Values Dissonance/Literature: Difference between revisions
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** In a story from ''The Case-Book Of Sherlock Holmes'', a man confesses to concealing his sister's death so he can retain use of her properties long enough to clean up at the track. These days, his hiring someone to impersonate her smacks of identity theft, and would be prosecuted as fraud. Holmes lets him walk, apparently not considering it objectionable once he's confirmed the sister was not murdered. The fact that both he and the suspect refer to his creditors as "the Jews" doesn't help.
** Quite a few culprits are allowed to go unprosecuted on the condition that they leave Britain, or are treated as if the crimes they've committed outside of Europe are none of Holmes' affair. Crimes outside the U.K. may not be ''Lestrade's'' jurisdiction, but Holmes takes pride in not having the same constraints as the police, so it seems hypocritical when his commitment to justice ends at the British coastline.
*** Practically speaking, Holmes can only use his 'freedom of constraints' when he is erring on the side of mercy because for Holmes to punish a wrongdoer in a situation where the British legal system has decided its not their problem would require Holmes himself to become a vigilante murderer. Which he doesn't want to do.
* In one of Doyle's "Professor Challenger" stories, [[wikipedia:The Poison Belt|The Poison Belt]], the Earth passes through a toxic region in the [[wikipedia:Luminiferous aether|Ether]], which gradually kills {{spoiler|knocks out}} the entire population of the world... in order of darkest to lightest skin. Professor Challenger's plan to protect people from its effects was offered to his friends, but not to his servants.
** The skin-tone ordering is somewhat alleviated by the fact that the story suggests the order was more on the lines of 'the equator first, then outwards from there' rather than ordered by skin-tone alone.
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