PS3 killing musings

This time close to home. A man was stabbed after confronting a man who robbed a women of her PS3 on the streets of San Francisco this week.

What a shallow and ridiculous world we have created for ourselves. I suppose this thing is not all that rare. If we were in the stone age, instead of senseless violence over a video gaming system we would have senseless violence over who gets to eat the squirrel, or because you broke my sun stick, or I grunted funny in your general direction.

I guess the idea is that we are supposed to be a "civilized" society where we have moved beyond this type of thing. Isn't that a little too Utopian to honestly believe in? I mean, really, not like I disagree, I wish society as a whole were civilized, but that fact is that society is a Utopian ideology, and is not a real thing, it's an idea. It is made up of real people, and people are flawed, ignorant, greedy, base, shallow, callous, immoral, selfish beings. While many of us may not display these characteristics, it is ridiculous to hope that the whole of society could rise up from the filth of base motivation.

People are born with different genetics, and have different upbringings. These things cannot be avoided. Thus, each human will be different, and thus somewhere down the line someone will be different enough to allow them, within themselves, to stab another person to death over a few hundred dollars of plastic and metal.

Some might blame this on consumerism, or capitalism, but can you honestly say that this type of thing would not happen if there were no video game systems? There will always be the haves and the have nots. Life is not fair, life is not equal, not matter how much you strive for it. This is why communism fails. You will always end up with someone on top, someone with absolute power, and absolute power corrupts absolutely. There will never be enough top shelf vodka or caviar for everyone in Russia, but I guarantee you that the President eats whatever he wants. That is a society setup for failure, based on hypocrisy from inception. But I digress.

I could never stab someone over a PS3. I was trying to decide within myself if I could stab someone in self defense, or in war-time. It is hard to say without being there. Some people would not. Some would rather die than kill another by their own hand. That is rationalism. The ability to overpower base instinct, the will to survive, hopefully for something greater.

I see no end to this. Things like this have always happened, and will always happen. But then I think of, was it... Holland? Where they have a significant portion of the population with firearms, many of them automatic, if I recall correctly, and yet they have one of the lowest firearm related crime rates. How is that possible? They aren't consumerists? They are educated? They are not densely populated? If it can happen there can it therefore be applied to the whole? I think not.

Still it is saddening when our fellow man reminds us how pathetic we are. I don't want to sound anti-human, but we, by virtue of self-awareness, believe that we are special. This is where I believe religion is born, but I will not continue down that road at this time. I was reading something about dinosaurs today, and they spoke of how these absolutely massive creatures roamed the earth some 100 to 200 million years ago. Life has been on this planet for so long, and yet I feel that deep down every human believes that we will somehow stick it out. That the giant meteor from space will not hit earth, or we will be able to stop it. That we can reverse global warming (not at this rate), or that science will be able to stop the spread of any disease or virus. Most of us don't think about things like supervolcanos; most probably haven't even heard of one before. We have done so much and yet squander our vast power on trivial matters.

It has always been my belief that nature will find a way, to cure the earth of the human plague. Aids, weather, volcanoes, asteroids. We will not make it forever; unless of course like Stephen Hawking suggests we get the hell out of here and boogy to another planet. I still have a hard time believing that humans will be able to make that journey. Although some in the past would not have been able to fathom flying, much less jets. But given our understanding of the universe, vastly greater than it was at a time when people could not fathom flight, it is hard to believe that human travel of many 10s or 100s of light years is physically possible within the lifespan of a human. Maybe if it were possible to suspend animation and re-awaken. Even then it would be such a limited portion of the population, although it would continue the spread of human existence none the less.

All of this from a stabbing. Man, I am musefull today. So, in summary... be kind, rewind... oh, wait... DVDs... hmmm.... Don't stab, it's bad!