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Yesterday something happen in my town where I live:

Dortmund / Hombruch, a nice place to live, every street is clean, much trees, a great market place with a big church on it.

It was one of those beautyful Saturday afternoons, many people bought their food on the market, sat in the Cafes and enjoyed the sunny day.

Directly on the market lay a drunken helpless man nearly dead. All people went around him and go on to buy beautyful things for the dinner. It was a wonder that they don´t kick him away because he was laying on their way.

At least there were somebody you gave his heart a bump and called an ambulance.
A doctor with two helpers came and examine the victim. They tried to speak with him without success, though.
Finaly they put him on bench on the market,
leaved him there and disappeared.

The man who called the ambulance spoke with the doctor and pleased him to transport the victim to the hospital at least. The doctor shouted "go away that hasn´t to bother you, that is not your cup." The man who called the ambulance is very confused now, is it wrong to help and call an ambulance?

By the way, after the ambulance arrived at the market the people halt their buying, crowded around the victim to make sure that he don´t get fresh air and were watching what was going on.

The victim is a person I know good, a artist, a very good professional painter in
a retro pop art sytle. Hapless he is ill, schizophrenic, his wife left him and now the town were he live for years now leaves him, too.
Many paintings of him decorate schools and industrie buildings in our town.

In the past our german chancellor talked
about a civilized western world.
Welcome to a civilisation where Bananas are more important than a helpless man.

<img src="http://www.phil-de-wolfe.com/gallery/18.gif"></img>


<font size=-1>[ This Message was edited by: ChrisWerner on 2003-07-13 03:14 ]</font>

Yea, i understand what you meen man... This is so sad... I experience something very very similar in montreal 2 years ago. I guy was laid, the face in the street, just beside a telephone booth, he looked dead, people were walking just beside him. I was disgusted. There was an ambulance just near by, the guys where eating there lunch. My girlfriend and i went to ask them to do something, after much debate, we succeded in making them move their fat asses, to saw the guy laying on the sidewalk. And, well, he WAS dead... horrible, people were walking beside a dead man, and did not do nothing!

I was equally ashamed at myself, cuz if it wasn't for my girlfriend, i would probably have passed by also. Maybe out of accoutumance. We are so often exposed to misery that we almost 'consciously' don't even see it.

I never saw anything in news paper for him, no mention of a dead man on the sidewalk in downtown nowhere.

And, sometimes, you can't even see what's happening. Last week, in Paris, i was waiting a train, in the trainstation, i saw a women, talking to an other, and all of the sudden, while the train arrived, she litteraly jumped on it... She was killed instantly, it was horrible, worst, people where shocked. She looked totaly normal 2 second ago, talking with somebody.

I suppose that's what they call human misery...

I'm really sorry for this depressing and macabre posting. I was affected also by this suicide, it's good to talk sometime.

On an up note, i have a little phrase that i keep telling myself when life suck...

"Life is never boring, it's people who choose to be bored"

This gives me a kick in the ass to be and make people around me happy.

Our modern civilisation is inhabbited with barbarians. Realy, there isn't much else to say. Luckily some people are more concerned about their next person. I think it is very closely related to the materialistic trend. Many people are very focussed on themselves and their own property. It gives an egoistic focus, and a side effect is, that those people will forget (or not learn) how to have empathy towards others. Also, when people are so focussed on getting things, the result is that they may be focused on fear of loosing: loosing their things, but also their life, their friends - everything. This does not have to be a consious focus, but it will easily be a driving power within them.

Sometimes I wonder, how much the "mass art" has to do with this. I think of television and movies. We are so acustomed with being on the "bad boy's" side, that we often do not think of it, while watching a movie. We can sit and hope for a mass murderer to be lucky without ever considdering how grostesque this is.

Anyway: one can choose to be depressed about it, or one can try and live with it (because it likely will not change within foreseable future). Life is the way you see it. So if you change your way of looking at life, life changes too. I choose not to keep myself upto date with the news for the simple reason, that I have many times realised, that when I do so my view of life darkens - too much focus on tragedy (because people find it interesting). So I spend my time seeing other sides of life instead. It is not neglegting the bad sides of the world - it is a choise of focus.

Just shows how special PlanetZ is. People have a high level of focus on helping eachother - without ever charging money to buy a new car.

Sometimes I think people just don't know what the true story is and have too many times been mistaken. That leads them to interpret their surroundings in the most negative way and decide that they should not get involved.

I remember a few months ago walking on Oxford St Sydney (mainly gay and club area) and there is an obvious drug addict who'd just had a hit: open mouth, slight drool, glazed half-closed eyes, nodding back and forth unsteadily. I have seen this look a thousand times.

