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Showing Original Post only (View all)Does the Newtown Massacre have to be anyone's "fault"? Maybe it's [View all]
Last edited Mon Dec 17, 2012, 05:54 AM - Edit history (2)
as simple as genetics run amok and, if there is fault to be assigned, it is to society for failing to educate its citizenry better about genetics (ETA: mental health, and the dangers of firearms).
Some 200 years ago, the poet Coleridge in discussing Shakespeare's Iago talked about his 'motiveless malignity.' While this phrase has traditionally received a gloss to mean 'evil' in the Judeo-Christian sense, if we strip out the religious hocus-pocus, perhaps we could say that the Newtown Massacre was an instance of 'genetic malignity'. Either way, the Newtown Massacre remains at its core ultimately unfathomable, much like Iago's crimes.
I'm really sick and tired of seeing the mother and father, individually or collectively, getting blamed for this. Anyone who's had mental illness in his or her family with a sibling or child knows that the best parenting in the world often doesn't mean jack shit one way or the other. (Lousy parenting may produce still more adverse outcomes, but that's another thread, I would say.) If the genes predispose someone to a particular affliction and the environmental trigger(s) present(s), the parenting of that person isn't going to mean much by way of prevention or amelioration.
Blaming the mother here smacks of misogyny in a major way, since she is not here to explain herself. Likewise, blaming the father carries just the faintest taste of misandry. Either one is way out of line, in my opinion, based on what we currently know.