Outside World

[摘要] It's 4 years since it last happened in this column, but the outside world has intruded into my insular medical thoughts. First — and let me get this straight: the leader of a major world religion that, in its time, has murdered thousands of people in the name of its god, quotes from a hundreds-of-years-dead chap who accused another religion of using violence. You might think the sensible approach to this would be to shrug shoulders, and say, ‘Look who's talking!’ But no. In a clear demonstration that human beings don't deserve the Earth that they are presently threatening with death by fire, there are riots and a nun is shot dead. Not long afterwards, a Berlin production of Mozart's opera Idomeneo is pulled because one scene includes the lopped-off head of Mohammed. The same treatment is meted out to Jesus, Buddha, and Poseidon, but you can be sure that the Opera House was not worried about being besieged by mermaids. There is no place for gratuitous insults, but we cannot allow the world to be cowed by imagined slights. There is no saying more abused than, “Sticks and stones may hurt my bones…” All too often, words bring on the sticks and stones. It's not so much that the pen is mightier than the sword, but that the pen is the pre-runner to the sword.

[学科分类] 卫生学