Science Quote by Jack Schwartz

Schwartz’s line has the chilly efficiency of a lab protocol applied to politics: reduce the chaos to a single testable question. “A fair observer” sounds neutral, but it’s a loaded challenge. Fairness here isn’t open-mindedness; it’s the refusal to be distracted by moral theater. The quote smuggles in a suspicion that violence is rarely “senseless” in the way official stories like to frame it. Someone, somewhere, is getting paid, gaining leverage, or clearing obstacles.

The intent is forensic. Instead of arguing over who started it or whose outrage is purer, Schwartz tells you to follow incentives. That’s a scientist’s move: look for the variable that predicts outcomes. The subtext is that public narratives about violence often function as camouflage - grief and patriotism can be recruited to block the more embarrassing audit of power. If you can keep the conversation stuck on motives and monsters, you never have to name the beneficiaries: arms suppliers, political hardliners, bosses who break unions, authoritarians who expand surveillance, media ecosystems that monetize fear.

The strength of the phrasing is its scalpel-like simplicity. It doesn’t claim violence is always orchestrated; it claims that violence reliably creates winners, and that those winners shape what violence becomes legible, excusable, or “necessary.” Still, the question is also a warning label: it can sharpen analysis, or harden into a reflexive cynicism that assumes every tragedy is a plot. Used well, it’s not conspiracy thinking - it’s accountability thinking.