Fun With Diatoms

I’ve been enjoying diatoms this week so I thought I’d share.

As a non-scientist, sometimes my attention is caught by something because it looks interesting or strange. In this case, the many many varied forms of the diatoms caught my eye. I admit, my first reaction was aesthetic – which is a fancy way of saying they look great. My second thought was – I wonder if I could crochet some. Then I started looking into them. Sometimes scientific enquiry can be led by a superficial attraction or a childlike curiosity. That’s my excuse, anyway.

This is what I have learnt:

Diatoms have been around since the early Jurassic period, around two hundred million years. There are more than 200 genera of them and an estimated 100,000 extant species. They’re not in the big league of beetles (around four times as many) but that’s still pretty impressive.

They are single-celled plants, a form of algae that lives in both fresh and salt water, and they exist in fossil form too. Most of them are microscopic but some can reach a mighty two millimeters.

The name comes from the fact that the cell is in two halves, from the Ancient Greek διά (dia: through) and τέμνειν (temnein: to cut) - cut in half.

Their single cell wall is made of silica (hydrated silicon dioxide) and is called a frustule, a word which I am enjoying saying to myself when no one is around. Most are non-motile (they don’t move by their own power). Some float around on their own and some form colonies.

You might think that something that old, small and basic would be some sort of blob, of interest to only the most niche of scientists.

Next time you swim in the sea, a river or a lake, think about the fact that you're surrounded by them.

They don't just look great, diatoms are one of the most important components of marine phytoplankton and therefore form the basis of the whole marine food chain. They fulfil both of William Morris's criteria: beautiful and useful.

They’re also immensely useful to us for monitoring environmental conditions and water quality.

But, most of all, their variety and their shape is amazing. I’m glad I took the time to look them up and learn something but, for me, it will always be their appearance that is the most attractive thing about them. Does that make me forever a hopeless non-scientist? Maybe it doesn't matter if my route to knowledge is along a path strewn with pretty or weird things.

Here are a few more. Enjoy. And no, I haven't crocheted any. Yet.

Behaving Like Animals

Is human nature a beast that needs to be tamed? Should we ‘throw out Darwinism in our social and political lives’? Or are we naturally altruistic, empathetic and moral?

In Frans De Waal’s new book, The Bonobo and the Atheist, he takes on the thinkers who believe that morality has to be imposed on our brutish natures and catalogues the growing evidence that disproves them. I interviewed him about the book for the Pod Delusion podcast; you can listen to us here.

There is a long history of thought that the natural world is a merciless struggle for survival and that humans decided to live together ‘by covenant only, which is artificial’ (Hobbes), that natural selection is ‘a Hobbesian war of each against all’ and ethics are humanity’s cultural victory over the evolutionary process (Huxley), that civilization is achieved through the renunciation of instinct and the action of the superego – which men are more capable of than women (Freud), that children have to be trained to be sociable through fear of punishment and desire for praise (Freud, Skinner, Piaget), that moral behaviour is achieved through reason alone (Kant).

These ideas have their origins in Judaeo-Christian teaching that morals have to be imposed from above, that in our ‘natural state’ we are unfit for society (or heaven) because of original sin.

What they all have in common is a kind of dualism between our ‘better angels’ and the beast within, our Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde.

The idea persists even now, albeit stripped of its religious origins. A lack of understanding of the difference between predation (of other species) and aggression (towards our own species) has led to the popular and persistent image of humans as ‘killer apes’. Matt Ridley has written that we are potentially but not naturally moral.

Richard Dawkins has said that ‘we, alone on earth, can rebel against the tyranny of the selfish replicators’ (The Selfish Gene) and that ‘in our political and social life we are entitled to throw out Darwinism, to say we don’t want to live in a Darwinian world’.

Some disagree. Darwin is one of them. He wrote that ‘any animal whatever, endowed with well-marked social instincts (…) would inevitably acquire a moral sense or conscience, as soon as its intellectual powers had become as well developed, or nearly as well developed, as in man’ (Descent of Man). Stephen Jay Gould wrote in 1980 ‘Why should our nastiness be the baggage of an apish past and our kindness uniquely human?’ Philosopher David Hume believed that moral sentiments come from ‘a tender sympathy with others’.

