Would you like it to be different?

The 'guilty ones' need the threat of being punished. What is vice or a crime without the risk of consequences?

Interesting stuff.

ps: at this point i now want to write about visiting two different lawyers in India, Mumbai. Any suggestions?

one is a homosexual
the other a cannibal
the first lawyer takes the wrong train and end up with the Pakistan hokey-team in one coupe and the Indian Hells Angels in an other.
(Well you understand what happens next....)
the second tries to seduce an old beggar to sell his left leg
not knowing the beggar is an undercover policeman who arrests him.
In prison he meets Pachaimuthu 'the terrible'
who has tattooed his full name
Pachaimuthu Gajananvihari Daitya Zakariya Qasim
around his neck and 'the terrible' in six different languages across his chest and back in large black letters, font: haettenschweiler, seize 24.
(now talk about preconception, social context and create a kind of unexpected twist in the character of Pachaimuthu. He turns out to be a real philosopher)
next!! they seduce a few luscious female guards
with their tanned and trained luscious bodies.
(some erotic scenes here, you know what I mean...)
and....
they both escape,
but feel used and dirty.
Pachaimuthu swears he will never touch a women in his life again.
While doing so, they look into each other eyes and recognize a kind of love they have never felt before....
(After this a pseudo-psychologic explanation)
A few years later, the cannibal has eaten Pachaimuthu
and suffers from a rare disease as a result of to much ink in his blood.
His last hope is to visit a doctor on Butcher Island
He takes the train, he feels sick and terribly sad
He would like to cry, but instead he feels he has to throw up
He staggers to the only toilet this train has...
and...
he opens the door....
and...

Ho , Eric , good ! You're new on the blog , aren't you ? I like stories !

@Eric W.
Interesting suggestions, thanks;)

But i forgot to mention that a french journalist working in Mumbai needs to be enlightened about the law regarding child marriages, so something like using this maybe?
http://www.hindu.com/br/2005/05/03/stories/2005050300301700.htm

My idea now is that one lawyer tells her about the law solely and the second one explains some backgrounds and practical info on culture and social pressure....

Maybe you can help me by putting this into your first draft...?

I have to warn you though. Wasn't it the great novelist Grunberg who said something like ''you can hardly use reality, some real live stories in novels, people just would not believe them."

Of course we as a society have to accept vices and intervene with crime. Vices can grow into different things. What happens when virtue grows into neuroticism?
Another quetion rises. Where does the power of society corrumpts in judging its vicious citizens?

Arnon

He doesn`t say anything about necessity. You should read carefully.

Dear Milan van Opmeer,

the first suggestions were free of charges,
see it as a friend service.
if you want more help you need to hire me.
I'm not that expensive
and my secondary labour agreements are beneficial to the taxes.

sincerely yours,

Eric W.

there's a spelling mistake in your post.
Tat should be that.

Dens

Thanks!

Jelena

Perhaps you should read Mandeville's work.
And even if your comment is solely based on the quote above: do you believe that Mandeville argues that it is worth combating human vices, even if this means that we are going to forswear the wealth and grandeur of nations?
No, quite the opposite.
As Mandeville wrote in his introduction to “An Enquiry into the Origin of Moral Virtue”:
“I believe man (besides skin, flash, bones, etc, that are obvious to the eye) to be a compound of various passions; that all of them, as they are provoked and come uppermost, govern him by turns, whether he will or no. To show that these qualifications, which we all pretend to be ashamed of, are the great support of a flourishing society has been the subject of the forgoing poem.” [i.e. “The Fable of the Bees”]

Hence, the reason why I used the word “necessity”.

Isn't society already trying to control vices as greed indirectly by civil- and human rights and other institutions? Otherwise the financial crisis would be far worse by now....

Maybe i should have written 'celebrate' instead of 'accept'.

@Eric W.
I understand, we all have to live. I will be fine though probably, at the end of this week i will have finished the chapter, then i can tell you for sure. Thanks.

A quote by Colonel Kurtz will do fine here:
“I've seen horrors... horrors that you've seen. But you have no right to call me a murderer. You have a right to kill me. You have a right to do that... but you have no right to judge me. It's impossible for words to describe what is necessary to those who do not know what horror means. Horror... Horror has a face... and you must make a friend of horror. Horror and moral terror are your friends. If they are not, then they are enemies to be feared. They are truly enemies! I remember when I was with Special Forces... seems a thousand centuries ago. We went into a camp to inoculate some children. We left the camp after we had inoculated the children for polio, and this old man came running after us and he was crying. He couldn't see. We went back there, and they had come and hacked off every inoculated arm. There they were in a pile. A pile of little arms. And I remember... I... I... I cried, I wept like some grandmother. I wanted to tear my teeth out; I didn't know what I wanted to do! And I want to remember it. I never want to forget it... I never want to forget. And then I realized... like I was shot... like I was shot with a diamond... a diamond bullet right through my forehead. And I thought, my God... the genius of that! The genius! The will to do that! Perfect, genuine, complete, crystalline, pure. And then I realized they were stronger than we, because they could stand that these were not monsters, these were men... trained cadres. These men who fought with their hearts, who had families, who had children, who were filled with love... but they had the strength... the strength... to do that. If I had ten divisions of those men, our troubles here would be over very quickly. You have to have men who are moral... and at the same time who are able to utilize their primordial instincts to kill without feeling... without passion... without judgment... without judgment! Because it's judgment that defeats us.”

