Keith
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Speaking at Newtown about the massacre of 26 at the school there,
President Obama said that we should not be powerless in preventing
other tragedies. Unfortunately, we have to be. Such killings have
already been going on in the past in many countries and will continue
to do so. And if they don't take place with guns, they'll take place
with knives and if not with knives by explosives made from
bog-standard agricultural fertilizer. My own moral criterion when
considering any unusual behaviour in modern times is whether anything
similar has ever been observed and described by travellers and
anthropologists in the last 500 years or so. I didn't need to apply
it in this case, of course; my response was instinctive. But in
Newtown's case also there has never been anything remotely similar
having taken place in hunter-gatherer society, The crucial difference
is that in hunter-gatherer society no-one could ever have been a
loner. In today's society, we have increasing numbers of young people
who, while mentally sane diagnostically, are deeply alienated from
those around them. In today's consumerist society we've thrown the
birth-community out with the bathwater.
- [Futurework] Send not for whom the Bell tolls Keith Hudson
