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A SOCIETY THAT NO LONGER THINKS
12/03/2008
What do you say when a 34 year old temporary worker, Jdimytai Damour, is trampled to death at a New York Wal-Mart the day after Thanksgiving?
What do you say about the people? What do you say about the store? What do you say about a society where something like this can happen?
Of course, you have to look at the security procedures at the store. The New York Times reports that the employee who died was "trying to hold back a crush of shoppers pressing against the store's sliding-glass double doors… Just before the store's scheduled 5 a.m. opening… the doors shattered under the weight of the crowd. Mr. Damour was thrown to the floor and trampled. He died about an hour later."
Why were the people allowed to press up against the door? Why did Wal-Mart not have better procedures in place to keep people in an orderly single file? Were they trying to create a frenzy so that people would buy as rapidly as possible, afraid the store would run out of the things they wanted? Was the lack of orderliness, the lack of security deliberate, in other words? A ploy to build up shopping mania?
You also have to look at the crowd, and not just as a group, but as individuals. What makes an individual press up against a store entrance, frantic to get in to scoop up a bargain? Is that video game system or that big screen television really that important? Studies show that the more unnecessary things we buy, the unhappier we are. Surely a big screen television, no matter how much it is discounted, is not going to bring happiness. And now that this group of shoppers who pushed down Mr. Damour and killed him will have to live with that reality for the rest of their lives, they surely won't be any happier.
Or do they even care? Are they like so many in this country who refuse to take responsibility for anything? Teenagers, in a study this week, said they were okay with their moral values even though the study showed that over 60% of them cheat on tests and steal from stores. Home lenders accuse buyers of being irresponsible even though they pushed the mortgages aggressively. Unqualified buyers accuse the lenders, while others see nothing wrong with taking out bigger home equity loans so they could buy items they didn't need.
Are they simply following the example of the President of the United States, George W. Bush, who seems to have no regrets over anything he did in his presidency, as he expressed in an interview with Charlie Gibson? When Gibson asked if the president felt in any way responsible for the current economic mess, Bush replied: "You know, I'm the President during this period of time, but I think when the history of this period is written, people will realize a lot of the decisions that were made on Wall Street took place over a decade or so, before I arrived in President, during I arrived in President." (Yes, that's how he phrased it.)
When asked for his biggest regret as president, Bush said only that the intelligence regarding WMD in Iraq was wrong. No regrets about the failure to adequately prepare for war, no regrets about going to war, no regrets about the horrific response to Hurricane Katrina, no regrets about the outing of a CIA agent, no regrets about the economic meltdown. George W. Bush is a man of no guilt and a man who does not think, does not look back, does not feel any responsibility for anything he did that caused pain to others.
So I wonder. Will the people who trampled Jdimytai Damour to death feel any guilt? I know they didn't think when they made the decision to go to Wal-Mart and press against the door that they would kill anyone, but that's the whole problem isn't it? They didn't think.
No one thinks anymore. No one asks themselves whether what they are doing is wise or smart or helpful or moral.
Bush didn't think carefully enough of the consequences before he sent his army into Iraq. He didn't think of what might happen in a real disaster if he appointed an unqualified person to lead FEMA. And thousands of people have died as a result of that lack of thinking.
Wal-Mart executives and store managers didn't think of what might happen if they didn't manage the crowd on the day after Thanksgiving. And the individuals in that crowd didn't think of how dangerous it might be to push and shove and run crazily into a store. And now, as a result of that lack of thinking, one man is dead.
We have become a society that does not think, led for the past eight years by a man who either did not think, or thought only of the short term. We citizens also fail to use our brains. We are impulsive and caught up in self gratification. We buy things we can't afford, and put it on our credit cards. We act like herd animals, not even looking down to see what or whom we are trampling as we satisfy our demand for more things we do not even need.
What can you say about a society where the people no longer think?
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