Ooohkay. I've wanted to honestly discuss this with other (intelligent) people for a while now, but as I haven't been able to find any lately in real life I turn to you. I'm a little nervous to be honest due to the subject, plus I'm bound to have missed something.

I adore Terry Pratchett books, mainly the Discworld series, and I know that many of the people here do also. He's made a couple of quite interesting points that, so far, I haven't been able to find a flaw in without severely stretching the terms used. The issue I'm having is that they may also only really be completely true by stretching terms as well.

The two points are:

1. All crimes begin with thinking of people as things.

2. Sooner or later, all crimes involve the theft of something, whether it be life, property or innocence.

Due to the context of the book, which is set in the equivalent of 18th century London, I'm sure there are exceptions. But so far for each one, I can think of a way of bringing it back in line with the original point - say we are talking about trespass, in point 1 you could say that it is true in the sense that you are ignoring the privacy and feelings of the owner of the property, and point 2 in that you are taking away a persons privacy.

I honestly don't know if this will get much discussion, I'd just really like to know what other peoples view of this is, and whether anyone else has come across these points in the Discworld books before and what they thought of them.

Thank you for taking the time to read this, hopefully I didn't make it too long winded or boring to read.

I disagree with point 1. people sometimes do something at random, what if you kill a dog for no reason? thats not a person is it?(animal rights activists stay outta this one)

if someone saw people as things he would have little regret for what he does to them(making it more likely for that person to commit a crime) and stealing something... well, nobody does anything for nothing i guess.

--that's my take on it.

What about stealing Pick'N'Mix? I just think of it as tasty.

I'm not sure how drug use applies to either point. If I grow some marijuana and smoke it in my living room, thinking of people as things is meaningless, and I have stolen nothing from anybody. Maybe I do not understand...

What about urinating in the street? Unless your 'stealing the cleanliness'.