Which is to what as this is to that?
Saturday, December 15th, 2012[ by Charles Cameron — second of two quick posts, this one concerning hasty comparisons between two school tragedies, the one here and the one in China ]
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You’ve no doubt noted the same double school tragedy that I have today — twenty school kids wounded in China, twenty school kids gunned down in America.
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I can’t do much more than try to be respectful of the victims and their families in both cases: my prayers are with them. But being a pattern seeker, I’m also wondering what questions this raises.
For some, it will seem clear that guns are to knives as deaths are to wounds.
Or should that be: America is to China as guns are to knives? America is to China as death is to injury? Once you start comparing what are, after all, two close similarities — brought forcibly to our attention by their commonality location in schools, their common date, their closely similar numbers of victims — it becomes clear that there are also very many differences to take into account, and that no one-size-fits-all ratio will accommodate their complexity.
Something for me to ponder, as I jump — as all humans, athletes of the mind, appear to jump — to hasty conclusions.