De Waal agrees with them. He does not believe in any inner dualism, in the need to choose to be moral or to accept moral instruction from above (gods, philosophers or authority figures) because altruism, empathy and morality are innate in us. What’s more, they also exist in other social animals. They are part of an evolved package of behaviours that make it possible for us to be social animals.

He calls the idea that civilization and morality are imposed on a violent, immoral, selfish nature Veneer Theory and concludes ‘Everything science has learned in the last few decades argues against the pessimistic view that morality is a thin veneer over a nasty human nature’.

Human morality is ‘firmly anchored in the social emotions, with empathy at its core’ (De Waal, Our Inner Ape). The desire to treat others well comes from altruism which, in turn, comes from empathy.

He is not idealizing humans or other animals. Conflict is inevitable. It is how and why we resolve it or avoid it that matters. He also underlines the difference between humans and some other social animals, writing: “What is so interesting about human prosociality is precisely that it is not of the "eusocial" kind, which promotes sacrifices for the greater genetic good. We, humans, maintain all sorts of selfish interests and individual conflicts that need to be resolved to achieve a cooperative society. This is why we have morality and ants and bees don’t. They don’t need it.”

For many years, De Waal’s claim that other animals display altruism and empathy was ignored or rejected. What his latest book achieves is to put onto a firm evidential basis the fact that the roots of our social behaviour can be seen in other animals. The question is no longer whether animals have empathy but how it works.

Research has shown that moral decisions light up areas of the brain in humans and other animals that deal with emotions and – significantly - the evaluation of others’ emotions. When VEN cells in humans are damaged there is a loss of self-awareness and empathy; these cells exist in apes, cetaceans and elephants – but not monkeys.

A recent study ‘highlights the fact that, similar to humans, sensitivity to the emotional states of others actually emerges very young in bonobos and may not require so much complex cognitive processing as has previously been assumed’. Small children comfort other distressed children, even before they have developed the language skills to be instructed to do it.

There is strong evidence in other animals of reconciliation and consolation after conflict - kissing, embracing and grooming for example, to restore social bonds. They are aware of unfairness – what economists call inequity aversion – which makes good sense in the avoidance of conflict. This has been seen in animals as diverse as capuchins, elephants, canids and corvids. They co-operate and form social ties, both of which improve survival chances – female baboons with the best social ties have the most surviving offspring, for example.

Co-operation is strongest in meat-eating animals as hunting requires co-ordination and meat-sharing to provide a reward. Vegetarian animals are much less co-operative because they don’t need to be.

Social animals show gratitude and revenge – remembering the behaviour of others and paying them back. They target their helping, which requires being able to see a situation from another’s point of view. They are able to delay gratification, which shows self-control – a characteristic thought to be only human.

He acknowledges that humans have more complex and developed social skills; we alone analyse, discuss and codify our behaviour. He says ‘I am reluctant to call a chimpanzee a “moral being.” This is because sentiments do not suffice. We strive for a logically coherent system’.

Human morality and laws show ‘a move towards universal standards combined with an elaborate system of justification, monitoring and punishment’ – for example the Geneva Convention and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. In animals there is what is called motivational autonomy – they don’t think about why they do something – for example, they don’t make the link between sex and reproduction or between sharing and surviving.

The fact that it is social animals alone who display similar behaviour to ours is the key. It has been suggested by Dawkins that ‘humans are nicer than is good for our selfish genes’. But we give help roughly at the same level as we need it; tigers are solitary animals who neither need nor give help, for example. Behaving pro-socially makes society work and affords the benefits of social living to the individual.

Being altruistic makes us feel good and helps us survive but is it then selfish to behave socially? Are we all really hypocrites? Is it selfish to care for our young, treat others well and to push to the front of the queue?

