Home | Join! | Help | Browse | Forums | NuWorld | NWF | PoPo   

So we fix our eyes not on what is seen, but on what is unseen, since what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal.


The Profile


Zanzibar
Age. 39
Gender. Female
Ethnicity. that of my father and his father before him
Location Altadena, CA
School. Other
» More info.
The World









The Link To Zanzibar's Past
This is my page in the beloved art community that my sister got me into:

Samarinda

Extra points for people who know what Samarinda is.
The Phases of the Moon Module
CURRENT MOON
Croc Hunter/Combat Wombat
My hero(s)
Only My Favorite Baseball Player EVER


Aw, Larry Walker, how I loved thee.
The Schedule
M: Science and Exploration
T: Cook a nice dinner
W: PARKOUR!
Th: Parties, movies, dinners
F: Picnics, the Louvre
S: Read books, go for walks, PARKOUR
Su: Philosophy, Religion
The Reading List
This list starts Summer 2006
A Crocodile on the Sandbank
Looking Backwards
Wild Swans
Exodus
1984
Tales of the Alhambra (in progress)
Dark Lord of Derkholm
Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?
The Lost Years of Merlin
Harry Potter a l'ecole des sorciers (in progress)
Atlas Shrugged (in progress)
Uglies
Pretties
Specials
A Long Way Gone (story of a boy soldier in Sierra Leone- met the author! w00t!)
The Eye of the World: Book One of the Wheel of Time
From Magma to Tephra (in progress)
Lady Chatterley's Lover
Harry Potter 7
The No. 1 Lady's Detective Agency
Introduction to Planetary Volcanism
A Child Called "It"
Pompeii
Is Multi-Culturalism Bad for Women?
Americans in Southeast Asia: Roots of Commitment (in progress)
What's So Great About Christianity?
Aeolian Geomorphology
Aeolian Dust and Dust Deposits
The City of Ember
The People of Sparks
Cube Route
When I was in Cuba, I was a German Shepard
Bound
The Golden Compass
Clan of the Cave Bear
The 9/11 Commission Report (2nd time through, graphic novel format this time, ip)
The Incredible Shrinking Man
Twilight
Eclipse
New Moon
Breaking Dawn
Armageddon's Children
The Elves of Cintra
The Gypsy Morph
Animorphs #23: The Pretender
Animorphs #25: The Extreme
Animorphs #26: The Attack
Crucial Conversations
A Journey to the Center of the Earth
A Great and Terrible Beauty
The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian
Dandelion Wine
To Sir, With Love
London Calling
Watership Down
The Invisible
Alice in Wonderland
Through the Looking Glass
20,000 Leagues Under the Sea
The Host
The Hunger Games
Catching Fire
Shadows and Strongholds
The Jungle Book
Beatrice and Virgil
Infidel
Neuromancer
The Help
Flip
Zion Andrews
The Unit
Princess
Quantum Brain
The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks
No One Ever Told Us We Were Defeated
Delirium
Memento Nora
Robopocalypse
The Name of the Wind
The Terror
Sister
Tao Te Ching
What Paul Meant
Lao Tzu and Taoism
Libyan Sands
Sand and Sandstones
Lost Christianites: The Battles for Scripture and the Faiths We Never Knew
The Science of God
Calculating God
Great Contemporaries, by Winston Churchill
City of Bones
Around the World in 80 Days, by Jules Verne
Divergent
Stranger in a Strange Land
The Old Man and the Sea
Flowers for Algernon
Au Bonheur des Ogres
The Martian
The Road to Serfdom
De La Terre � la Lune (ip)
In the Light of What We Know
Devil in the White City
2312
The First Fifteen Lives of Harry August
Red Mars
How to Be a Good Wife
A Mote in God's Eye
A Gentleman in Russia
The Fatal Conceit: The Errors of Socialism
Seneca: Letters from a Stoic
The Juanes Module


Juanes just needed his own mod. Who can disagree.
The Nature of Goodness
Thursday. 11.16.06 4:00 am
Ok, so a Tale of Two Cities. Don't read this if you don't want to hear me refer to what happens in the end.