Too sustain a free market an awful lot of regulation is needed.

My dear Milan - great writer of an unknown future,

I'm happy to hear you will be fine
didn't expect less
good luck with finishing your chapter, your book or books....
and -if I may suggest (for free of course) :
keep it a secret
don't talk about it until everybody is stunned when your book is behind the window of every serious bookshop.
Your picture in XXL behind it.
But until that moment:
keep it still,
don't mention it to anybody
let it be the best kept secret Dutch literature has
sshhhh

yours,

Eric W.

Dear josiane pollet,

New....
I don't know
it feels like I have been here before.....

yours,

Eric W.

@Eric W.
Thanks, that is on my mind as well. Lately i was thinking though that i should maybe mention some ideas behind it in advance, sometimes you have to help people think for themselves;)

Its funny what Ayn Rand wrote in 1968 about fountainhead in this respect.

Eric W

Say people,
try and search 'Eric W' on this blog and you will find out who is hiding behind this name!
[Go to the com and search; you will get 427 results!]
If it isn't our all and dearest Mr Arnon Grunberg himself!
New here? I don't think so.
Hugs and kisses all,
bert h
==================

Dearest bertje,

now really!!
I don't want to insult anybody
but I'm as much Mr Arnon Grunberg
as he is me!

You haven't answered my last questions
on White snapper
Would you be so kind to take a minute for this.

Thank you in advance!

yours,

Eric W.

@Bertje
Strange, i put you in the automatic removal a week ago or so, and there you are again.

@Eric W.
Well, if your Arnon it wouldn't be a total surprise . Your brilliant literair suggestion to support homosexuals in India probably comes from your active involvement in human rights movements like amnesty international. And the whole entertaining story you represent reminds me of the rest of your work.

Dear Milan van Opmeer- great writer of an unknown future, in an unknown galaxy,

You write: "Well, if your Arnon ....."
Just to say: "Well, I'm not".

yours,

Eric W.

Eric W.

I'm sorry , I didn't notice you before , but I was always just looking for one name . I think ddd is working on a great project , or he's undercover . Maybe I'll take you as an interval.
Do you have a private emailadress or so ? I don't like to go in public.

Dear josiane pollet,

I do have a private emailadress, would you like to have it?
Who is ddd?
And you 'take *me* as an interval',
is there any danger for *me*.....?
I'm rather attached to my life, you see......

kindly yours,

Eric W.

Josiane, Carlos and Eric W. already. How sad;)

Eric W

I'm sorry , its ok , my d . idendidy is back . For the moment that is.

Dear josiane pollet,

I'm happy to hear your cat is back.
Could you stop writting 'I'm sorry'

thank you,

Eric W.

Dear Eric W.

Mr. Milan van Opmeer wants to address me in a private email.
Since you already offered your help to him
and you're not that expensive
but most of all because your secondary labour agreements
are beneficial to the taxes
I would like to hire you
to work as an editor-filter
for his upcoming mail.
I'll consider throwing in a Christmas bonus
when your work is satisfactory.
Awaiting your earliest reply,

yours sincerely,

jeanette p.

Questions, questions...

Dear Eric W.

Sorry for the delay - I'm not in the habit (anymore) of reading and keeping trace of every little post on Mr Grunberg's blog.
Furthermore I have been and still am house- & cat-sitting and missed your post in 'White Snapper'.

I do wear glasses but take them off when I read a newspaper, mag or book.
Still nearsighted (a consequence of continually reading).
Behind a PC however I keep them on (mostly).

You said:
(...)
"Fight them, with words, would be my advise.
I'm still quite proud of the fact that one of the participants of this blog committed suicide on 22/10/2008 after a nice discussion.

see: http://www.arnongrunberg.com/blog/826"

A nice discussion, surely, and I guess I misinterpreted your 'intentions' when you mentioned this suicide to me.
By the way, there are 'tenSions' and 'intenTions'; 'a piece of adviCe' and 'to adviSe'.

I used 'etc' to refer to every sentence not dealing with this issue. I agree I use it too often, that's why I am not a writer.
The 'etc' referred to earlier subjects as the identity of Eric Wander, the David Duinker ravings etc. - sorry, the supposed disappearance of those posts. My mistake, caused by a faulty (?) search engine on this site.
Couldn't find them right away, started a search on my own name, which offers results up to and including 05/04.2010 !!
Jumping to conclusions I was wrong again, but I was led astray.
And if you say you are not Arnon Grunberg, well, that's OK by me as well.
I hope I have answered your questions to your satisfaction,

Yours truly,
=============================================

@ Milan van Opmeer
You put me in 'the automatic removal' and it didn't work?
Why ask me? Can I help it?
Perhaps I'm a jack-in-the-box - could someone start posting under that alias here please.
Perhaps it is because you did something wrong, or some macro or program just doesn't work all that well. Like the search engine on this site.
(Even Google makes funny mistakes sometimes - scanning old newspapers and finding the phrase "cheaper" materials" - they come up with the phrase "bhesper materials".
I love it. And you should too.)
It could be because I was posting from another machine in someone else's house (I don't have a laptop).
Anyway, keep trying to automatically remove me, lots of success!
Dear greetings,
==============================================
P.S. 'literair' = literary

My dearest bert hesper,

thank you indeed for your elaborate answer and helping comments.

all the best,

Eric W.

