So I’m re-reading Watchmen right now, and I’m thinking that I probably have better things to do. I may start up Kierkegaard’s Fear and Trembling again, and I promised Janelle that I’d read some Annie Dillard, but are there any other good reads my three readers can recommend?

A while back, I picked up Watchmen to check it out, since the movie is coming out soon. I was blown away. I realize how geeky that makes me sound, given that this is a graphic novel (large-scale comic book). But consider that Watchmen made Time magazine’s list of 100 top novels between 1923 and today. (That’s novels, not graphic novels—it was on the list with The Great Gatsby and other classics.)

The quote in the post title, which means, “Who watches the watchmen,” sums up the premise of the story. The story covers a wide range of time, but basically, there are a few individuals who took it upon themselves to be superheroes. They didn’t have any special powers—just wits and physical prowess. They eventually band together into a team, to more effectively fight crime. But then, one of them attempts to rape one of the other ones.

There’s a public outcry. It makes sense. They don’t know who these people are, where they live. The police can’t catch them. If they decided to run amok, it would be quite difficult to stop them. Eventually, the government intervenes and passes an act which states that only government-sanctioned superheroes are legal; all others are to be hunted.

That’s all back-story, revealed later in the story. The story actually opens up with a murder of a man which is later revealed to be one of the costumed superheroes. One of the other costumed heroes (the only one who neither worked for the government nor retired) takes it upon himself to investigate this, since he doesn’t trust the police to finish the job. He uncovers something horrific, and—surprise, surprise—it’s something the costumed heroes can’t seek help with.

All of this sounds really cliché. It’s not. The writer took great pains to make these costumed heroes real people, who struggle with the morality of their actions and question the impact they can really have on the world. They show some of the good guys being bad guys, but they also show some of the bad guys being innocent victims. Even in the end, it’s not really stated whether the “villain” was justified in his actions. They very intentionally leave it ambiguous, with the action having both drastically good and drastically bad consequences and the characters not knowing how to react. It’s a story that really makes you think and doesn’t tell you what to feel in the end.

If you’re interested, you can actually pick it up pretty cheap on Amazon:

It’s by the same guy that wrote V for Vendetta, although I consider Watchmen to be the better story.

I just started Fear and Trembling by Kierkegaard. Here’s an excerpt from the first paragraph of the second chapter:

An old proverb fetched from the outward aspect of the visible world says: “Only the man that works gets the bread.” Strangely enough this proverb does not aptly apply in that world to which it expressly belongs. For the outward world is subjected to the law of imperfection, and again and again the experience is repeated that he too who does not work gets the bread, and that he who sleeps gets it more abundantly than the man who works. In the outward world everything is made payable to the bearer, this world is in bondage to the law of indifference, and to him who has the ring, the spirit of the ring is obedient, whether he be Noureddin or Aladdin, and he who has the world’s treasure, has it, however he got it. It is different in the world of spirit. Here an eternal divine order prevails, here it does not rain both upon the just and upon the unjust, here the sun does not shine both upon the good and upon the evil, here it holds good that only he who works gets the bread, only he who was in anguish finds repose, only he who descends into the underworld rescues the beloved, only he who draws the knife gets Isaac.

I think I’m going to like this book. If you’re interested but don’t want to shell out the money for your own copy, the entire text is online here.

I think this passage illuminates something C.S. Lewis touched on. Almost every human has a conception of justice and what is fair. This is usually a very strong notion. But when you look at the world around us, it’s hardly fair. The natural law is that the strong take, and the weak are taken or taken from. Goodness is not rewarded unless it translates into strength. I think most people would agree that this isn’t really “fair.”

Where we get this concept of fairness from is a mystery, since it rarely actually exists in nature. Lewis says that this conception is inborn in humanity and present because of our formation in God’s image. Many of the philosophers (excluding most of the Postmodern persuasion) would say that this is simply human transcendence—rising above nature.

Anyway, I have my thoughts (I’m in the Lewis camp). I want to hear yours. Why do we have a conception of justice that is thoroughly unrealistic (meaning seldom found in our perceivable reality)?