I'm not sure what I, in my informed yet still inadequately informed position, can meaningfully add to the reams that have been written following events in Paris last week. It's complex, and the more I think about it the harder it becomes to see how a radicalised, extremist minority are ever going to be content playing nicely with a largely secular, social, democratic majority. I don't see a happy ending, is what I'm trying to say. That's depressing, I know, but I can't help it - Marvin the Paranoid Android has nothing on me.
Instead, let me point you to some interesting blogging on the subject, specifically: Tim Footman's immediate reaction on his excellent blog, Cultural Snow, makes a lot of points I would like to make, but more succinctly and in better prose; and Andrew Collins' take, a week on, which has some interesting background on the roots of this most terrible of problems.
Interestingly, it was also Andrew's blog that recommended Windows On The World by Frédéric Beigbeder, a book of astonishing power that I finished reading over Christmas and cannot recommend highly enough. Its post-9/11 theme seems depressingly relevant after Charlie Hebdo and all that followed.
No comments:
Post a Comment