Gee, a guy gets up in the morning, checks the news and has this gem of a story staring him in the face.
How’s a fella supposed to react to someone getting his hand chopped off?
Reaction 1: Don’t read the news.
Umm… I don’t really like this as an option. It seems a little naive and perhaps a little foolhardy to adopt a head-in-the-sand approach to the world around me. Not that I haven’t taken this as an option before, just that, well… I don’t like it.
Reaction 2: Thank God I’m not in Somalia
Umm… I don’t really like this option either. It seems to have the same naivety as the first option, and the same drawback. If I ever wind up in Somalia then I haven’t really equipped myself well, because my entire strategy was based on not being there.
Reaction 3: Thank God that we’ve moved on past this kind of primitive, nearsighted worldview
Umm… I don’t really like *this* option, either. This has the same naivety as the first two options. In the first one, it was turning my back on the world; in the second option, it was turning my back on a nation. In this one, I have to call it turning my back on people. First of all, the chopping off of limbs is not just an Islamic thing, it dates back to ancient Sumeria. For pretty much as long as there have been people, people have done stuff like this.
I don’t have any good answers on this one.
3 Responses to "Don’t read the news"
wow that is one grim article all right
It’s not even particularly grim, although it’s grisly. (After all, the man wasn’t executed)
I would love to dismiss it out of hand as an evil and misguided perversion, but I think the truth is a little more complicated than that.
I just don’t know what the truth is in this case.
I think it’s the larger situation that I find grim – the oppressive change for the worse following years of bloodshed stuff. My problem with the article is definitely how do I respond? Shake my head? Join Amnesty International? Pray? Go read the “In Other News” section about the man saving the cute duckies? Sadly it’s often the latter.