I do not know how to attach a document, so here comes the story:


Eden by Night

When you miss the night bus along the E5 motorway, you have to wait for at least two hours until the next one comes. We started to walk towards the intersection. I had seen a bus stop a little further down the road. I must have miscalculated somehow, because as it turned out it was quite some walk. In fact, we didn't seem to get any closer, even though we walked towards it for quite some time.

We didn't leave the club in good spirits. The concert was disappointing and we quarrelled over some trivial remark I made about our plans for what to do for Christmas. In fact Eva and I were at that point in a relationship where every little difference in opinion could spark some sort of row. I wanted to leave the city, but Eva insisted that it was our turn to host the family this year. We have a big family and formal dinners seem to last a lifetime with them. Neither of us looked forward to making the arrangements. But Eva was probably right and we were stuck this year, much to my dismay.

The band had played for a long time. Another source of tension, because Eva had intended to leave earlier. I wanted to stay. The fact that the venue was in a remote part of the city didn't help. By daylight these parts of town do not look very inviting, but at one o'clock at night they look derelict. We ended up wandering through the deserted concrete urban wastelands of pedestrian overpasses, glaring streetlights and rolled down iron fences protecting shop windows. Not many people on the streets. That was about to change.

While walking down the road we passed a beggar. He had a grey beard and he walked strangely bent as if he was looking for something on the ground. The downtrodden man, held a plastic cup in his hand. He had a sign around his neck on which something was scrawled with a black marker: "My children go hungry", it read. Eva wanted to give him something. I didn't, because I didn't want to take out my wallet in this part of town. She gave me a look which obviously wanted to tell me that I was a jerk for being stingy, or that I was a coward for not wanting to slow down, also possible.

The beggar noticed our hesitation and started pleading with Eva and me. "Please, I haven't had something warm all day". "What is fifty cents to you?" We walked on but he kept trodding along, talking to us. His voice went from softy complaining to covertly threatening and back to complaining again. "You look like such a happy couple, you'd share a bit of that luck with the homeless", "I'm from the south you know, we from the south are nice people, we don't do anybody harm, you see". Than with an openly disapproving tone, "You guys always make yourself believe you do a lot for the poor, but than say 'hey, you can't help everyone'. Bad faith that's called, bad faith". I positioned myself between Eva and the beggar and briskly walked on.

We passed a second figure sitting beneath an overpass. He called out to us and got up. He was dressed in clothes that reminded me of the outfits worn at the turn of the century, or even before that. Beneath a long coat I saw an odd elaborate blouse and what appeared to be a sash. As my gaze travelled down, I noticed he was missing a leg from the knee down. The stump of his leg was wrapped with frayed, dirty yellowish looking bandages. Inadvertently I looked away from him. He managed to reach us very quickly though. "Been treated in a second rate hospital, can happen to everybody these days", he confided. "So, do you have something to spare for a one legged pirate?" He spoke with a gleeful sounding voice, oddly high pitched. The first man, who had been trudging along, began touching me lightly on my shoulder. I signalled to Eva to walk on, upping the pace a little.

A woman leaning against a streetlight smiled at me. "Hey handsome, Wouldn't you like to enjoy yourself for real once? I promise I won't look at the clock". You could read the signs of faded beauty on her face. She must once have been a pretty Latina girl, but now her face was crisscrossed by wrinkles and scars. "Aw, Martita, if you have him, I guess you won't be putting out for the pirate tonight", the cripple said. He had no trouble keeping up with us at all. "I'll have him you'll see", she said with a salacious grin and a tinkle in her voice. Eva glared at her, but she merely giggled in response.

Just now I noticed we were accompanied by a fourth man. A besodden drunkard, cradling a bottle of gin. "Do you have some change to spare?" "I hate sleeping on the streets you see, even the gin don't keep the cold away". I looked around me and I was surrounded by these four people. I saw Eva's face just behind the first man. She shot me a frightened glance and I tried to look back reassuringly, in which I failed. I tried to signal to her to stay there and that I would reach her, but these figures somehow managed to keep me from seeing her for more than a mere glimpse.

"Sir", a little girl's voice chirped. "Would you buy a pack of tissues from me?" The child was pulling at my coat. She was 9, 10 years old. I heard music, yes, a street musician was playing violin. The man joined us and asked for some coin so he could keep plying his trade. The bunch was crowding on me. I saw a woman with tangled hair, whom I didn't notice before. "Eva, walk on!" "I'll catch up with you" I shouted. She did, she ran. A blind man blocked my way. I had to stop or I would be tripping over his stick. "I can see you, even though I am blind", he whispered. "Want to know how"? "I could tell you, I am a fortune teller", a woman said, "for a small fee". She was a huge woman wearing a head scarf. Her breasts bulged out of the ragged dress she was wearing.

The little girl tied a little improvised bracelet around my wrist. She made it from small colourful thread. "Now you'll buy my tissues won't you?". "You're handsome", the prostitute tried to kiss my lips. I tried to push them away, finding some path out of the melee. Faces sprung up and were replaced by others, pathetic looking people, but with expectation in there eyes, mingled with something else, some sort of possessive devotion.

"What is it you want?" I asked frantically, by now ready to give up. "You want my wallet, here you go, my watch is that it?" "You can take my coat too for all I care, just leave me alone," "Take it, take it all". They started murmuring among each other and seemed excited about something. They seemed to have come to an agreement of sorts, and decided that this was their moment of triumph. Revelling in their victory they pulled me up above their heads and like a procession we continued down the road.

As we moved along I saw the street lamps and their yellow, pinkish glare. Like a limelight it shined on our procession, blinding me from time to time. I saw the ecstatic face of the whore and the content smile of the violin player. The sounds of the city seemed berserk, as if it frantically talking to itself in some metallic language. It related its dreams and its fears. With clarity I realised the incalculable number of dead it had cost to build it. For a moment I felt like I belonged among these derelicts it had produced.

