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Crude Poetic Justice?

coberst

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Crude Poetic Justice?

Wikipedia informs me that “poetic justice” is a notion that fictional literature takes on as a cultural demand whereby literary outcomes must support moral standards by justifying in the end the virtuous behavior of the good guy and punishing the bad behavior of the bad guy. Furthermore logic is also maintained.

How can our (American) present troubles be considered as poetic justice?

Let us just examine the great human manufactured catastrophes visited upon us in the last few years; the Great Crude Oil Smear, the deadliest mine disaster in three decades, the greatest financial catastrophe since the Great Depression, and the looming global climate change induced by human activity.

The common element in all of these catastrophes is our three decade guiding premise that Government is the problem while Free Market forces are the solution.

Poetic Justice results because the American people are punished, with a great crude oil smear, by the logic of their commitment to the free market and their dark suspicion of government regulation.

Perhaps God is a practical joker!
 
Poetic Justice - usually that's an eye-for-an-eye level of events. The oil spill - this is Irony. The thing that we centered our lives and political platforms around becomes the very bane of our existence and the root of death for many (wildlife, future tolls).

Consider, though, that the spill will likely not just effect the US alone - thus - what is the "justice" in the possible effect on world-wide people who had no hand in the production, demand and riches of oil? If only the bad were punished with deluges of oil and the good blessed with pristine beaches poetic justice would be had - but that's hardly the case.
 
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Poetic Justice - usually that's an eye-for-an-eye level of events. The oil spill - this is Irony. The thing that we centered our lives and political platforms around becomes the very bane of our existence and the root of death for many (wildlife, future tolls).

Consider, though, that the spill will likely not just effect the US alone - thus - what is the "justice" in the possible effect on world-wide people who had no hand in the production, demand and riches of oil? If only the bad were punished with deluges of oil and the good blessed with pristine beaches poetic justice would be had - but that's hardly the case.

The United States with 5% of the global population, which uses 25% of the global production of petroleum, becomes tarred with petroleum; that is poetic justice!
 
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The United States with 5% of the global population, which uses 25% of the global production of petroleum, becomes tarred with petroleum; that is poetic justice!

I see your point - but disagree. it's only poetic justice if *only* those in the US who use oil were going to be effected.
However, we're not - this will spread to other countries and is affecting wildlife, sealife and altering the very nature in the Gulf.

There's no justice in that - perhaps the cost end is poetic justice. But that, too, will be spread throughout the entire world's cost of oil. If it was *just* affecting the US then it would be poetic justice but it's not.

Karma and irony.
But not poetic Justice - the innocent are not being spared or given an upper hand as you point out as a basic component of 'poetic justice' in your initial post,
 
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I don't think God reads Wiki. I also don't think these tragic events wrecked us. We just get stronger.
 
I don't think God reads Wiki. I also don't think these tragic events wrecked us. We just get stronger.


Wiki says: “Poetic justice is a literary device in which virtue is ultimately rewarded or vice punished, often in modern literature by an ironic twist of fate intimately related to the character's own conduct."

To call this situation poetic justice is not to say that it is justice that this should happen to the United States. It is to say that if this was a literary novel and this happened to a country in the same manner then we could evaluate it to be poetic justice.

To say that this is poetic justice is to point this out so that we all might learn something very important about human actions in the real world. We Americans go blindly along "jus doin what comes naturally" without ever analyzing our actions in a critical and sophisticated manner.
 
In the literary sense poetic justice is "what goes around comes around," or "getting one's just deserts."

So this would be poetic justice to the oil company - but not to the nation as a whole because it is affecting people who avoid using oil as much as possible, and it doesn't affect some of those who have fattened their wallets.

In order for it to be poetic justice in the literary sense in regard to the entire US is MUST fit this criteria and it does not.
 
Crude Poetic Justice?

Wikipedia informs me that “poetic justice” is a notion that fictional literature takes on as a cultural demand whereby literary outcomes must support moral standards by justifying in the end the virtuous behavior of the good guy and punishing the bad behavior of the bad guy. Furthermore logic is also maintained.

How can our (American) present troubles be considered as poetic justice?

Let us just examine the great human manufactured catastrophes visited upon us in the last few years; the Great Crude Oil Smear, the deadliest mine disaster in three decades, the greatest financial catastrophe since the Great Depression, and the looming global climate change induced by human activity.

The common element in all of these catastrophes is our three decade guiding premise that Government is the problem while Free Market forces are the solution.

Poetic Justice results because the American people are punished, with a great crude oil smear, by the logic of their commitment to the free market and their dark suspicion of government regulation.

Perhaps God is a practical joker!

I think your analogy falls flat, because I can't see that anyone, like a West Virgina coal miner or a Mississippi offshore oil worker, who's just trying to make an honest living deserves to end up dead.
 
I think your analogy falls flat, because I can't see that anyone, like a West Virgina coal miner or a Mississippi offshore oil worker, who's just trying to make an honest living deserves to end up dead.

how dare you bring realism into a thread like this, everyone knows coporations are eeeeeeeeeeeeeevvvvvvvviiiiiiiiiiilllllllllllll
 
how dare you bring realism into a thread like this, everyone knows coporations are eeeeeeeeeeeeeevvvvvvvviiiiiiiiiiilllllllllllll

frankly, i'm more inclined to find irony in the environmental implications of all this. determined not to allow the 'destruction' of shallow-water drilling or to allow evil oil companies to disturb the grounds of Alaska's largest mosquito swarm, they pushed oil rigs further and further out, increasing the likelihood of an event like this. now they will use this event to push for further closing of American drilling; which will cause us to depend more upon nations with less stringent environmental protections, such as saudi arabia, and venezuela. the net result will be an increase in pollution.
 
A 'crude' exhibit....

xzibitbp.png
 
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