The big difference is that queue-jumping is a consciously chosen act whereas instinctive behaviour doesn’t involve thought so the term ‘selfish’ doesn’t work as a measure. As De Waal has written, ‘Imagine the cognitive burden if every decision we took needed to be vetted against handed-down principles.’ We may think about our impulses and choose whether or not to act on them but we do not need to learn or be forced to behave well all the time. We often rationalize our moral decisions post hoc.

Part of the problem of resistance against altruism and empathy in other animals is human exceptionalism, the idea that humans are in some way special, set apart. This too has its roots in religion, with humans as God’s special creation, the only creature possessed of a soul.

De Waal notes that religions developed in countries where there were no other primates have the strongest tendency to set humans outside nature – they have no animal gods or animal-headed human gods.

The idea has persisted for a surprisingly long time in a secular form both in science and the humanities but is slowly being eroded. De Waal has written: ‘Humanity never runs out of claims of what sets it apart, but it is a rare uniqueness claim that holds up for over a decade. This is why we don’t hear anymore that only humans make tools, imitate, think ahead, have culture, are self-aware, or adopt another’s point of view’.

We are not unique and we are not Jekyll and Hyde. We are complicated animals.


One section of the book which looks at atheism has been strongly criticized by some atheists, including AC Grayling, who accuse De Waal of being an apologist for religion. My analysis of Grayling’s highly flawed argument is here.

Are you atheist enough?

One section of Frans De Waal’s latest book The Bonobo and the Atheist has unleashed criticism from certain prominent atheists, including PZ Myers and AC Grayling.

De Waal is a world expert on primate behaviour, CH Chandler Professor of Psychology and Director of the Living Links Centre at Yerkes Primate Research Centre at Emory University.

He is accused of being an apologist for religion and of not taking its malign effects seriously enough. What is worrying is that it appears there may now be only one correct form of atheism.

I interviewed De Waal about the book for the Pod Delusion podcast. The UK publisher has embargoed the interview and a detailed review of the book until late April when it’s released in the UK although it’s already out in the US and parts of Europe. So I can’t go into too much detail, although the section that has caused so much offence is available online.

In Prospect magazine, AC Grayling writes:

‘But he does not like the "new atheists," and takes the view that religion, though false, has a role, and should be left alone.’

This is not what De Waal believes. For example, he has written:

‘While I do consider religious institutions and their representatives — popes, bishops, mega-preachers, ayatollahs, and rabbis — fair game for criticism, what good could come from insulting individuals who find value in religion?’

In The Bonobo and the Atheist he writes ‘I am all for a reduced role for religion with less emphasis on the almighty God and more on human potentials.’ He also recognizes the major problems any atheist American politician would have in getting elected and that ‘this explains why atheists have become so vocal in demanding their place at the table’.

This may not be a strong enough form of atheism or strident commitment to secularism to please everyone. He points out that there are cultural differences, that his Dutch upbringing gives him a different perspective on religion as the Dutch are generally much more indifferent to it than the British and Americans where the most vocal atheists come from.

It’s true that De Waal doesn’t like what he calls militant atheists or personal attacks on individuals who find comfort in their faith. He doesn’t think that all religious people are somehow defective, or ignorant or inferior thinkers. As a scientist, he is more interested in ‘what good it does for us. Are we born to believe and, if so, why?’ and ‘For me, understanding the need for religion is a far superior goal to bashing it’.

Faith is the proximate, not the ultimate, cause of behaviour. It’s a symptom, not a disease. Remove faith and the behaviours would remain with some other justification. It’s this ultimate cause that interests De Waal and which he is better placed than most to investigate.

In his article, Grayling (rightly) lists some of the many ‘divisions, conflicts, falsehoods, coercions, disruptions, miseries and harm done by religion’. He continues: ‘He might respond with the usual points: on one side the charity, art and solace inspired by religion, and on the other side Hitler and Stalin as examples of the crimes of atheism.’

The problem is that De Waal doesn’t. It’s a very weak argument to attack what someone might have said – but didn’t. There’s no point saying that Hitler was not an atheist when someone isn’t arguing that he is.

