The magnitude of Justice

“Throughout the history of law the magnitude of the crime has been lessened by the magnitude of the criminal.”

P 28, Our Oriental Heritage, Will and Ariel Durant.



The proof of this lesson has a million legs, and it thunders like a herd through the annals of history, and any exception you offer would be swarmed and engulfed by the rule.

Let’s not engage in any petty listing of the wealthy and famous who have escaped justice. They suck, and that’s their mental enema to hold. They are not the problem. It’s all the people who just step back and let it happen that are the true problem.

Which people?

The Eskimos! They’re evil!!

That’s not true at all. I apologize to the Eskimos.

You and me are the people in a state of accusation here.

The blogger and the blogged.

But before I call you and me weak, vacillating weather vanes of morality, I should do some writer-ing to prove it.

“Throughout the history of law the magnitude of the crime has been lessened by the magnitude of the criminal.”

In the past, this Lesson would have referred to what we call the Lords of the Earth, those who owned the land and thereby also owned the right to say who lives and dies. As laws became written codes instead of personal whim, the last person held accountable by these new laws were these very same Lords. A marked sign of feudal kingdoms becoming modern states is the crisis where a Lord is forced to accept the same justice as a peasant; the beheading of Charles I is an example of this.


Meritocracy aside, legal theorists forced exemptions on behalf of modern lawmakers, to protect them from undue prejudice in passing laws. After all, if they actually had to follow the rules they set, no new rules might be passed. And without new rules society will. . . .that is without new regulations everyone will. . . um. . .be happy, content and self-reliant? It seems this legal theory is the opposite of the ideas currently dominating the management of children, lawbreakers, Heaven and Hell. Why congress commits actions exceptional to these things is a Historical mystery, but we know why they are allowed to:

“Throughout the history of law the magnitude of the crime has been lessened by the magnitude of the criminal.”


How many elected officials have been prosecuted for criminal behavior? How many have served time? How many have been served the same plate of justice that the poor man does when caught stealing food?


Why is this even possible in an age so publicly proud of its advances in social justice? It is possible by a little morality two- step jig we call The Lords of Ego Shuffle.


In the past a person would become powerful and thereby famous, but today a person can become famous, and then powerful as a result of the fame. This is a modern phenomenon. Antiquity and antiquity’s following decades don’t have the power-less becoming powerful as a result of their simply showing yourself to lots of people. Actual accomplishments were required, unlike today.


Lady Gaga is a good example. Nothing about her is original; an outlandishly extravagant pop star has been walking the stage since Sarah Bernhardt. The recent lawsuits brought by the 80’s Sarah Bernhardt, Madonna, further prove that even her music (which is the actual reason we forced to deal with her) is legally not different. So a we have singer who can’t sing without computer enhancement, who sings songs stolen from other music, and whose contribution to culture has been the ability to walk in heel-less high heeled shoes. Well, when she’s sober she can walk in heel-less high heeled shoes.


Her fans will bleat about the positive message of her music, which they claim is about love and acceptance of others and yourself. As an expression of this message, these fans call GaGa the Mother Monster, and they call themselves monsters. Do I have to even point out the lie here? Okay, I will. A crowd of people who emulate the fashion industries’ number one supporter are only Monsters in the hypocrisy of their actions and in their financial support of a person who would not piss on a guy in jeans and a t-shirt if he was on fire. Oh, unless that person had AIDS and there were TV cameras about.


Lady Gaga typifies the modern ‘magnitude’; a magnitude of nothingness.
These we will call Lords of the Ego. People like Oprah, Tom Cruise, Bruce Springsteen, P Diddy and Simon Cowell all contribute nothing to society but distraction and the hope to billions of sufferers of Capitalism that maybe, someday, they too will be paid three million dollars for two months work and not have to answer to anyone; although to do so goes against the ethics taught by every major world religion, just in case anyone was worrying about what the ‘right’ thing to do is.


Our civilization’s answer to this Lesson of History has not been to close the loophole, but to provide a way for the non-powerful to achieve this status, hence the creation of the Magnitude of nothingness and the Lords of Ego.

The masses will tolerate injustice, if they perceive they have a chance to reap the same unjust benefits in the future. Which is why OJ went free and Martha Stewart went to jail.

And, as the people agree to the Lords of Ego Shuffle, they can’t really protest when the wealthy and powerful escape responsibility illustrated by today’s Lesson, now can they?

Oh yeah, and just in case you were deluding yourself into innocence, you and me are those masses; even if you have a college degree.

