makes me soo mad, whats up with people today.

[fosse]

it was on the new earlyer, that some teens beat a man to death for his ipod, i mean wtf!!!! is that what a human life is worth an ipod.
and a few weeks back the same thing happend with a dad who got beaten to death protection his daughter, and only the otherday in the news paper, a 22yr old was arested for setting a 82yr olds hair on fire!!. i mean.. whats up with ppl to day,
makes me soo mad, but so angry.

fosse

[Skoorb]

People have always been like this but we're just more apt to notice it because of the media. It's shocking how awful some people can be. You think that's bad but it's nothing compared to what some people do on a daily basis and we never hear about it.

What you mentioned above is the case of devaluing human life, which is bad, but when it's not only devalued but also used as a play thing by sadists on a grand scale is when it's worse. I'm thinking in particular of what some "rebels" do in Africa (not that atrocity is limited to there by any means), but I'll save mentioning it here because it's quite upsetting.

[thirtysomething]

Don't forget that 500+ million people today did something really nice without expecting reward or media coverage. The news wants to rile you up - don't let it stop you from living a happy and ethical life.

[1FastGTX]

Originally Posted by thirtysomething

Don't forget that 500+ million people today did something really nice without expecting reward or media coverage. The news wants to rile you up - don't let it stop you from living a happy and ethical life.

Fantastic point!

[FerretNose]

While it may seem that society today is one major horrid violent ****-wad, keep in mind that, at no other time in history has human life and individual rights been so valued by so many. Just 50 years ago, it would have been considered ridiculous to give a tin shit about the treatment of captured terrorists. (I don't give too much of a shit, myself, but I respect differing opinions. ) Our own prisoners are given incredible rights these days, they have access to food, books, fitness, and television, things people in 3rd world countries would kill for.

And if you think about it, here in the western world it is extremely uncommon for anyone to actually die or suffer horribly from hunger or freeze to death; a person would have no just plain not seek help at all for that to happen, as we have a system that provides health care, food, and shelter to those who seek it.

Now I have been sick to death for the past few days about those kidnapped kids, one of whom was killed, both were repeatedly raped, and their family was brutally murdered while they watched. But go back about 300 years, and you will find that this sort of thing commonly happened to any village who has the misfortune of being invaded, even by so-called "civilized" armies.

Finally, there are many places in Africa where selling your children into slavery is still a valid debt-repaying system; where a man from a powerful village sends thugs to kidnap a woman he wants as a wife, and these thugs have no problem murdering her family and raping her on the way back to the "husband"; there are places in India where, as soon as a baby girl is born, it is dashed upon the rocks because they only want sons, and in some places in the Middle East a person can be stoned to death just on someone's word against them.

The leaders of these places don't want our help, they don't want us in there, because we might put a stop to their fun. Cruelty is their way of life and they know it's wrong, but boy do they have fun just being able to kill and maim and rape anyone they want (not just women). That's true evil- just as that guy who got those kids, and the ones before that, and the ones before that- and if people weren't so damn concerned with the "human rights" of terrorists, sexual predators, and the like, we wouldn't be in this boat.

Therein lies the irony. Sorry for the rant- I have been stewing about things for awhile, and you brought up such a good subject.

[Skoorb]

Finally, there are many places in Africa where selling your children into slavery is still a valid debt-repaying system; where a man from a powerful village sends thugs to kidnap a woman he wants as a wife, and these thugs have no problem murdering her family and raping her on the way back to the "husband"; there are places in India where, as soon as a baby girl is born, it is dashed upon the rocks because they only want sons, and in some places in the Middle East a person can be stoned to death just on someone's word against them.

We're lucky as hell to live in the West. Don't read the following unless you want to read about real horror (worst I've personally ever heard about): I was reading about the civil war in sierra leone, which wrapped up only a few years ago. During its time many people were amputated with machetes--including very young children. Villages were slaughtered. In some cases children were forced to murder their own parents and then joined the rebel factions. Adolescents sometimes had to rape their own mother. These people had a game whereby a pile of papers would have different things like cutting off hands, lips, etc. and a prisoner would have to choose a piece of paper from the pile. They had another game whereby some people would place bets on the sex of a baby and then take a woman (who was probably pregnant from rape), while she was late term and cut her belly open to see if they guessed correctly.

Things like this continue to happen but they're such a "normal" part of the area that we just don't hear about it, so instead CNN will place hours and hours upon a single abduction of a girl in the US and ignore the fact that a village may have been cleared out on another continent the night before and entire families massacred.