“The world is too much with us; late and soon,
Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers;….”
How can it be that a throng of shoppers can trample someone to death? For what have we collectively lost our minds?
This is not an accident but a symptom of our failure to understand what is important.
As if the death and the senseless rush to step on another human bespoke not enough, afterward there was no shoppers’ remorse.
“Kimberly Cribbs of Queens, said the crowd had acted like ’savages.’ Shoppers behaved badly even as the store was being cleared, she recalled.
“When they were saying they had to leave, that an employee got killed, people were yelling, ‘I’ve been on line since yesterday morning,’ ” Ms. Cribbs told The Associated Press. “They kept shopping.”
What was so important? The Wal-Mart special, a flat screen TV? Best that Wal-Mart gave away a mirror with each purchase.
So we grieve for the employee and his family and friends and co-workers….But also for a society to which the word “civilization” has lost its meaning.
“For this, for everything, we are out of tune” (Wordsworth)
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/29/business/29walmart.html?_r=1
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