Investigating the past

I have often thought that we live in the Age of the holy exception. It seems all to obvious that the rules always apply to others but not to me- "I was only parking on the yellow line for a minute!"
"But there wasn't anyone on the loading/ Private Parking zone!""Surely those rules only apply to the great unwashed?"

Actually while these small infractions do not have much meaning my recent activity has served to remind me that the justifications we try to convince ourselves with can go to ridiculous extremes.

While filming for a TV project to be shown in a couple of months I paused to explore how and why this person did what he did. I didn't find a lot of answers to be quite honest but discovered a wide array of self justification that must be going through his mind- and that is an ugly thought -that we as a species all too easily can form a construction of thought within our heads that can allow us to commit the most heinous crimes, all the while appearing rational, and even lovable (even if only in a clownish way)

David Lavery on his blog has been exploring the concept of clowns and this encouraged me to form some thoughts as well. In sitcom universes the characters are always trapped by their circumstances- think Steptoe and Son- however much of their motivation surrounds a wish for social mobility, the way out- in Friends this is explored through marriage, jobs and childbirth, those things being accomplished the series ends as thy all go their separate ways, ending the entrapment that held them together. However while some clowns form plans and other clowns actions seem to constantly work to defeat those plans (the red nose clown and the white face clown) there is another clown who seems to be around simply to upset the constructed world around him- the misrulic clown. Insanely he is not interested in gaining or losing but only seems motivated to turn everything around him upside down- he follows only his own whim, his own basic instincts for destruction.

The Joker exemplifies this clown- the scary clown. As I see it this is the model that perhaps motivates some of the more extreme of the shooters out there- most recently the fellow who shot all the old people, after all, schools have already been done. He gains nothing here apparently - having no discernible connection to the victims- except possibly the notoriety that the media will supply him with.

Why do we give him that?

Is it that in our need to balance the books by allowing the media to be the arbiter of whether justice has been done or not, we have, in a sense, created a situation where our feelings of injustice can now only be played out in front of the camera- even when we work to ppear innocent of the charges brought against us.

I tell you -it keeps me thinking.