Sydney Carton. In my opinion one of the most sympathetic and tragically noble characters in literature. A waste of life. A drunkard. Someone who could have been attractive but ruined it by weakness in character. I know plenty of people like this. So I was reading about him on Wikipedia, and I thought the person who was synopsizing him put the question of who he really was interestingly. The person basically said that Carton's sacrifice at the end could be viewed in two different ways: Either he did it nobly and selflessly, giving his life because he cares so much for Lucie Manette and he wants her to have her husband back, something something, whatever. I'll copy and paste the actual entry:

"The most common interpretation of Sydney Carton is one in which he is the selfless benefactor of others. Having grown weary of his life of self-indulgence, he decides to sacrifice it in order to save the life of Charles Darnay, who had shown himself more worthy of living it than Carton had his own. However, a more self-centered interpretation of Carton also exists. In this interpretation, Carton regrets his being regarded as a ne'er-do-well for having wasted his life, and chooses to give it up, hoping that his past will be forgotten and that he will be remembered for his sacrifice. This interpretation suggests that Carton is more concerned with his reputation than with the well-being of Darnay and his family."

Now this made me wonder. Would the fact that Carton gave his life for Darnay just so that people would remember him as a good person instead of a huge failure at life make his act selfish?
I think a far more selfish act would have been to let Darnay die and then attempt to take his place in Lucie's heart after he was gone, don't you? If your whole life was spent doing good for others, but the only reason you did it is because you wanted to die with everyone thinking that you were good, would that mean that you yourself were never actually "good", and your whole life was essentially a farce? If people discovered that your driving force for good wasn't that you were good but that you wanted to be seen as being good, would they decide that you were in fact a selfish person?

Let's turn that on its head. What if you did all kinds of bad things, but you did them for selfless reasons? Does that make you a good person? I can't answer with a resounding yes on that one.

Perhaps the most noble of actions are those in which you make a sacrifice for what is right without anyone ever knowing that you did it. Perhaps everyone thinks ill of you, but if they only knew the truth, they would know that you are noble and good. However, by the very nature of the truth it would be ignoble to reveal it. Yet you steadfastly stay the course because you are essentially good and that trumps your desire for people to see you as a good person.

So that begs the question- would Carton have sacrificed himself for the sake of Darnay if Lucie would have never known about his sacrifice? What if he managed to wrangle Darnay's head from the guillotine and replace it with his own but Darnay never knew how or why it came about? Would he still have done it?


I think he would have.


Recommended by 2 Members
middaymoon ZZ
5 Comments.


This blog was hot hot
» kkama67 on 2006-11-16 12:07:19

i shall recommend this
so i can read it when my school finishes the book :)

lol, nice timing
» middaymoon on 2006-11-16 07:14:55

Courage is when you do what is right regardless of personal risk.
» Dad (71.229.172.142) on 2006-11-17 02:34:20

It is rather valuable phrase
Rather amusing message buy xanax cheap It to me is boring. alprazolam without prescription Very good idea buy ultram There is a site on a theme interesting you. how do i get prescribed xanax Sounds it is tempting xanax prescription online 69e0da
» Booker (124.195.2.46) on 2011-06-08 04:39:09

Improbably!
It seems remarkable phrase to me is buy adipex Be assured. buy synthroid Excuse, it is removed buy ativan online It is remarkable, very valuable idea buy xanax In my opinion, you are not right. buy tramadol online 9e0da8b
» Tyson (178.213.33.129) on 2011-07-09 06:08:55

Name.

URL.

[to enter your email, use "mailto:[email protected]"]
Subject.

Comment.

Word verification.

Copy the first 4 characters only.

If you are a member, try logging in again or accessing this page here.

Zanzibar's Weblog Site • NuTang.com

NuTang is the first web site to implement PPGY Technology. This page was generated in 0.279seconds.

  Send to a friend on AIM | Set as Homepage | Bookmark Home | NuTang Collage | Terms of Service & Privacy Policy | Link to Us | Monthly Top 10s
All content � Copyright 2003-2047 NuTang.com and respective members. Contact us at NuTang[AT]gmail.com.