The group seemed cheerful, happy with their prize. "We have it", "it is ours now", I heard them tell each other. Out of the corner of my eye I saw that we passed by the bus stop. The sign normally stating the destinations seemed only to show gibberish. Not in print, but scrawled on with a black marker. "Bad Faith is the Scourge of Our Age", was the only thing I could make out among the jumble of words. A street cat meowed below it.

We proceeded past a bridge, a large one by the look of it. The procession turned towards a door placed within the fundament of the bridge. It appeared to be some sort of a shelter for these homeless people. Inside it resembled some kind of hospital though. From the look of it the hospital had been left to decay quite some time ago. The dirty floor had brown spots and looked sticky as if someone had spilled some unsavoury liquid over it. In a corner an old wheelchair was placed and a discarded pile of crutches lay by the entrance. It had that hospital smell of disinfectant, but mixed with the odour of milk gone bad. The look of the place reflected the lives of these people, a forgotten lair with ghosts as patients. A social worker was sitting behind a desk. He looked up and I recognised my religion teacher, Mr. Applewhite. I called out to him when they carried me over the threshold. "You are mistaking me for someone else Mister", he said. "Welcome anyway, we will make this your home soon". He spoke in an authoritative voice, like a psychiatrist or lawyer.

They carried me into a room where they had set up an old examination table. It had been a modern and adjustable one once, but now it just lay there, flat. They did drape that classic white paper over it though. Carefully they put me on the table.

"I want this", the blind man said and with a pencil he encircled my left eye. The one legged pirate hopped beside me and stuck a pin in my leg. To the pin he attached a little white paper with the word "leg" on it. "So soft", the prostitute was caressing my skin, "for me, for me". I couldn't move. The little girl took one of her tissues and wiped away the sweat from my forehead. "Please don't cry sir", she also said. With the look of a priest administering the sacrament, the drunk placed his bottle of gin in my hand. One by one they marked the parts they chose. While they were dividing me, the world seemed to walk away and became grey, as if I was trying to look through a heavy snow storm. It reminded me of an old T.V. of which the channels had faded and had given way to a formless scramble of white specs. The voices became muffled. I did faintly hear that the musician had picked up his violin.

The "snow" before my eyes will never entirely subside. 'Cataract', the doctors say. I do manage to find my way out of the shelter every day. I succeed even with my bad leg. Of course I drink too much again, so I am not a pretty sight. When I saw Eva last week she didn't recognise me and didn't even bother to give me the Euro I asked for. I need that Euro. It just pays for my stay. Mr. Whitechapel will not let me in otherwise. I will have to lay in the cold, inside the bus stop. A meowing cat will keep me company and I'll see the night bus pass by.

(this is by the way, copy righted material)

I have published stories on Benkei's site and some others, (hi by the way Benk!) but I do not think they can be found anymore. For anyone interested I have them of course. My claim to fame is to have won the short story contest on PF once. Other than that I wrote articles in scientific publications. The most interesting one from a philosophical perspective is called 'precautionary logic and a policy of moderation' and is freely accessible.

"It is because (this sort of?) sex is inherently violating, objectifying, manipulating. Consider: it is usually the man who asks for consent of the woman (to do things to her body, to use her body as a mean for his own climax, to satisfy some urge that is inherently questionable)."

Hmmm, I agree with quite a bit of what you say, but you also jump to conclusions and miss a lot of nuance. The issue of consent is actually quite simple. We ask for consent because it takes two to tango. The rules of sex are that it is intercourse with consent of both parties. If it is without consent it would be rape. Rape is a kind of sex frowned upon because sex against the will of one party is a very painful humiliating and unpleasant affair for one of the parties. So basically we require consent. I do not think it has anything to do with teh capitalust system. Sex is not 'inherently wrong', sex without consent is inherently wrong, much the same as violence is inerently wrong.

During the sex act you indeed use the other person for your pleasure, I agree with that. However the beauty of it is that the other uses you for that very same purpose. It is the mutual objectification that makes it moral. If objectification is merely one sided, yes than you have a point, but it is not. The point of it is, at least for me, that the other consents to the defilement, the base urges and what have you, but also has the right to use you in likewise manner.... and you even like it when he/she does... So yes, sex is most intimately bound up with consent, because otherwise the objectfication is just base and nother else than structural dominance in the worst form.

Is there anything wrong with rewarding people for what they accomplished purely or almost purely by luck? — czahar

An award is given for something, an achievement. In achieving something, always somewhere down the line there is a luck factor involved, if only the abscence of bad luck. A nobel price winning scientists probably would never have won a nobel prize if his train was late during his very first job application for instance. If luck cannot be a factor in giving awards than we probably should abolish the institution of awards, something we can choose to do. On the other hand not accepting an award because it is based on luck is incoherent. Since luck plays a part in any general award it is no reason for rejecting that specific award, unless the disclaimer is made that all awards are rejected.

In fact contrary to pseudonym's line, I would take Cuthbert's line, but even radicalise it. We have a duty to accept the award, because universilising the maxim "awards should not be accepted when there is an element of luck involved" leads to a contraditction: there is always an element of luck involved so the whole institution of awards is eradicated. Now we could argue whether that is a good idea. A second Kantian question would be: can we will to live in a world without the institution of awards? We can but it would make the world a more barren place. Do we want that? Since the insitution of awards exists from time immemorial and seemingly in every society I argue we have an imperfect duty to accept awards at least some of the time. The mother did not live up to duty, despite her intentions.

Thanks Tiff, really great to see you too! Nice to be here!