Philosophy

Not all people who do wrong pay the price for their crimes.

Once recent example is Ta Mok of Cambodia's Khmer Rouge, known as "The Butcher".

Ta Mok was directly responsible for the death of tens of thousands of people.

Upon his death, hundreds showed up to pay respect for a man who was responsible for many atrocities.

The BBC Magazine has an article on several "what if ..." scenarios on extremely difficult ethical questions.This article was also discussed on Digg. The examples in the article seem to too extreme, but there are real life examples that pose the same questions. For example, the policeman or soldier who has to kill people in their normal line of work. On a larger scale is how politicians and heads of state justify war on other countries to themselves and to the public. Remember when Tony Blair said that that war is for the sake of peace?

After a Virginia, USA school decided to sell their used Apple iBook laptops really cheap, panic and stampede ensued, as humans exhibited their worst behavior. The local newspaper, the Times Dispatch also has an article and even a slideshow showing people pushing and trampling on falling fellow human beings. Slashdot also has some comments, some from those who attended.

In Gulliver's Travels, the satirist Jonathan Swift provides religious, political and philosophical critique on various aspects of British Society in his time.

In Alice in Wonderland, Lewis Carroll always made thinly masked critiques of the Victorian age he was living in. Once such criticism is the Knave's trial and the Queen of Hearts attitude: sham trials with guilt being pre-determined.The Knave of Hearts is accused of allegedly stealing the Queen of Hearts' tarts, where in fact it was Alice who did so. The Queen of Hearts had made up her mind and wanted the Knave to be beheaded.A trial is set, but it is only a sham trial.

Children stories often carry a moral message. This is not a new thing, and has been the case since millennia and across many cultures around the globe.

Sometimes, the moral story is not direct, and indeed can be very deep,and sometimes it is enveloped in satire or even cynicist philosophy.

You may have heard about Postmodernist Deconstruction? Have you wanted to know more about it?Well, start with the Postmodernism and the Deconstruction articles on the more than excellent free user-written encycolpedia Wikipedia.