>
> Why set the bar so high? Can we really provide a quantitative,
> operational definition of crimes against humanity? Should we?
>
> I consider the murder of the Sikh fellow in Arizona to be a
> crime against humanity. Morally, I just don't see the distinction
> between the loss of one innocent life and thousands. If the
> loss of life is a human tragedy, we don't need to whip out our
> metaphorical dicks and see who has the longest body count.
>
Aren't there some who claim that the greater the crime - the "anti-humanism" - the greater the virtue i.e. who make self-destructive nihilism the summum bonum.
A mild version of the idea that rule-breaking is an essential feature of a great experience is found in the following:
"So where, precisely, did Marx go wrong with regard to surplus-value? One is tempted to search for an answer in the key Lacanian distinction between the object of desire and surplusenjoyment as its cause, Henry Krips evokes the lovely example of the chaperone in seduction: the chaperone is an ugly elderly lady who is officially the obstacle to the direct goal-object (the woman the suitor is courting); but precisely as such, she is the key intermediary moment that effectively makes the beloved woman desirable - without her, the whole economy of seduction would collapse." Zizek as long ago quoted by Doug (from The Fragile Absolute I think).
The most extreme nihilistic act of self-destructive sadistic violence - self-destruction in a supremely "transgressive" limit experience - constitutes the moment to which, if it did not contradict its nature, one could say stay.
Marx, by the way, seems to me to have objected not to "play" but to mindless "mere play" as "freedom". This was his objection to Fourier. The realm of freedom is the realm of mindful play.
Ted
Ted