There has been a lot of rage and violence in the world lately and I am not speaking about war. I am speaking about the tragedy in the school in Newton , Connecticut or the man who killed the fireman or the man who pushed another man into the subway tracks. What is wrong with this world?
Unchecked rage can be very dangerous. One wrong move and an unbalanced person could be chas v' shalom pushed off the edge. What is about now that there is so much of this going on ? Is there more of this now than usual or is the media just reporting more of this lately?
7 comments:
Part of it is sensationalism. The media plays it up and word spreads much quicker than it used to.
But part of it is a malaise in society. To be perfectly cynical, it's a long time since North America has fought a good war, you know, one in which there was more than just some kids with video game controllers in Florida flying drones over south Asia and blowing things up.
We are, as a society, bored. We don't know what real suffering is. We don't have a clue about real deprivation. And so we downgrade our definition of "acceptable" and "bad" to the point that a life that 95% of people on the planet would die for becomes below our expectations. And so we seek our thrills elsewhere. We lose respect for the value of life. We fail to understand the evil of violence. And then this stuff happens.
Rabbi Avigdor Miller warned that newspapers like to print stories that make people worried and nervous. That is what sells newpapers.
I think that it is dangerous not to know what is going on in the world
Ah, but it depends what. There's a war going on in Congo, it's killed 5 million people or something like that. Now, that's certainly a tragedy but knowing about it doesn't help or harm me in any way except that it makes me feel sad for all the senseless loss of life.
There might be a monsoon in India. Not knowing about it isn't dangerous for me.
So no, you don't have to know about lots of what's going on in the world and in the old days they didn't and life still went on.
Sefer Pele Yoetz, chapter Caas [anger]:
Silence in a time of anger is like water on fire.
yes, but sometimes crazy people get more annoyed when one does not react to their rage
Objectively, the USA is a much safer place than it was 20 or 30 yrs ago.
For statistics see http://www.disastercenter.com/crime/uscrime.htm
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