Poem: "Certain Superior Qualities"

[ysabetwordsmith]

This is today's freebie, inspired by a prompt from callibr8.

WARNING: This poem relates a historic murder that readers may find disturbing.


"Certain Superior Qualities"


Nathan Leopold believed in
Nietzsche's concept of supermen,
transcendent individuals who possessed
extraordinary and unusual capabilities,
whose superior intellects allowed them
to rise above the laws and rules that bound
the unimportant, average populace.

Believing himself to be above it all,
Leopold did not feel obligated by
any of society's ethical norms.

He convinced his friend Richard Loeb
that he, too, was such a paragon.

"A superman is, on account of
certain superior qualities inherent
in him, exempted from the ordinary laws
which govern men," Leopold wrote in
a letter to Loeb. "He is not liable
for anything he may do."

Together they kidnapped
and murdered Robert Franks
a teenager from Chicago.

It was meant as a demonstration
of their intellectual superiority, which
they thought enabled them to carry out
a perfect crime and absolved them
of responsibility for their actions.

Society described it as
"the crime of the century."

Despite their beliefs of impunity,
Leopold and Loeb were both
convicted and sentenced to
life imprisonment plus 99 years.

Loeb was later murdered
by a fellow prisoner in 1936,
fatally caught in a false friend's web.

Leopold was released on parole in 1958,
slipping out of his debt to society.
He worked in health care and
took up birdwatching.

After all his ambitions,
he wound up aspiring
to mere mediocrity.

* * *

Notes:

Leopold and Loeb were privileged young men who committed a famous murder.

Friedrich Nietzsche was a German philosopher with some pretty harsh ideas about existential issues.

Comments

living in infamy

[callibr8]

WOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOT!!!!! Love it!!!

blown away

[callibr8]

Also, let the record show that the elapsed wall clock time from prompt to poem, posted, with links, was less than 90 minutes.

HUZZAH!!!!

[mock exasperation]

There you go again, disproving what "everyone" knows, that it's never possible to get something optimized for cost and schedule and performance.

[/mock exasperation]

Re: blown away

[ysabetwordsmith]

>>Also, let the record show that the elapsed wall clock time from prompt to poem, posted, with links, was less than 90 minutes.

HUZZAH!!!!<<

Yay!

;) If you think that's fast, though, you should see Tom Smith inventing filk songs from prompts at a house party. He can do it in five minutes flat, to music.

>> There you go again, disproving what "everyone" knows, that it's never possible to get something optimized for cost AND schedule AND performance.<<

You too can bullseye a Venn diagram ... with ~40 years of practice. :D

Re: blown away

[callibr8]

Yes, Tom Smith has earned his "fastest filker on the planet" reputation.

> You too can bullseye a Venn diagram ... with ~40 years of practice.

LOL!

Re: blown away

[siliconshaman]

A true master makes the seemingly impossible look effortless...

although as my old sensei used to say, true masters are also damned annoying to the rest of us mere mortals.

Re: blown away

[ysabetwordsmith]

Oh, was that impossible? So sorry, I didn't notice.

;)

Re: blown away

[siliconshaman]

Exactly...

Re: blown away

[technoshaman]

40? Wow.

Re: blown away

[ysabetwordsmith]

The earliest of my poetry is in my parents' handwriting because I couldn't write yet.

When I was in junior high, I started writing a poem every weekday, and kept that up at least through high school. By college it had just smeared into "I write tons of poetry all the time as inspiration strikes." My notebooks were all full of haiku and darrow poems in the backs because I'd get bored listening to a class I could've taught.

[siliconshaman]

The problem with Nietzsche's philosophy is, he never did define his terms... so people are free to interpret superman to include whatever standards they choose [and inevitably include themselves.]

Sociopaths are particularly fond of seeing themselves as "superior". [Leopold & Loeb were among case studies I've had to study for psychology.]

[we_are_spc]

No emotions=superior because all emotions do is cloud judgment.

Yep.

OK so maybe that's more a psychopath than a sociopath, but.