People getting away with murder; as a metaphor or as a reality is frustrating as hell to witness, but it’s not impossible to fight. All you have to do is risk social standing, defy custom and refuse to yield to the Lords of the Earth and the Lords of Ego.

Which, though heroic, will not make you a hero.

It will make you a citizen.

It will be hard, and people will call you crazy for simply doing what all acknowledge to be the right thing.

But history is here for you, and so am I.

History for Living-

This blog is about applying the lessons of history to our daily lives. But don’t be fooled, History is not an academic pursuit-it’s what every single one of you is doing right now!! This Blog will, I assure you, get personal, wet, sticky and challenging to the ideas you hold most dear. So you can relax, there will be no quizzes, and there will be swear words and jokes and stuff.

But I will not lie to you, or pull the punches of what our ancestors have learned.

If you feel I am wrong about something, let me know with a polite argument.

I am not seeking to prove myself right, but to find out what is right.

And, obverse-ly in the words of Oliver Cromwell, “I beseech you Gentlemen, by the bowels of Christ, to consider that you might be wrong.”





“Man does not love society as much as he fears solitude.”

P21, Our Oriental Heritage, Will and Ariel Durant.


As an Macro-Historical principle, the above statement gives us insight to certain social truths, but little forward action; it is it’s own discovery and therein a cul-de-sac of thought leading only to itself. However, when applied to the personal, daily lives of men and women, it becomes almost a geometric Axiom; a law that we cannot escape. But by acceptance and forethought, we can limit it’s painful side.


And pain, love, joy and compassion and all those vague necessaries are what life is all about.


Don’t let the academic nature of that first paragraph bother you too much.


‘Cuz the rest of this is going to be about the broken hearted, and the loss of love.


The above Historical principle is Will and Ariel Durant’s mathematical word formula which objectively describes the sum total all the horrible things we do to ourselves to just prevent our- selves from being alone. We cannot live alone, but other people are so weird. And other people think I’m weird. Sometimes we pick the wrong solution to our lonliness, and when the mistake must be rectified, we are twice as alone as before, and twice as fearful

The fear of solitude, the terror of being alone in an empty apartment with the growing suspicion that nobody likes you, or ever did or ever will. You may take comfort in the truth that our species has carried these feelings since the burden of consciousness first bloomed in our skulls.

But so what, Montaigne? What’s this going to do for me and that bastard/bitch who hurt me, or won’t return my calls? How will it help ease the pain of being turned away, of having to learn how to forget those intimacies you’ve created with this other soul, who now must be a stranger?

Dang, calm down Tom Waits.

Though loneliness can be existential, History isn’t so all you Satre Jr’. are on your own. Let us stick to the classic modern loneliness from breaking up.

Here’s what History teaches us about heartbreak.

The first lesson of history is to drink profusely. Yep. That’s right. Get real drunk.
Since bread, there has been beer. And since beer, there has been weeping in it. But it was not until 325BC, in the Greek port of Cos where the Official rules of breakup drinking where established:

1. Go with two friends. One will not be enough.

2. Go to a bar you do not regularly frequent, for you will likely be thrown out and asked not to return.

3. Yes, that woman who looks like a man is a man.

4. Do not communicate at all, in any way, with the ex during the drinking binge.

Other rules are added and subtracted with the flow of the lava lamp of time. But those are the basics.


After the drinking is done, history begins to splinter a bit on the next best course to heal a broken heart; Shakespeare wrote sonnets, Ivan III liked to cut off heads and beat people with knotted ropes. But the social scientists here at Cromwell’s Ghost Laboratories have distilled centuries of experience into a few the basic categories. They are: Replacing the lost love, Burying oneself in work, Finding new hobbies, New clothes, New haircut New stuff. And these catagories are all fairly standard though time and space.

These however are just coping mechanisms. Mummer’s plays and magic lantern shows we put on to cover battle within; the fear of being alone-or worse, the fear of deserving to be alone.

The only real solace to this pain is the oxymoronic truth that if you have feeling enough to suffer from the loss, then you are a good person. Jerks, scumbags, bitches and assholes don’t mind losing what they can never really have. And even though it may feel like all things sweet, good and true were taken from you with the loss of the other’s face from your life, you are a good person, and more good things will come again to you, as the old pleasures will soon lose the taint of your ‘other’, and become only yours again. But, unfortunately, no matter what you do to cope or hide, you will be in pain and it won’t go away quick.

But that’s okay, because History is here for you, and so am I.

“Man does not love society as much as he fears solitude.”

You will get over this, because you have to.