Dear jeanette p.

thank you for offering me a job as
an editor-filter for Mr Milan van Opmeers upcoming mail.
I'm sorry but I have to disappoint you in this:
I don't have the skills to perform the job.
Please contact the Fanelli brothers (or sisters).
They are a bit messy, but effective for what you have in mind.

yours truly,

Eric W.

Dear Eric W.,

Thank you for your quickest reply.

I know I was asking a lot and I'm glad you inform me about the limits of your capacities instead of accepting the challenge and really disappoint me.

Funny you happen to mention the Fanelli's. I considered to offer them the job for 8 tenth of a second. They are surely most effective but lack the fingerspitzengefuehl to say the least.

Wishing you a pleasant evening.

Cordially yours ,

jeanette p.

image 'pseudo-Mandeville'

The image you're using, probably borrowed from Wikipedia, does not represent Bernard Mandeville, but Jean jacques Rousseau. See for the question of Mandeville's picture: www.bernard-mandeville.nl

Arne

Thanks!
I'm familiar with bernard-mandeville.nl.

MILAN

@ JEANETTE P.
WHAT'S ALL THIS TALK ABOUT SOME FILTER FOR AN UPCOMING EMAIL?

"an editor-filter for Mr Milan van Opmeers upcoming mail."

MR MILAN VAN OPMEER IS SENDING YOU SOME PRIVATE EMAIL, AND YOU NEED AN EDITOR FOR THIS EMAIL?!
SO YOU CAN UNDERSTAND WHAT HE IS SAYING?
IS IT A MATTER OF TRANSLATING ONE LANGUAGE INTO ANOTHER, OR - MUCH HARDER OF COURSE - A MATTER OF TRYING TO FIGURE OUT WHAT THE HELL HE IS SAYING IN WHATEVER LANGUAGE?
I SUSPECT THE LATTER IS THE CASE.
HOWEVER, I'M WILLING TO HAVE A GO AT IT, ALTHOUGH I'M AFRAID IN THAT CASE MR VAN OPMEER WILL NOT SEND YOU ANYTHING.

BY THE BY, HAVE YOU SEEN HIS SITE ? ["Milan - great writer of an unknown future"]
( http://www.milan-van-opmeer.nl/ )
cLICK 'INVLOEDEN' AND WATCH 25 NAMES, AND SOME MORE THAN 25 BOOKS WRITTEN BY THOSE 25, AND 'MUZIEK'.
THAT'S IT.
IT IS SO FUCKING CUTE!
REMINISCENT OF MY HIGHSCHOOL DAYS, WHEN YOU HAD TO MAKE A LIST OF 25 BOOKS BY 25 DIFFERENT DUTCH WRITERS FROM 5 DIFFERENT PERIODS/CENTURIES FOR YOUR FINAL EXAMS.
(AND 5 BOOKS FOR ENGLISH, 5 FOR GERMAN & 5 FOR FRENCH).

"INVLOEDEN: (...) 'MUZIEK'(!!) YEAH YEAH...

- OTHER PEOPLE - MY FAMILY - MY COUNTRY - MY GENES - THE CLIMATE - ETC ETC ! YEAH, SURE, MY WHOLE FUCKING SURROUNDINGS/ENVIRONMENT!

ERIC W. CALLS ME 'BERTJE' AND LO AND BEHOLD: A CERTAIN MILAN VAN OPMEER STARTS CALLING ME 'BERTJE' AS WELL.
IF THAT ISN'T PATHETIC COMING FROM A PSYCHOLOGIST!
NEVER EXCHANGED A WORD WITH THE GUY.
HE WANTED ME IN 'AUTOMATIC REMOVAL' AS WELL. (?!)
WHAT, WHY, WHAT'S GOING ON?

ANYWAY, WHATEVER, DEAR JEANETTE P., READ THIS 'LOVELY' STORY ABOVE AGAIN - COMPLETE WITH ALL THESE LOVELY' VAN-OPMEER'-SPELLING AND GRAMMAR MISTAKES, AND JUST GIVE UP ON THIS FAKE PLASTIC IMITATION OF A HUMAN BEING.

YOURS,
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

@Bertje
Are you ok?

@Milan

Question is: "Are you?"
I'm fine thank you.

bert hesper

It's very kind of you that you are willing to give it a go.
I wrote Milan to consider your offer.

I haven't read Milan's site. If you think you can lend him a hand,
why not make it two?

I can imagine you don't like Milan using the nick name Eric W. gave you without your consent. I wouldn't agree either.

Good luck bargaining.