http://anthropik.com/2007/04/listening-to-the-monsters/ se wo were fi na wosan kofa a yenki Thu, 16 Oct 2008 01:11:49 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.3.3 http://anthropik.com/2007/04/listening-to-the-monsters/#comment-85937 Hasha Fri, 20 Apr 2007 03:02:04 +0000 http://anthropik.com/2007/04/listening-to-the-monsters/#comment-85937 A fitting post. People like to think of incidents such as this one as being somehow ‘incomprehensible’; and in a sense they are, but not nearly as completely as people would like to believe. Extreme cases such as this one, or rather, their frequency and exact nature can serve as a kind of thermometer: just as mercury in a thermometer will tell us about the temperature in a room, the ‘monsters’ will tell us about the level of pressure in a society. If outbursts of seemingly incomprehensible violence are becoming more common, that means that the pressure is increasing. And everyone is feeling this pressure, not just the few nutcases who commit massacres. To be sure, the vast majority of us do not react in such extreme ways; but we are all reacting in <i>some</i> ways. For me, that’s the interesting part. How are the ‘normal’ people reacting to the pressure that led a few (but an increasing few, or the increasingly violent few) on the margins to commit atrocities? In what ways are ‘normal’ people starting to bend and crack under the ever more intense pressure? And what is to be done about this? A fitting post. People like to think of incidents such as this one as being somehow ‘incomprehensible’; and in a sense they are, but not nearly as completely as people would like to believe. Extreme cases such as this one, or rather, their frequency and exact nature can serve as a kind of thermometer: just as mercury in a thermometer will tell us about the temperature in a room, the ‘monsters’ will tell us about the level of pressure in a society. If outbursts of seemingly incomprehensible violence are becoming more common, that means that the pressure is increasing. And everyone is feeling this pressure, not just the few nutcases who commit massacres. To be sure, the vast majority of us do not react in such extreme ways; but we are all reacting in some ways. For me, that’s the interesting part. How are the ‘normal’ people reacting to the pressure that led a few (but an increasing few, or the increasingly violent few) on the margins to commit atrocities? In what ways are ‘normal’ people starting to bend and crack under the ever more intense pressure? And what is to be done about this?

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