Grayling writes: ‘Why, he asks, are the "new atheists" evangelical about their cause? "Why would atheists turn messianic?" He cannot see why Sam Harris, Richard Dawkins, the late Christopher Hitchens, Daniel Dennett and others attack religion and believers, and why they robustly and even aggressively argue the case for atheism’.

He continues: ‘In any case he has the nature of the debate wrong. Atheists (…) are mostly not interested in pursuing the metaphysical debate about whether the universe contains or has outside it supernatural entities or agencies of some kind - gods and goddesses, fairies and so forth. (…) Their militancy - for such indeed it sometimes is, (…) is about secularism, not metaphysics.‘

He’s being disingenuous here and this second paragraph contradicts the first. ‘why they robustly and even aggressively argue the case for atheism’ which inevitably involves engaging with the supernatural elements of faith.

Atheism is not the same as secularism although Grayling seems to be using them interchangeably here (and he really should know better). All the arguments he makes for constraining religion are secular arguments, very different from attacking believers or aggressively arguing the case for atheism. Secularism defends the rights of believers to believe without persecution; trying to convert them to atheism or attacking them for their beliefs is, in some respects, anti-secular.

He is being disingenuous because, along with Dawkins, Hitchens et al there are groups and individuals in the UK and US who promote atheism for its own sake – for example, Atheism UK – that Grayling is surely aware of. There are plenty of atheists who do point and laugh at religious beliefs, analyse at length scriptural inconsistencies and attack believers as inferior (for example, even the name of the Brights suggests superiority). There are frequent debates advertised on the existence of god(s) in which non-believers take part. Scientists take on creationists, for example. Grayling is mischaracterizing both atheists and De Waal.

Finally, Grayling writes: 'But one would not want the evolutionary history of all aspects of our psychology to entail that, merely in virtue of that fact, they should all be left as they are. A large part of moral reflection is devoted to overcoming or tempering the evolved capacities for aggression, greed, concupiscence and partiality that disrupt rather than enhance community living'.

De Waal is not saying that anti-social tendencies should be left alone. He is more interested in finding out where they come from. The book is against dualism, against the idea that morals and all pro-social behaviour need to be imposed from above or outside on our anti-social natures. He believes – and proves with considerable evidence - that pro-social behaviour (including altruism, empathy and morality) are evolved and are just as strong in us as less attractive characteristics. We have evolved certain instinctive behaviours that make social living possible and part of that is how we deal with anti-social actions.

De Waal’s position is that while philosophy (and religion) may investigate, codify and universalize morals, they do not invent them. He challenges in detail Dawkins’ argument that we need to ‘throw out Darwinism’ in our social and political life. Perhaps this is why he is attracting so much flak. (I’ll be writing considerably more about this aspect when the embargo on the book is lifted.)

There are elements of the book I would take issue with – for example, De Waal’s speculation that atheism is the result of trauma. This may be the case for some people but others reach atheism through a mental process that leads them to reject belief. Some people never have a belief system in the first place. De Waal’s memories of the religion he grew up with contain no apparent trauma to explain his atheism and support this theory.

De Waal’s laid-back atheism may not be the ‘right’ kind: is there now only one atheism that is acceptable in public figures? He writes that the enemy of thought and science is dogmatism, whether political, religious or otherwise, because it shuts down discussion and sets up prophets who cannot be questioned. Does every scientist need to sing from the same hymn sheet as the arbiters of atheism (all white, middle class, old men)? Do they all need to be Dawkinses to be acceptable?

More to the point, do we all need to hate religion, despise or patronize all believers and ‘aggressively’ promote atheism to be part of the club? Are you atheist enough?

31 March update: De Waal has now responded to his critics here.

I promise that I will do my best...

The Guides and Brownies are now consulting on whether to change their Promise. The usual objections will be raised in certain quarters by people who are too quick to think that their faith is being persecuted, that our great traditions are under attack, that everyone should adore the Queen (gawd bless her) or by people who just don't like change. These are the facts.

I was an Imp in the Brownies and a Scarlet Pimpernel in the Guides. I still have all the badges. Growing up in a village, they were an important part of learning social skills and a good way to escape my parents' control for a few hours a week. It's because I enjoyed them that I'd like every girl or young woman to be able to join fully, not because I want to tear down the very fabric of society.

