Why is life suddenly so cheap?

grubs50

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Life seems to have become so cheap in this new millenium, Sucide bombing have suddenly become part of our daily lives, it is now part of our daily lives to read about missing ppl esp girls being found dead , people getting killed by muggers and wierdos and even as a result of road rage. Reading that soldiers are killed in various wars around the world is now not as shocking as it would have been in the past.............i can go on and on with various examples but what has really changed in our society to make life so CHEAP!!!.
 
The only thing that has changed is the speed at which information is transmitted around the world. Other than that nothing has changed and I am amazed you even think that it has. Have you forgotten that only 60 years ago 40 Million people were killed in WW2 which included suicide bombers from Japan ?

The UK itself may not have had the number of deaths we now hear about but elsewhere in the World there was plenty of it going on for example in 1980 to 1988 over 1Million died in the Iran Iraq war and there are many more examples of this.

For those in power or in positions of dominance, life has been, is now and always will be, "cheap"


Paul
 
Grubs.......maybe the 'witnesses' have it right ....maybe we r heading for that big Bombshell!

Personally I think we r just self-destructive......& if u go back in history things have never really changed we have always been like this, but with modern technology we just get to hear about it more.

Jay
 
The streets of London and Glasgow , Liverpool etc never were
all that safe.
Or the back alleys in Calcutta.
It's how we came to populate Australia !
Remember the Mohocks of the 18th century ?

The internal tribal wiring which triggers the need for power over our fellow man whether at the personal or governing level is part of the (male) human condition, it would seem.

But war is just another form of theft.
And is not part of the human condition.
 
money.... capitalism must have a balancing act, its the big situation that the planet is going through,its seems attitudes are biased towards i want more now, people are being sold lifestyles that they should be aspiring to, today there is more affluence in peoples lives yet the planet has never been more miserable with themselves (western society), I Managed to aquire second hand book, called "Britain on the couch" which goes into detail regarding such matters, suggesting its other peoples expectations of ourselves which has a lot to do with why people are suffering more (mentally) , perceptions and beliefs. I feel that maybe we are going through a capitalistic Blow off over the next century, i'm sure we will completely bugger the markets and the planet maybe, but after that when people look back and realise how stupid people were early 2000, then maybe people will discover the next big thing, the human mind.

but I wouldn't say human nature is impossible to change, i think it takes time to evolve, and we as a species are relative newcomers as life on this planet so lets review it in another 1000 years maybe and see how we are doing.

Ive no doubt that slowly people are beginning to question themselves.

all life = energy
energy cannot be destroyed
the human identity dies- but then what ?

the biggest question..
JD
 
But don't you think that there is less 'shock value' now..........it all seems to be part of our daily life.............compare the sucide bombings of the past few years and the previous 20 years even including the Palestinian intifada and u would see that there has been a disproportionate increase.
 
i with trader333 on this - we just get to hear a lot more, a lot faster and in a lot more depth - and i am sure that things get a lot better overall as each year goes by

but that still makes it real depressing when you hear the **** that goes on, but as you get older you end up with less anger over stuff and more just wishing people could see how wasteful their actions can be for themselves and others

one weak cowardly person can just do more damage now due to the opportunites - but they are still one person
 
A lot of the worst cases in the third world don't even get reported despite better communications . IMO, i don't think the developed world has been this bad in terms of total disregard for life.
 
grubs50

there are a lot of people in the world - **** is gonna happen no matter how you figure it - but 99.999999999999999999% of people are good - you got to be carefully optimistic - but bear in mind that a small proportion of the 100% are gonna be fruits and when fruit gets rotten - its gonna have the capability for damage
 
stevet,

Based on your above percentage figures then less than 1 person on the entire planet is not good and I would suggest that the evidence for a larger number of "not good" people is overwhelming.


Paul
 
trader333

i know you are up on this math stuff - but in this case i suspect you are wrong - figure out the population of the UK and extrapulate to say the number of people in prison for real bad deeds and then extrapulate that number to those who might still be roaming around free - and i bet you i might for once be close!

but you know i love adding on those decimal points
 
what about your "lurkers with evil intent " ?

I love that phrase, it summons up all sorts of Poeist images.

(take off one decimal place !)
 
grubs50 said:
i can go on and on with various examples but what has really changed in our society to make life so CHEAP!!!.

People are lost with themselves people are sold the american way of life, but are people truly happy when they achieve it? did they want it? do they feel they have to chase it? will they be called failures if they dont make it or called losers because they dare to challenge the status quo of it all?

I certainly have no idea what way globally people will go but i suspect it will be a cycle of sorts, love, hate, fear, capitalism,compassion,spiritualism.

which course is the planet currently sailing along ?
we as a race dont like to share, at this stage in our evolution, it seems, until we shift that habbit and become less fearful of others it will be a wild and violent struggle i suspect.

