Arson

Simone at AnotherSomething's school was burned in an arson attack. I am something of a pessimist, and while I totally sympathise with the loss and the insult, I couldn't see it as hard to understand - in fact I would think this sort of thing is almost over-determined.

The first candidate is the arsonist, looking for a mostly wooden building that will certainly be empty in the middle of the night, and which people care enough about to notice the attacks.

The second candidate is the person for whom school functioned as a giant, long-running hell of having 'not good enough' stamped on them by the adult world of the state and by their peers. If they have hated us, we need to remember that they think we hated them first.

The third candidate is perhaps the dux or the prop of the first fifteen at an elite private school, celebrating the end of their academic year with a hearty 'sod the proles'.

Each of these may be present in a single person - they seem to me to draw energy from resentment, from a self defined by weakness and lacks.