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Cadwell NOT Caldwell

Those Martian Politicians

[4 minute read ] 

opinion

Dogs will roll over onto their backs and expose their bellies as a gesture of submission, or in the case when the pack leader is a human with no teeth on their hands, when they are happy or want to be tickled. Different strokes for different folks. My brother had a dog that would smile at me because I often saved her from attacks from her vicious sister. A dog showing its teeth, in their dog-world, is usually a threat or warning, yet they show their long canines outside of a closed mouth to smile at humans. I suppose they have learnt that humans smile without opening their mouths but do show their teeth; and that is the difference. Dogs exposing their under-bellies are trusting that they will not be attacked while in an indefensible position. 

       'Don't run, we are your friends!' The Martians say in 'Mars Attacks!' holding a translator in one hand while shooting with the other. 'Don't run, we are your friends!' Have we heard that before? Did we instead translate something similar into 'Trust in me'? such as Kaa, the fictional snake from Rudyard Kipling's 'Jungle Book' stories, says to Mowgli, the man-child.

I can think of so many instances when a confident person has tried to impose their opinion on others and caused them to act inappropriately, Husbands do it to wives and wives do it to husbands. Adulterers do it to other people's partners; and bored people try to impose new ideas on themselves, by justifying their behaviour with inadequate information.

Every time the American Government, run by Jack Nicholson as President in 'Mars Attacks!' charitably forgives the Martians for killing swathes of people because there may be a cultural misunderstanding , the aliens apologise and say 'Quite right! We come in peace, we come in peace' and then they kill a whole bunch more people with their ray-runs. They do this at least three times in the film before Jack Nicholson gives a heart-warming speech of togetherness. The listening alien ambassador sheds a tear and immediately kills him.

I am reminded of a fable of a scorpion and a frog, which Wikipedia tells me first appeared in writing  in Russia in the early 20th century. Hmmm. I might not believe that as the origin. I think the scorpion wants to cross the river but it will drown because it cannot swim so it asks to be carried across on the frog's back, but the frog is frightened that the scorpion will sting it. The scorpion swears it will not do so, and the frog agrees to carry it across the river. Halfway across, the scorpion stings the frog despite knowing the frog will die and itself will drown.

       'Why did you sting me, you will drown?' asked the frog.

       'It is in my nature. Sorry.'

The voice in the Wikipedia says: 'The fable teaches that vicious people cannot resist hurting others even when it is not in their own interests and therefore should never be trusted.'

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Scorpion_and_the_Frog

I am not at all comfortable with that conclusion; not one bit. It is the use of the word 'vicious'. I can't help but think that the voice belongs to a wounded and biased person. Scorpions are not vicious. They sting to survive; defensively or to kill prey. I am pretty sure they have no intent to injure just because they are psychotic or psychopathic. Scared or hungry fits a scorpion sting I suggest. I realise that the fable is warped to present a message not dissimilar to 'A leopard cannot change its spots.' which has the same moral message to it, but a scorpion is not vicious.

       'Thank you, Martin. let's go to Roget's Thesaurus to see what word could be better used.'

       'What do you have?' asked another.

       'Starting with the word 'vicious' the index has 'furious'; 'evil'; 'disobedient', 'malevolent', 'wrong'; and surprisingly also 'vicious' ,' 

         I had to butt in, 'None of those words are right. We are imbuing sentiment on a scorpion; anthropomorphising it in ways that are only applicable to humans when they find themselves in the direst of circumstances. You know, cannibalism when they are starving, and the like. We might as well say it is vindictive and hates all frogs for some prehistoric affrontery. I might say, there is a huge difference between stealing food because the thief or their family is hungry which is to survive, and stealing luxury goods to sell to gain riches, which is vicious.'

       'What word would you substitute for 'vicious' in the Wikipedia entry, then?'

       'Well, the entry in Wikipedia might be more accurate if it says that people who act instinctively and hurt people should not be trusted to act benevolently or be considered to be benign. This talk of vicious people being unable to resist hurting others, is nonsense.' 

Psychiatric problems may lead to having no compunction to refrain from violence but that is a different kettle of fish to something like accidentally drowning the rescuer by climbing onto them. The drowning person is acting instinctively. So it is a question of rationale and reasoning in a time of extreme stress or utter terror that overrides all sensibility. I wouldn't trust the same drowning person to not accidentally drown the next rescuer, but I might trust them with my family at a picnic; even if there is a nearby pond I would not expect them to throw my family into it and sit on them. I would expect them to stay well away from the water and wild horses would not get them near. No, the person who wrote the Wikipedia entry has a vindictive axe to grind, or at best is extremely clumsy with their words. The third option is 'sensationalism'. This is vicious in that the writer cannot resist 'bigging' themselves up by writing in a manner that is exciting and divisive, and in so doing disrupts other people's understanding of something that is really quite simple to understand. The fable is about instinct not cruelty.

A little further analysis of the Wikipedia entry reveals an obvious flaw. In the first paragraph it says the fable originated in Russia in 1933, and then in the third paragraph it says the earliest known appearance, which means written, was in Russia. The fifth paragraph mentions a story called 'The Scorpion and the Turtle', which appeared in Persian texts in the fifteenth century, as a precursor to the (Russian) Scorpion and the Frog. (Note I used the word 'precursor' and note how many websites on the subject also do). The whole entry is suspect and rather than being factual is, it seems, initially written in an emotive way. This catalogue of significant deviance is not instinctual, it is either by design for which 'evil' might fit, but 'wrong' definitely does; or it is clumsy and offered as fact which is 'wrong' but not malevolent; or the writer is viciously attempting to pervert the course of a transference of knowledge.

It all started with a single misuse of a word, 'vicious'. It should be noted that there quite a few websites that are closely similar to the Wikipedia entry in their content; 'AmericanLiterature' being one of them.

'Don't run, we are your friends' and then shooting the people if you are a Martian, is no different to deliberately giving false information to anyone, as far as I am concerned; but only if you are a Martian.

Fact or fact-based

English courts long ago recognised that it is the value of the theft that is the tell of the character of a thief and stopped hanging beggars but not highway men or burglars and robbers; as is suggested in an interesting article 'The History of Judicial Hanging in Britain 1735-1964' under the subheading, 'Multiple executions at Newgate in 1820.' https://capitalpunishmentuk.org/the-history-of-judicial-hanging-in-britain-1735-1964/

Hungry thieves were sent to America, and then Australia after the American War of Independence. 

From another Wikipedia site:  '[...] before abolition of the death penalty for theft in 1832 [...] In 1808, the lawyer Samuel Romilly KC successfully had the law changed to remove the death penalty for pickpockets and lesser offenders, starting a process of reform that continued over the next 50 years. The death penalty was mandatory (although it was frequently commuted by the government) until the Judgement of Death Act 1823 gave judges the official power to commute the death penalty except for treason and murder.' 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capital_punishment_in_the_United_Kingdom

From Hansard, 'ABOLITION OF CAPITAL PUNISHMENTS', HC Deb 27 March 1832 vol 11 cc948-55: 'Mr. Ewart rose to move for leave to bring in a Bill abolishing Capital Punishment in the cases of horse-stealing, sheep-stealing, and cattle-stealing, also in cases of stealing in a dwelling-house, no person being put in fear therein.'

https://api.parliament.uk/historic-hansard/commons/1832/mar/27/abolition-of-capital-punishments