Category Archives: People

Broken Britain?

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An excerpt from Yahoo! News:

LONDON – Ahhh, Britain. The land of Shakespeare and the Beatles, Churchill and the Queen. Rolling green hills, groovy London shops, hip plaids splashed over raincoats and umbrellas.

Cut to the reality of 2009: the highest teen pregnancy rate in western Europe, a binge drinking culture that leaves drunk teens splayed out in the streets and rising knife crime that has turned some pub fights into deadly affairs.

Ahhh, Britain.

In the latest symbol of what some are calling “broken Britain,” 13-year-old Alfie and his 15-year-old girlfriend Chantelle became parents last week. The news sparked a flurry of handwringing from the media – and even ordinary folk admitted it didn’t help that Alfie barely looked 10, let alone 13, as he cradled his newborn daughter.

Alfie’s father, who reportedly has nine or 10 children of his own, gamely promised to have a “birds and the bees” chat with his son to prevent him from producing a second child before he grows facial hair.

Somehow that was not reassuring.

Read full article

I agree that this article describes a sad situation.  What I’m wondering is why everyone else agrees.  After all, if values are based on individual choice and survival of the fittest is what’s best for the race, then maybe we should just accept as normal and fine all that is taking place. 

“If Alfie is able to pass on his genes early on in life, good for him.”

“If binge drinkers die early from liver disease or knife fights, they are only confirming their own inadequacy for survival. ”

Again, I don’t agree with the opinions I just expressed.  It could be that good and evil, or right and wrong, exist in reality and not just in our minds or opinions.  Perhaps all can and should agree that what is happening in British society (and some other places too, of course) is bad, wrong, and ought to be somehow changed.

Just Another Reckless Form of Idolatry

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After a bit of unsettling reflection on the deadly day of shopping at a Long Island Wal-Mart (see previous post),  I think there may be a loose relationship to another recent event – or rather, a category of events, which occur with disturbing regularity.

MSNBC.com
India stampede death toll passes 200
Dozens more injured as 12,000 celebrated key Hindu festival in Jodhpur
The Associated Press     updated 11:40 a.m. ET, Wed., Oct. 1, 2008

JODHPUR, India – A Hindu temple official blamed an unruly group of pilgrims trying to get ahead in a line of worshippers for a stampede that killed more than 200 people and injured nearly 60 in western India.
Authorities were still working to determine the final death toll, but the number had already crossed 200, said senior police official Rajeev Dosat.
The disaster occurred just as the doors of the temple were being opened for worship at dawn for more than 12,000 people celebrating a key Hindu festival in the historic city of Jodhpur in Rajasthan state. …  To see the entire original article Click Here

In India this is not a random, one off occurrence.  Keep your eyes and ears open to world news and you’ll certainly see it in the headlines again.  For example:

You get the idea.  In India it happens at the temples where they worship their gods and goddesses.  In the USA, where consumerism receives the kind of frenzied devotion normally reserved only for deities, it has begun to happen at Wal-Mart.  Listen closely and you can hear Jeremiah’s distant, tearful prayer:

O Lord, my strength and my fortress,
     My refuge in the day of affliction,
     The Gentiles shall come to You
     From the ends of the earth and say,
     “Surely our fathers have inherited lies,
     Worthlessness and unprofitable things.”
Will a man make gods for himself,
     Which are not gods?
                     – Jeremiah 16:19-20 (NKJV)

Killed in a Stampede at Wal-Mart? You’ve Got To Be Kidding.

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No doubt there is a lot that could be said about the following event, but at the moment I don’t even know how to begin.  Check out the links to view the article at a local news website.

Worker dies at Long Island Wal-Mart after being trampled in Black Friday stampede

BY JOE GOULD, CLARE TRAPASSO and RICH SCHAPIRO
DAILY NEWS WRITERS
Updated Friday, November 28th 2008, 10:46 PM

A Wal-Mart worker died early Friday after an “out-of-control” mob of frenzied shoppers smashed through the Long Island store’s front doors and trampled him, police said.
The Black Friday stampede plunged the Valley Stream outlet into chaos, knocking several employees to the ground and sending others scurrying atop vending machines to avoid the horde.
When the madness ended, 34-year-old Jdimytai Damour was dead and four shoppers, including a woman eight months pregnant, were injured. …

To view the complete article at the NY Daily News Click Here
For the live pics of the event on their website Click Here

A World Split Apart

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Way back on June 8, 1978 author Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn delivered the commencement address at Harvard.  At the time he was exiled to the West for his courageous writing and speaking during the Soviet era.  Today – a relaxing day off – I was reading it in a collection of essays and it just kind of struck me.  it’s amusing interesting fascinating that some of the things he said might easily be said today – 30 years later.  Here’s a little bit of it.  The complete text can be found here:  A World Split Apart

“Without any censorship, in the West fashionable trends of thought and ideas are carefully separated from those which are not fashionable; nothing is forbidden, but what is not fashionable will hardly ever find its way into periodicals or books or be heard in colleges. Legally your researchers are free, but they are conditioned by the fashion of the day … a selection dictated by fashion and the need to match mass standards frequently prevent independent-minded people from giving their contribution to public life. There is a dangerous tendency to form a herd, shutting off successful development. … This gives birth to strong mass prejudices, blindness, which is most dangerous in our dynamic era. There is, for instance, a self-deluding interpretation of the contemporary world situation. It works as a sort of petrified armor around people’s minds … It will only be broken by the pitiless crowbar of events …

“If humanism were right in declaring that man is born to be happy, he would not be born to die. Since his body is doomed to die, his task on earth evidently must be of a more spiritual nature. It cannot unrestrained enjoyment of everyday life. It cannot be the search for the best ways to obtain material goods and then cheerfully get the most out of them. It has to be the fulfillment of a permanent, earnest duty so that one’s life journey may become an experience of moral growth, so that one may leave life a better human being than one started it. It is imperative to review the table of widespread human values. Its present incorrectness is astounding…

“Even if we are spared destruction by war, our lives will have to change if we want to save life from self-destruction. We cannot avoid revising the fundamental definitions of human life and human society. Is it true that man is above everything? Is there no Superior Spirit above him? Is it right that man’s life and society’s activities have to be determined by material expansion in the first place? Is it permissible to promote such expansion to the detriment of our spiritual integrity?”