In the grand scheme of things I’m not that old, and maybe it’s my rose coloured glasses, but it seems that these days there is no value on human life. Maybe it’s down to the fact that the media feel the need to report only the bad news, but each and every day there just seems to be another senseless killing.
When the news is dominated with the news of the killing – no, that’s not strong enough – when the news is dominated with the news of the callous, reckless, motiveless, unconscionable, illogical, and undefendable murder of an 11 year old child in Liverpool, you have to think that things have reached a nadir. When a child can ride up on a bike, pull out a handgun, and then just shoot another child in cold blood, for no reason whatsoever, you have to wonder what is going on in this world.
No doubt, there will be hundreds of column inches devoted to the breakdown in society that this killing represents. Many more articles will be devoted to trying to discover the root cause of this breakdown. Some will lay the blame on TV, or video games, or bad parenting. I’m sure that the really creative journalists will be able to come up with even more excuses. But at the end of the day, that’s all they are – excuses. They won’t bring back a son, a brother, a child.
When the killer is caught, and at this stage I have no doubt that they will be caught, they’ll be asked why – why did you shoot an innocent child? Why did you feel need the need to obtain a gun and use it to take the life of an innocent 11 year old? Why? And when the killer answers, it would not surprise me if they answered: “Because I could”, or “I dunno, I was just messing around.”
You can argue that society today has been desensitised to the taking of human life. Watch any Hollywood action movie. At the end of the movie, while the hero may have taken the life of umpteen “badies”, you never see the hero being punished. You never see the guilt. The hero rides into the sunset with the heroine on his arm.
But Hollywood isn’t real life. What is real life is the utter anguish and horror that a family in Liverpool are dealing with right now. Stop for a second and think about it. You’re sitting here reading this page, while in Liverpool there is a family trying to deal with the realisation that their son, their brother, is dead. Taken from them suddenly and horrifically. A child whose life ended lying on the cold, wet pavement. In Liverpool there’s a mother who tried to comfort her son as he lay dying in her arms. A father who cuddled the body of his young son in the bereavement suite of the local hospital. A brother that has to deal with the death of a sibling long before he should have to. Before you go back to your life, think of that.
If you don’t feel an iota of sympathy for all those that have been affected by crimes of this nature, then you have a problem. You need to look at yourself and ask, “If I can’t feel anything for this family, then what value do I place on a human life?”. If you can at least ask yourself that question and honestly give an answer, then maybe there is some hope for society.
On the other hand, if all you can do is shrug your shoulders and move on, then there is no hope – as a society, we have collectively reached a point where life doesn’t matter, and that can lead to only conclusion, it could have been me, you, or anyone that pulled that trigger and killed an 11 year old child. And that truly is a horrific thought.
Tags: Life