We Schoolchildren
Verse two
Accurate scholarship can
Unearth the whole offence
From Luther until now
That has driven a culture mad,
Find what occurred at Linz,
What huge imago made
A psychopathic god:
I and the public know
What all schoolchildren learn,
Those to whom evil is done
Do evil in return.September 1, 1949 by W. H. Auden
This is the age of “big data.” Server farms gather terabytes from every quarter, presentable for analysis. A surplus of data opens the door for ambiguous scholarship. Global climate change. I have friends who “are waiting for more research” never mind the accelerating melt of ice caps at both poles, and severe weather events. Never enough data to make judgment painless, effortless, cheap. Do we not already know? Every act is a link in a long chain, each a repository of betrayal and beneficence from its predecessor. No deed is private, isolated, purely personal, “none of your business.” And a psychopathic god is no description of a flawed individual. It’s descriptive of accrued evil, —the butterfly effect writ large. A super-storm.
