Friday, December 21, 2012

Dalrymple: Newton's Unanswerable Questions

Do read it all.

"Yet, except in one case, I found no evidence that the low standard of practice had actually resulted in a preventable killing, despite the immense power of the retrospectoscope—the medical instrument that provides us with wisdom after the event and that sometimes does lead to improvements in practice that saves lives, though at other times it provides us only with scapegoats."

Yet:

"A further point: it is unlikely that we will ever have a full medical explanation of events such as the Newtown killings."

However:

"In an article in Le Monde, a professor of sociology at Strasbourg University, David Le Breton, quotes a German schoolboy who killed 15 people in a school in Winnenden in 2009: “I’m fed up, I’ve had enough of this meaningless life which is always the same. Everyone ignores me, no one recognises my potential.”

"This reeks of resentful, narcissistic grandiosity, the result of an imperative to be an individual at a time when individuation is more difficult than ever"