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06468_Field_TCUM T33.txt
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1996-04-10
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Wyndham Lewis made this a theme of his group of novels
called The Human Age . The first of these, The Childermass , is
concerned precisely with accelerated media change as a kind of
massacre of the innocents. In our own world as we become
more aware of the effects of technology on psychic formation
and manifestation, we are losing all confidence in our right to
assign guilt. Ancient prehistoric societies regard violent crime
as pathetic. The killer is regarded as we do a cancer victim.
“How terrible it must be to feel like that,” they say. J. M. Synge
took up this idea very effectively in his Playboy of the Western
World .
If the criminal appears as a nonconformist who is unable
to meet the demand of technology that we behave in uniform
and continuous patterns, literate man is quite inclined to see
others who cannot conform as somewhat pathetic. Especially