Welcome to my first musings. They are brief but more will follow! Enjoy...
(Mum found this school photo of me in the loft.)
The Chief Constable of Wiltshire, Brian Moore recently wrote an open letter to the media raising concerns about parental control. This was after 40 kids in Melksham, Wiltshire had arranged to meet to see a fight between two girls. They were having a spat on Facebook and one had threatened to stab the other...with a hot poker from the AGA (I made that last bit up, but it is Wiltshire!). These kids wanted to see what would happen! Most of them had managed to con their parents into believing they were sleeping at a friends. (I made a mental note not to fall for that one when my daughter, Isabel, is a teenager.)
I have a tendency to be judgemental, (I've been working on this), so before I ranted about 'kids these days', I cast my mind back to my school days. I did recall several occasions where we ran to the playground after an argument got out of hand chanting "fight, fight, fight". The worst that ever happened though was some hair pulling, face scratching and the odd skirt removal (thank God thongs weren't popular when I was at school). I suppose being in a catholic school might have made a difference. We thought those girls were probably going to spend a good few years in purgatory for the hair pulling alone.
I have a tendency to be judgemental, (I've been working on this), so before I ranted about 'kids these days', I cast my mind back to my school days. I did recall several occasions where we ran to the playground after an argument got out of hand chanting "fight, fight, fight". The worst that ever happened though was some hair pulling, face scratching and the odd skirt removal (thank God thongs weren't popular when I was at school). I suppose being in a catholic school might have made a difference. We thought those girls were probably going to spend a good few years in purgatory for the hair pulling alone.
It shouldn't be surprising that these kids were interested in the outcome, since humans have always had a morbid curiosity...think back to the Roman Amphitheatres. I taped the film 'Stand by Me' over Christmas to watch with my 10 year old. It has some great messages about friendship and life and there are beautiful moments, but the overarching storyline is that these kids want to see a dead body. After a few moans at the start Isabel loved the film. I asked her at the end what she had taken away from it. After a few seconds contemplation, she said... "avoid people with knives". Disappointing...
Times have changed. Movies and games are more violent and the news, in every medium is saturated with death. Have we been de-sensitised to human suffering and loss of life? Possibly...if you think about the public reaction to the cat in a wheelie bin story and compare it with the level of public interest in some of the human tragedies we hear about!
So to bring this post to a close without it being completely pointless...in the words of my daughter "avoid people with knives".
Times have changed. Movies and games are more violent and the news, in every medium is saturated with death. Have we been de-sensitised to human suffering and loss of life? Possibly...if you think about the public reaction to the cat in a wheelie bin story and compare it with the level of public interest in some of the human tragedies we hear about!
So to bring this post to a close without it being completely pointless...in the words of my daughter "avoid people with knives".
RSS Feed