Dalrymple catches the Guardian in a glaring contradiction: On the one hand, why are the Americans paying so much attention to the Boston bombings when the number of people killed by guns is so much greater?
On the other hand, let’s talk more about the death of Stephen Lawrence but ignore the much greater number of black victims killed by black criminals.
But that would have been a very painful subject, requiring real moral courage to address; and another very human characteristic is the avoidance of subjects that cause pain and require real moral courage to address.
“The premise of Mr Young’s article was that we should pay attention to social (or antisocial) phenomena in proportion to their statistical frequency.”
Steven Pinker discusses a very similar thing here http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CJckLUkh9q0 at 19:30
But I’d say more interestingly at 30:22 he says “I’m a bit of a traitor to my generation” he discusses how the “60’s were the decade of doing your on thing, ‘letting it all hang out’, ‘if it feels good do it'” etc and how this manifested in an increase in violence. I’d say he almost goes so far as to largely blame the 60’s for mass incarceration (‘putting the devil back in the box’), “more effective policing” but also ‘engagement with communities’, of course.
Proust
Perhaps I am being a little slow Louise, but what is the Proust point?