Also: I would love to know, was that a basic psychology course, or is that your field of study/profession?

-Fallon~~

[siliconshaman]

Diploma level, I was working towards a Bsc in Therapeutic counselling. Then they changed the rules requiring a £480 annual fee and certification in 'best practices' which essentially made the school of therapy I preferred working in [person-centred Rogerian] illegal. Because BACC is run by Neo-Freudian NPL advocates.

Technically, I could still work as private counsellor.. but I couldn't get professional insurance without the BACC certificate, and it's illegal to work as a counsellor without it. [not to mention stupid!]

O_O

[ysabetwordsmith]

I didn't know Rogerian therapy was actually illegal.

And then they wonder why people "don't want help."

Gee, because when your life is careening out of control, what you really want is someone to come take away the last shreds of control that you're clinging to by your fingernails. >_<

Well, good for you bailing out of that.

Re: O_O

[siliconshaman]

Yup, that's what happens when the government hands over the job of drafting regulation laws to a committee run by a clique.

I'm just a little bitter about what happened, but at least I hadn't invested years of work and my whole life into it like some of my mentors.

And yeah, the BACC standard model of practice goes hand-in-hand with reliance on drug therapy and supports involuntary 'sectioning' of patients if they are deemed a 'risk' which usually ends up with them locked up in restraints. [word of advice for people visiting Britain.. do not tell the police if you are having thoughts of self harm.. that's a one way express ticket to the local psyche ward... and good luck getting out if you've nobody on the outside to help.]

[we_are_spc]

Wow. And...um, so we're taking psych basics and sociology ones-and the more I read, the more I just want to...I dunno, scream, because so much depends on the pharmacologists that it's just...wtf.

I had no idea that so much was dependent on exams and that they could be so...unfair like that. :(

-Fallon~

Yes...

[ysabetwordsmith]

Unfortunately the medical industry has created a monopoly. They train people to behave in certain ways and they enforce it ruthlessly. Anyone who doesn't like those practices and results is not permitted to participate, either as a caregiver or a willing client. Dissenters are open season as victims, though.

The industry also has a savage habit of identifying alternative methods that are becoming popular, such as massage therapy, and taking them over by force.

"If you're upset, turn up your soma."

Re: Yes...

[we_are_spc]

Yeah, we've noticed. I mean, I get some of it (I feel like the MBLEX is a sort of necessary evil)...but some of it I don't get. It just, like you mentioned earlier, makes people more afraid, and we, then wonder why people just...sort of ride things out on their own. I feel like the more medicalized a society is, the more it falls apart at the seems.

I mean, some people say that it's lack of religion (God, of course) and morals, but I'm not quite sure I agree with that whole argument.

Sure, I believe that you shouldbelieve in *something* even is that something is yourself, but I'm not sure that 'lack of morals' is the *only* erason society seems to be cracking and going to hell; the more I read about credentialism, I think that's also part of the reason. Now that I have a better idea what it is.

-Fallon~

Re: Yes...

[ysabetwordsmith]

>> It just, like you mentioned earlier, makes people more afraid, and we, then wonder why people just...sort of ride things out on their own.<<

Exactly. People go to doctors when the benefit exceeds the risk/cost. Otherwise they stay home. So the worse they get before they're desperate enough to seek help, the lower the trust that indicates in the field, the lower its performance and value are to clients. If it was better, they'd go in sooner and more often.

>> I feel like the more medicalized a society is, the more it falls apart at the seems.<<

This matches my observations.

>>I mean, some people say that it's lack of religion (God, of course) and morals, but I'm not quite sure I agree with that whole argument.<<

Bullshit. You can have morals without religion, and a great many people have religion without morals. For example, asshats who think it's okay to picket a funeral because they've decided their deity dislikes (insert random trait here).

Re: Yes...

[technoshaman]

I wouldn't say certain asshats have religion without morals. It's just that they *claim* the religion out of one book and get their morals/ethics out of a very different one, probably titled "how to win friends, influence people, and rob them stinking blind"...