Friday, July 9, 2010

Society Regresses

In Ancient Rome, they held gladiatorial events at the Coliseum. Murder was a commonplace event that the crowd cheered for. In this day and age, we like to think that we’ve become more civilized since then. Yet, on a daily basis we see death and destruction. What’s worse is the fact that if the culprits aren’t brought to justice and their ultimate demise, there are those among us that are not satisfied. Have we really come that far from the days of the Coliseum?

A suicide bomber reigned down terror in a tribal region in Pakistan killing over fourty. Some will claim that those in the region are nothing but uncivilized animals. “They know nothing but killing,” I hear. I make the claim that we are no different. Police officer accidentally shoots a suspect in the back, killing him. I am not here to defend this officer. He pulled a gun, claiming that he thought it was a tazer. How you could make this mistake is absolutely beyond me.

Put on trial, he was convicted of accidental manslaughter. The spectators at the Coliseum were quite unhappy with this judgment. They call for the thumbs down for Caesar. The crowd, those who consider themselves the enlightened few in California, started rioting over the fact that the officer was not given a harsher conviction. A society that claims to value life regresses to Hammurabi’s code, calling that we take an eye for an eye or else we shall destroy the cities we live in. The livelihoods of business owners completely destroyed is somehow a valid response to officer’s sentence. We still have a long way to go before we can consider ourselves civilized.