Well, an old and well-dressed couple stop and start fussing over him, asking if he is OK etc, trying to help him up. Bollocks to that, he was just some scumbag junky who couldn't wait to get home to shoot up.

Now maybe next time this nice old couple won't help someone who has collapsed through illness because they think "oh, another drug addict, remember last time dear ?"

I have done first aid courses and in Sydney carried a mouth-guard and gloves for resusitation in my pocket. I carried them always in my jacket because I knew that if someone collapsed or was injured *I would not* attempt to help or resusitate them unless I was protected. Sorry.

I think society brings on a lot of these problems to itself through misguided (IMHO) principles.

An even better example....
A very good friend of mine (a young mother) goes to a play group in inner-city Sydney. It is for little children 1 year old to 4 years old. The property they use is part of a park and owned by the council. For the little kids it is one of the few green areas around that is fully fenced and safe.

But then drug addicts started hanging around in the park. The mothers complained - council did nothing.

Then they started sleeping in the park and leaving rubbish and bedding and bottles and scraps everywhere. Again Council does nothing. Now there are rats attracted in the park and seen in the late afternoons scavenging.

So then the mothers start picking up the rubbish of the junkies. (They had asked Council to clean up, but Council refused extra clean-ups before the children's play times...)

Then a little boy and girl (2 and 4 years old - my friend's kids) are playing in some leaves and uncover a stash of used syringes !!!

Again complaints to Council get nothing. The reply was: "Well, these people have rights too."

Disgusting.

For me this is the essence of the problem. We put the rights of drug-crazed irresponsible and thoughtless drug addicts perhaps *higher* than innocent little kids.

It is by this infinite toleration of filth and drugs and beggars and nutters and squalor and petty crime that the whole of society gets degraded. People begin to interpret their surroundings in a harsher and more distant way. They now expect that a collapsed person is a junkie, that someone who tries to stop you in the street wants money from you; that every alley is a pissing area.

Maybe that sounds harsh. Perhaps I lived for too long in the scummy areas - at first rich, varied and enjoyable, then for the last couple years I just saw the filth.

That's the main reason I left Sydney. I must bring up my child in a place where you don't have to scan the area for nutters and syringes before letting them play....

_________________
Here I rest

<font size=-1>[ This Message was edited by: Spirit on 2003-07-13 09:24 ]</font>

Spirit please do not believe that lie. The reason why they do not help keeping the park safe is not because some unfortunate people, who have fell into the drugtrap has rights. I realy do not believe that. I do believe however, that it is a question of money.

I have not been in your country, but it is a classic. Funds are low in the Council (or reserved for other things), and therefor the security of the children is not taken care of. And it is a common human defence mekanism, that if somebody do not like reality, they make up another reality. Here the social worker (or whoever gave that far out answer) may not like fact, that he/she is not able to help, and makes up another reason witch puts the reason in another box - and in the same go he/she put the blame on the addicts instead of on the economic choises of the Council.

I am not a communist, because I believe there is too big risk with it in bigger populations, but I do see it as a function of liberalism. When people vote for low taxes, they do vote for low sevice too. I spoke to a facutly leader from the Melbourne University in person 3 weeks ago. From what I understood, it is tough making humane research on the "soft values" in Australia, because the Universities are highly dependant on money from private companies. In Denmark, the new government has tried hard to cut down on education (education and infrastructure is realy the only reason for Denmarks good economy, so I don't understand this move), but I see, that it can get a lot worse

Sorry to bring the discussion here, but I just want you to see thru, what I believe is just another lie to make life easyer for some person from you local Council.

Yes, you're right there for sure. What's really lacking is the will to do anything about the problems.

The Olympics in Sydney were almost laughable for all the money that appeared. projects that had been impossible suddenly were done in an instant.

Graffiti that had been on walls for years was scrubbed away, footpaths were widened, flowerboxes lined the streets, a new railway extension was made, a tram service was put in etc etc

Homeless people to me is a terrible thing. No one should be homeless (well, some want to be...) and I can't see why the problem can't be solved or at least dramatically reduced.

Yet strangely, it is a problem that seems to effect all western nations (others too of course!) and is getting worse. Even in Japan I saw very neatly stacked piles of cardboard boxes waiting for the homeless to return to them that night.

I agree with Immanuel - sometimes I just can't bear to keep up with the news because of all the terrible things, and how - like murders on TV - constant repetition dulls the mind to the full horror of it all.

( I hope I don't give the impression that Sydney is so bad ! In all my travels I think it comes out extremely high, but suffers from ALL the big city problems like every other big city ).