What do Guides and Brownies do?

According to the web site, the ethos of Guiding is that

All girls are welcome
We put girls in the lead
We encourage girls to speak out
We let girls have their own space.

A change in the promise would mean that all girls are equally welcome, which is not the case at the moment.

Guiding is not just about doing good deeds locally. They've joined with five UK charities to help members learn about issues that seriously affect the lives of girls and women around the world, and to 'empower them to advocate, volunteer and raise awareness to make the world a better place for girls'. Basically, at its best it's Girl Power in uniform.

The Guide Law is a pretty good set of values for anyone:
A Guide is honest, reliable and can be trusted.
A Guide is helpful and uses her time and abilities wisely.
A Guide faces challenges and learns from her experiences.
A Guide is a good friend and a sister to all Guides.
A Guide is polite and considerate.
A Guide respects all living things and takes care of the world around her.

Why change the promise?

At the moment, the Promise is:
I promise that I will do my best:
to love my God,
to serve the Queen and my country,
to help other people
and to keep the (Brownie) Guide law.

They say they are consulting because 'Over the past few years we have heard from more and more girls and Leaders who struggle with the wording of the Promise, particularly in interpreting what it really means to girls today'.

Guiding is not about camping, church parade and learning how to fold bandages. It's not a training ground for some 1950s type memory of the Women's Institute.

Why attack a great tradition?

A change to the Promise would not undermine the values of Guiding or deny its history. As they point out themselves, since they were founded in 1909 (Brownies in 1914), the Promise has already changed 11 times 'to reflect changes in society and to make it more meaningful to girls and women'.

People who oppose change and cite tradition as a defence often mean they want things to stay as they were when they were young, not as they have been for all time. It's a form of parochial nostalgia.

The Guides are a Christian organisation in a Christian society

No they're not. The web site states: 'Girlguiding UK has always been open to girls of all faiths and none – we have never been a Christian organisation'. You don't currently have to make the Promise but this means that there is effectively a two-tier membership. Some Guides are more equal than others.

The proposal is to change or remove the line in the Promise about loving God. At the moment, if you're a non-believer, then either you can't be a full member or you have to lie when you make the Promise, which is hardly in the spirit of the Guide Law. Girl Guides Australia removed the reference to God from their Promise in 2012.

I did make the Promise and, at the time, I meant it. I had a very religious upbringing that I hadn't turned away from at that point. But as society changes, an increasing number of girls and young women have decided they don't have a faith and shouldn't be excluded or downgraded.

This isn't about excluding or marginalising religion, it's an equalities issue, about making Guiding open to everyone, equally. A change would also open up the organisation to adults who want to volunteer, the Brown Owls and all the others.

Changing the Promise would also change people's perception of Guiding. Saying they welcome everyone but having a religious component to the Promise sends a mixed message.

God save the Queen, you evil commie Republicans

There's also a proposal to change the part about the Queen - not because Guides have gone all republican but because serving Queen and country is a rather nebulous, archaic and even militaristic concept that has little or no meaning to many people today.

Why does this matter?

This may seem like a minor issue, but it's an area of inequality that could be easily fixed, to the benefit of women. And, in a society where there are so many pockets (or gaping holes) where women's lives need improving, it's a change that could affect a lot of people. Not all changes need to be huge.

Girlguiding UK has around half a million members including about 100,000 trained volunteer adult Leaders and supporters.

There has been a lot more in the media about changes to the Scout Promise and campaigners have paid them more attention, sometimes getting pretty heated. The Guides have largely been ignored until now. They seem much more open to change than the Scouts, who have long refused even to consider dropping the God part of the Promise, although they too are now consulting.

What can I do?

Anyone can respond to the consultation. Adult non-members can fill out the questionnaire (and leave comments) here. It takes about ten minutes.

UPDATE 22 JUNE 2013:
The Guides have now decided to change their Promise. The new version will be:
I promise that I will do my best: to be true to myself and develop my beliefs, to serve the Queen and my community, to help other people and to keep the Guide law.

