little boy again. He watches a group of drunken peasants whip an old horse to death because it can’t move a heavy load. The story shows you something, reminds you of the terrible undercurrents disguised by our civilized and so-called Christian ways. What the story suggests is true. It’s been proven thoroughly enough.
Everyone's either got to whip or be whipped by someone else. As long as we're still on earth, cruelty is the rule of the land. You may try to choose which side of the whipping you’ll be on, but the decision is ultimately hopeless. You loose either way. In the end everyone's a slave being beaten to death, however gradually. There’s got to be a better way. I’m sure there is but it would require a wide agreement, a mass moratorium on beatings and humiliations, and I’m quite sure that will never happen on this earth. Even if you lived a life of perfect innocence, you’d merely be an interesting exception, and memorable victim like Jesus, a whipping post for those who don’t care and have never thought it over. I don’t want a nigger and I don’t want to be anyone else’s nigger. I just want to live.


City O’ City
Denver
March 30, 2009