Is everything all right?

So much has gone wrong over the past few weeks: the Boston Marathon bombings, the ensuing manhunt, the Texas factory explosion, the terrible floods in the American Midwest.


It makes you think.


Natural disasters – floods, tsunamis, storms, earthquakes – are awful, and take a terrible toll. But they’re not intentional. They just happen. The universe doesn’t care very much about human beings (sadly enough), and sometimes we get in the way.


Human disasters, like the Boston bombings, are another thing. They make us think about human folly, and insanity, and how easily our lives can be overturned by a backpack full of black powder and shrapnel.


They make us realize that, though we might feel comfortable in our lives, there’s always an unknown element. An asteroid might hit. A fire might break out. A madman might open fire.


Back in my freshman year of college, I was assigned to read a book by Michael Novak. In it was the following passage (I paraphrase):


“Your child wakes up in the middle of the night, crying from a bad dream. You come into his bedroom and cradle him, and say: Everything is all right.


“Are you lying?”


Yes, of course. We’re all lying to ourselves. We’re in peril every moment, and death is just around the corner.


But maybe that’s the silver lining in tragic events like the Boston bombing: they remind us not to be too secure in our daily lives, and to live fully.


Here’s the last line of a classic Latin poem, “Copa,” written maybe by Propertius, maybe by Virgil, maybe by someone else:

Mors aurum vellens, “vivite,” ait, “venio.”

Death tugs you by the ear. “Live it up,” he says. “Here I come.”

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Motivations

 

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Last week was pretty horrible here in southern New England, but things have calmed at last: one of the marathon bombers is dead, the other is in custody and charged with using a weapon of mass destruction.

 

 

I’m thankful that one of them is alive; maybe he can explain to us, in some way, what this was all about.

 

 

When horrible things happen, we try to make them conform to a narrative: good guys and bad guys, mysterious conspiracies. We want to understand why people do the horrible things they do.

 

 

Here’s some of what we know: the brothers, Tamerlan and Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, were ethnic Chechens. They came to the USA when they were young, and went to good schools. They are described as being mostly happy and well-adjusted by those who knew them.

 

 

So what happened to them?

 

 

It appears that Tamerlan became radicalized over the past few years. He was under scrutiny by both American and Russian intelligence, but neither discovered anything of interest.

 

 

All of the clues were subtle:

 

 

-         He visited his family in Russia last year, who noted that he seemed to be much more devout in his religious practice than before.

-         He posted a radical Islamist video on YouTube, and then removed it.

-         He told a friend that the Bible was a poor imitation of the Koran (showing an interesting misconception of the history of both books), and said that the United States used the Bible as an excuse to be a world aggressor.

 

 

We won’t know much more. He’s dead.

 

 

But his brother is alive.

 

 

His brother is a deeper mystery. He seems to have been universally liked, and is still described warmly by those who know him.

 

 

Here’s a narrative. Tell me what you think of this:

 

 

Once upon a time, in Chicago in 1924, there were two young men named Nathan Leopold and Richard Loeb. They both came from well-to-do families, and were both very intelligent. They decided, for whatever reason, that they were Supermen a la Nietzsche, and were far smarter than anyone else. They decided to demonstrate this by kidnapping, abusing, and killing a little boy named Bobby Franks.

 

 

They didn’t get away with it. A pair of Leopold’s glasses were found at the crime scene, and the whole scheme fell apart.

 

 

Loeb is portrayed as a persuasive seducer, who conned the more suggestible Leopold into coming along with him. (Leopold was a little older, but much shyer by all accounts.) And how about those glasses that Leopold dropped? Do you wonder if he dropped them on purpose?

 

 

It makes for a nice neat narrative.

 

 

But what do we really know?

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The F-bomb

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Boston was in celebration mode over the weekend, after the capture of marathon bomber Dzhokhar Tsarnaev. There’s been an outpouring of relief. At Saturday’s Red Sox game, there was this memorable moment:

 

 

 

 

In short: David Ortiz, “Big Papi,” spoke before the game, saying: “This is our f***ing city, and nobody gonna dictate us!”

 

 

Naturally the usual silliness broke out:

 

 

a)     Think of the children!

b)    Think of the television audience!

c)     Think of the FCC!

 

 

The head of the FCC almost immediately tweeted that he was fine with this. (He had nothing to lose; the FCC doesn’t regulate cable broadcasts.)

 

 

As for the children: if they haven’t already heard the word, they will hear it (and much worse) in due course.

 

 

Seriously: it’s so silly that people respond so violently to profanity, especially bathroom / anatomical / sexual profanity. I know it’s largely cultural, but the whole idea that the common name of a body part or a sexual function isn’t a “nice” word is just – amazing. I mean, look at me! I can’t even write “f***ing”!

 

 

Because I’m afraid I might shock or offend my readers.

 

 

I know enough about languages, however, to know that this is the way language works. Some languages (such as Tibetan) have a whole different range of vocabulary items which are used in higher-class situations.

 

 

Religious profanity is altogether a different thing. Casual swearing in Jesus’ name is common in most Catholic countries, but is often considered blasphemous in Protestant countries.

 

 

Arabic, of all the languages with which I’m familiar, is the best for swearing. Arabic-speakers combine bathroom words, sexuality, family insults, and religion in the most refreshingly creative ways.  Here’s one of the most creative (please note that I will try to translate in the least offensive way):

 

 

“May God condemn the religion of thy mother’s private parts.”

 

 

Compared to that, Big Papi seems tame, doesn’t he?

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