A question of blame

[Anita Kilgour]

> But why were they nuts?

As you say, there are thousands of potential reasons.  So why is everyone
pointing to half a dozen?  Not because they're looking for a way to avoid
this happening again, but because they want someone to blame.

Granted, the only folks I think right now have even the slightest right to
be doing that are the parents/friends of the dead kids.  I don't think it's
rational, but it's pretty flipping common, and especially in the parents
cases, expected.

> Were they hypnotized by violent computer games and movies?
> Was it lead poisoning from cheap window blinds imported from China?
> Did their parents abuse them?
> Was it dioxins from burning chlorinated compounds?
> Did they have an detectable and treatable geneticly based
> mental illness?

Harald, you've seen me when I'm borderline losing my temper.  Have any clues
why I can't seem to deal with the idjits of the planet?  I rarely play video
games.  Violent movies?  Seen them, but well done violence sends me into
near catatonia in sypathetic pain.  Window blinds?  I think with the number
of blood tests for one or another toxin I've had over my life, I'm likely
clean (plus my folk didn't have blinds until I gave up on licking them. <g>)
Abuse? Nope.  Dioxins?  Don't *think* so...Mental illness?  Only one known
in my family is good old fashioned senility...and that's not likely for
another 60 years yet....(we get it real late).

So...why would someone nice like me consider things like that?  Probably I
would.  If my mind snapped.  Why did my mind snap?  Could be bunches of
things.  Could be nothing.  That's part of the problem.  As you've pointed
out to me before, psychology is still very much in its infancy as a science.
And likely, considering the complexity of the human mind and brain, we
likely won't ever have a really good hold on how it works.

I forget the exact quotation, but it was something like, "If humans could
understand how the brain worked, we wouldn't be smart enough to want to
try."  And it's also the height of hubris that it seems that humans can
achieve to think that someday we will anyway...

--
Anita