And of course there has been the predictable howl of protest from certain religious groups, equally predictably quoted in the Mail, Express and Telegraph.

There is also the predictable protest that Guides and Brownies will now promise to serve their community rather than their country, although the Queen has kept her place. Words like lefty and liberal salt these articles.

Chief Guide Gill Slocombe has responded:
“All the essence of what we do is still in the Promise. It has just been reworded to make it more easily understood by the girls of today.

“We were getting feedback that people were struggling with the Promise, they were uncomfortable with it. I have used the word 'off-putting’. I think people were gritting their teeth and saying it.

“This was never a faith organisation. It was always a spiritual organisation. I don’t see how Guiding could have grown to 145 countries with 10 million girls worldwide if everybody had been expected to go along to their local Anglican church and sign up.

“Nothing is changing except the Promise. We have been wilfully misunderstood. Let’s hope we can set the record straight.”

Wilful misunderstanding is something that people keen to get on their high horse about the destruction of everything they hold dear are very good at.

Being true to yourself is a bit nebulous and needs to be clearly framed within the context of the Guiding ethos as a whole to give it any meaning but it's not the wooly fudge that some critics are making out.

The Scouts are said to be planning a change to their Promise later this year. It shouldn't matter that the girls got there first, but it does to me. Come on boys, keep up.

Well done, Guides and Brownies, you have done your best. My ten year old Brownie self gives you the three-finger salute.

A Bigot is for life, not just for Christmas

This Christmas, instead of the traditional platitudes about peace on earth and loving each other, the Catholic Archbishop of Westminster used his festive address to attack same sex marriage - again. And a High Court judge joined in.

One thing these two have in common is an interesting use of statistics. I've already written about how equalities are not a numbers game. Either a group of people is equal to others or they are not, regardless of how many of them there are. This is perhaps the most important point to be made when numbers are being brandished as the killer blow in an argument - although it is important to point out where statistics are being abused.

High Court judge Sir Paul Coleridge thinks the government shouldn't be wasting its time: "So much energy and time has been put into this debate for 0.1% of the population, when we have a crisis of family breakdown".

Statistics on the percentage of the population identifying as lesbian, gay or bisexual vary but nowhere is a figure this low cited. Not everyone feels comfortable reporting their sexuality, but as a rough indicator of how wrong the judge is, in 2006, the first full year of civil partnerships, there were 231,454 marriages and 16,100 civil partnership between LGB people. That works out as 6.96% as a comparative proportion.

Archbishop Vince Nichols claims that during a "period of listening" held by the government, those who responded were "7-1 against same-sex marriage".

However, the government consultation run earlier this year found that 53% were in favour. This took account of the petitions received as well as 228,000 direct consultation responses, including the huge petition opposing any change from the Coalition for Marriage.

Within the consultation itself, 63% said religious marriage ceremonies should be available to everyone.

I've written before about the consultation and the religious opposition, despite the fact that the government has made it clear that no churches or other places of worship will have to perform gay marriages.

Vince Nichols also tries another tack, claiming that a change in law would not be democratic. He claims that "There was no announcement in any party manifesto, no Green Paper, no statement in the Queen's Speech. And yet here we are on the verge of primary legislation. From a democratic point-of-view, it's a shambles. George Orwell would be proud of that manoeuvre, I think the process is shambolic."

He is basically accusing the government of sneaking legislation through against the wishes of the electorate.

However, on May 3 2010, three days before the general election, the (shadow) equalities minister Theresa May launched the Tory's contract for equalities which included the plan to introduce same sex marriage. The section on civil partnerships states “We will also consider the case for changing the law to allow civil partnerships to be called and classified as marriage.”

If people wanted to vote differently based on this sole issue, they had time to make that decision. Equalities Minister Lynne Featherstone has tackled the nonsense of this claim in her blog.

Democratically-elected MPs will be allowed a free vote and the Bill is expected to be introduced in the New Year. As this letter to the Telegraph shows, the MPs and Lords against gay marriage are very much in the minority.

