Thursday, June 21, 2007

Herd mentality

You have to really begin to wonder what is wrong with the world today when an angry mob beats a man to death because he was a passenger in a car that accidentally hit a two-year-old boy. The mob pounced on the driver when he got out of the car to check on the boy, then turned on the passenger who got out of the car to defend him. Apparently, no weapons of any kind were used – just the hands of four or five men, used to pummel the life out of someone. That is about as vicious as it gets. I really have to hope that there is some other story here - that the guys that beat the men knew them, and there was some other motive - because to think that strangers can be this violent towards people they don't even know when moved by a crowd, well, that scares me.

Luckily, the child did not have any life-threatening injuries, but even if he was instantaneously killed, I don’t see the moral or ethical impetus that moves people to beat someone to death. Honestly, if this is what the world has come to these days, what it will it be like for our children? Are we going to end up with a violent, post-apocalyptic world without an apocalypse? Because that sure seems to be where we are heading.

1 comment:

Cheryl said...

It's completely senseless and totally scary. We had a man beat to death here on his porch a few years ago. It was a mob beating and one of the youngest suspects was only 10 yrs old at the time. The beating that you are writing about took place after a Juneteenth celebration. We also had one of those in town and violence erupted here as well. We have to work extra hard at keeping our children safe!