Tuesday, March 5, 2013

Do Complex Questions Have Simple Answers?

Is it men, by that I mean males? Is it guns? Is it the lack of guns? If it is madness how does one explain McVeigh?

We are an inquiring species and not humble. We believe in our own ability to theorize and make sense out of the unknown. We even try to make sense of the senseless.
I doubt if we will have any insight here, how one decides to plot against strangers, attack children. But we are complex beings with a complex history. Are we a technological people with some outliers in Africa and the Middle East? Are we a primitive people with some outliers in North America and Europe? Are we thinking beings with an emotional overlay, an emotional beast with a thinking overlay? Are we an urban people? Hunter gatherers? Agrarians?
Are we trapped in our freedom now that we have gone beyond God and morality, as Niechiez thought? If that is so, how do we explain the religious bomber?

The ancient Greeks believed the relationship between the Polis and the citizen was not a natural, inherent relationship. They thought it had to be taught. Are we allowing shards to develop in the culture where individuals grow untaught about their responsibility to the polis, the whole? Does our obsession with freedom force us to refuse such teaching?

Or have we slipped the civilizing leash. Have we outrun our moral and civilizing supply lines.

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