It's not clear what the Archbishop thinks would constitute a democratic process. Legislation by petition? His version of democracy is more akin to a theocracy where a tiny minority made of religious leaders and fundamentalist believers rules the rest of the population. If the government were being truly Orwellian, the law would have been changed without any consultation or vote and history would have been rewritten to remove any trace of the previous status quo. When Nichols says Orwellian, what he means is 'legislation I don't like'. That's the trouble with democracy, you don't always get your own way. On the up side, you do get the freedom of speech to express your Yuletide bigotry.

The Pope used a Christmas address to say that gay marriage will 'destroy the very essence of the human creature'. He doesn't need to use dodgy statistics because he has a direct line to God and is never wrong.



31 December update: Vince Nichols is at it again. He has latched on to this like a ferret and will not let go until his teeth meet.

The mind of a killer

It's traditional to tell horror stories at Christmas. This year, the media have got a real live one.

The media are falling over themselves trying to 'understand' why 20 children were killed at Newtown. Hacks, amateurs and psychologists who should know better are speculating about the motives and mental state of the killer.

We need a reason and we need to know that Adam Lanza was a monster, not 'normal'. Not like us or anyone we know so we can keep the horror at arms' length. All of this speculation is like the stories small children tell themselves when they're scared of the dark. They're comforting.

The monstering of this child-killer who was little more than a child himself is the same as the monstering of child abusers. We need to know they have the mark of Cain on them but now that 'evil' alone is not a reason that many of us accept (or that sells papers), we have to resort to psychology, or what passes for it. (I wrote about the problem with blaming evil here).

The best the media have come up with so far is the fact that he was shy and didn't have a Facebook page. Unless Adam Lanza left a detailed written explanation for his actions, we may never know why he did it, which is something that discomfits the media and a lot of us.

The worst the media have come up with includes details of how he shot his mother in the face, that the school principal should have had a high-power rifle in her office, self-proclaimed 'heart-wrenching' photos, blaming Lanza's 'paranoid gun-crazed mother', confusing his alleged Asperger's with mental illness. And on. And on.

President Obama has said that the dead children were 'called to God', another comforting fiction. America's current principal God was bound to be dragged into it at some point and Obama's narrative is one way of forestalling 'why did God let this happen?', of making sure everyone knows his god is one of the good guys in this story. Except, what kind of bastard god kills children for reasons we mere humans are not privy to as he moves in mysterious ways? Obama didn't mention whether this god of his had also called the six adults who were killed.

The focus on why Lanza did it is also a convenient distraction from how he did it. With guns. Legal guns. For us in the UK, gun laws are not a key issue, so the media focus on the deaths. The fact that one of the dead children was British gives them an excuse they don't need to wallow in their foetid mire.

The list of American school shootings is a very long one. And every killer did it for a different reason or complex set of reasons and circumstances. Even if Lanza's motivation is understood, it won't stop the next one. Does it matter why he did it? Should someone have spotted the signs? There's going to be a lot of 20/20 hindsight, a mixture of accusations against society and individuals or the shrugging off of accusations (by the NRA, for example).

There's also a kind of 'it wouldn't happen here' self-reassurance being promoted by certain parts of the media so we can tuck our children into bed feeling superior to the gun-toting frontier mentality of the colonials.

It's a very human response to feel for the bereaved and to need to know, to understand, but this need can infantilize us, make us content with bedtime stories to ward off the monsters, real or imagined. Meanwhile, the media have given themselves a big fat Christmas present.

The Evil That Men Do

The evil that men do lives after them; the good is oft interred with their bones.

At a Scarborough Borough Council meeting, councillor Colin Haddington called for Jimmy Savile's body to be exhumed and removed from the cemetery. Savile’s nephew Guy Marsden said he supports the families of other people buried at Woodlands Cemetery who want the body moved away and would also support plans to dig up and cremate Savile. The gravestone has already been removed but exhumation may not be simple as it's reported the coffin is encased in concrete.

There's a lot more going on than simply removing the body of a man that many people admired and now revile.

There’s a long tradition of removing or mutilating corpses of people who have committed an offence during their lives. It's a symbolic act – sometimes politically symbolic, sometimes morally or culturally.

It’s as if removing Savile will distance him from society, cast him out. He can't be brought to trial, but he is effectively being tried posthumously, his remains have been judged unfit to lie with others. Savile was a practicing Catholic and his removal would be a kind of excommunication from the community of the dead, like the burial of certain categories of people in unconsecrated ground. In this context, burning his body is a symbolic way of wiping him out.

In 897 at the Cadaver Synod, Pope Stephen VI had the corpse of Pope Formosus disinterred and put on trial. He was found guilty and thrown into the Tiber.

When Harold I Harefoot, king of the Anglo-Saxons, died in 1040, his half-brother Harthacanute succeeded him and had his body disentombed, decapitated and thrown into an animal pen or a river, according to different sources.

John Wycliffe was burned as a heretic 45 years after he died in 1384.

Oliver Cromwell was exhumed, hanged for a day at Tyburn, beheaded and the head put at the end of Westminster Hall.

In 1917 Rasputin was exhumed by a mob and set fire to.

Other practices included digging up and mutilating the bodies of people suspected of being vampires to prevent them rising and the use of murderers’ bodies for dissection, denying them a burial.

There are three main reasons for doing this – to punish the dead, to warn the living and to appease the living.

Some Christians believed that that the body had to be buried whole facing east so it could rise facing God on Judgement Day. Burial in unconsecrated ground, dismemberment or other destruction therefore prevented resurrection and condemned the person to Hell.

Posthumous punishment could also be a sort of restitution to the living – anyone who had suffered at the hands of the dead person, a kind of revenge of the powerless. It's also a very good way to make a political point. Desecration of the dead was taken very seriously, so making an example of a corpse could also serve as a warning to the living, to make them fear for their souls, their family reputation or their own honour.

Even though (most of us) no longer believe it's necessary to be buried whole to be resurrected or that a dead person (or at least their soul) can be posthumously punished, even for the non-religious, the thought of their body not being treated in the way they want after their death can be a hard thought to deal with.

In some cases, there is also a sense that the ground may in some way be contaminated by the presence of the body of someone who has done something terrible, as if some essence of them or their crimes remains. It's a human trait that the evolved instinct to avoid or destroy physical sources of contamination becomes symbolic, applied to behaviour or beliefs.

This seems to be the case with Savile, as some families are upset to have their dead relatives buried near him. There is also an implication that the memories of the living will be tainted by the knowledge of who is lying near their dead, that Savile is in some way haunting them. Digging the body up is a kind of exorcising the ghost or staking the vampire.

It will be interesting to see if the contamination stays with the grave and others are reluctant to use it if he is removed.

Separating a rapist or paedophile from society in this way also serves to reassure the living that they and their dead loved ones are good people, untainted, deserving to rest in peace. Savile is not like us. Except that child abusers and rapists are not a separate category of humanity, however much we might like to think they are and try to mark them as Other.

There may also be some kind of expiation of guilt for anyone who should have seen or done something, either in the alleged Savile cases or with other abusers. And society as a whole has failed the victims so society as a whole must be seen to condemn his acts, public opinion now replacing religious censure.

In some cases, this becomes self-righteous outrage, more about being seen to behave in a particular way than achieving anything tangible (like changing laws to protect the vulnerable). This can trigger a kind of mob mentality; although we no longer have physical witch hunts and pitchforks, there is Twitter.

Sometimes there is good evidence, sometimes only rumour and myth. The living can sue for libel, the dead can't - which is why sometimes the truth only comes out after someone is dead and the only recourse is to punish the corpse or the reputation. But sometimes posthumous punishment backfires as the reputation of the punishers is itself destroyed by history.

Savile chose as his own epitaph 'It was good while it lasted'. If the investigations prove the allegations to be true, what will last is the haunting of the living, both the victims and the rest of us in varying degrees. Ritual cleansing by fire or removal or other means may sound primitive or irrational, but sometimes it helps draw a mental line under a life.

11 January update: The police report on the Savile investigation has now been released.