JD
 
fortuneatly or unfortuneatly we only have a short ticket for the life ride - so best to try and enjoy it and not get too worried about cataclysmic unfolding events in the year 3000
 
there is a real contradiction between the content expressed above, ie: the human conditions' need to dominate each other and thus devalue life, weighed against all the advances tha are made and strived for in technology and science, which fall into 3 categories:

1. To make communication with each other easier and more effective, (eg: telephone, internet etc..)
2. To improve each others standard of living, (eg: all consume goods, housing, sanitation.)
3. To improve each others health, (advances in medical science.)

All these display an inherant need to talk to each other more and understand each other, whilst making life easier and improving each other's health, yet e still want to kill ach other over what are on a global scale, pretty petty squabbles.

I agree with the poster above who says that humankind is currently in a sustained period of examining itself and will come out of it better.

All wars are about one thing only: territory, and if you think about it 'nationalism' is a false and contrived concept. Just look at the post war european project; Europe is now a village with less and less boundaries to trade and movement. The concept of nationalism will dissapear and it is the integrationists that have got it right. If you bring all people togethor under a common identity the less chance they will wa with each other. (The 'united' states of America is another good example where peoples of all nationalities, creedds and colours live under a common identity, by and large peacefully.) In Europe this will be harder to achieve because the nations here have very long hsitorys as nations.

I live in Central London and kLondon itself is a microcosm of this, for example where I live, has very high numbers of Italians, Americanns and Arabs, and again by and large it works.

Integration and common identity is the key to prevent war and whlist some 'little englander isolationists' may not like it, we as a species are ultimtely compelled and heading that way. For my own part-long may that road continue.

best bbmac.
 
stevet,

It was a purely mathmatical statement I was making ie
99% = 1 in 100,
99.9% = 1 in 1000
99.99% = 1 in 10,000

So to quote your figure of:
99.999999999999999999% = 1 in 100000000000000000000

As we only have 6 Billion people on the planet your quoted percent just happens to be 16 Billion times more than the entire population of the planet.

In fact if you had said that only 1 brain cell on the entire planet is bad you would have been more accurate than quoting the above percentage. (I know am I am just splitting hairs and I know where you were coming from)


Paul
 
I think integration and common identity are inevitable but I don't want to be pushed/rushed towards it because it suits a political ambition.
 
Trader333

you know i rely on you for this maths stuff

but u lost me a bit on this one

"As we only have 6 Billion people on the planet your quoted percent just happens to be 16 Billion times more than the entire population of the planet. "

dont you mean multiplying the real number of bad people to arrive at the number of good people would mean that there were 16 billion times the world population of good people

and if so, where did you get your figure for bad people

and i can see that you have not added in the poplulations of the other dimensions, running paralell to our own - which of course, if your underlying bad people number is correct, i was adding into my own calculation

other dimensions - by a strange quirk based on physical laws of the universe- dont support bad life forms - they are all goody two shoes over there
 
I like JSD's point of "Americanisation or Greed is good."
Many years ago I was surprised to be told by an American tourist that in the US most couples worked whereas in the UK it was the man who was breadwinner.

Today most UK couples have to work or work to grasp more goodies.

Is this why UK people bugger off to France etc for "quality of life" purposes. To avoid Americanisation ( The French soon told US firms what they thought of US attempts to interfere with the "Lunch Break").

We seem to have less time for each other whilst keeping the treadmill going, and it saddens me to see young couples unable to buy their first home, or forced to leave their county etc.

Once upon a time home prices were linked to local economics (wages etc). Now with the advent of second homes and retiree movement, that economic regulator has been broken. Even the French are beginning to protest at the number of second home owners and rising property prices.

No prizes for guessing which country will try to do something about house prices first.

In Cornwall I am aware of a growing feeling of being crowded in as greenfields are turned into housing. There are not the jobs to support the number of houses, nor can many locals afford them.

Retirees and second home owners maybe?

Go to Mousehole or Fowey or many other seaside towns and you will find them almost deserted due to the high number of second homes.

I have my property, I was born here but worked away for many years. But the feeling of being stifled by the encroaching estates and subsequent loss of countryside makes one look at France and its' open spaces and greater sense of community.

Now crime has always been with us. Consider the iron anti strangulation collars worn by persons out for a night in London town in the 18th century. The media reports more, it's not necessarily true that there is more serious crime but maybe true that anti social behaviour ( Drunkeness, damage to property, noise, general loutish behaviour) has increased.

Consideration for other people is on the decrease and the family unit is not given the support or recognition it deserves. The newspapers report dysfunctional people, families and general yobbery because it makes news. People doing good works or happy families are not what sell newspapers or get the voyeurs to sit in front of the box.

Maybe it is because I am older that I think thus, perhaps it's an over fifties male mid life thing?

Apologies for the rant.

I feel better now.
 
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Grubs is right, more and more people are becoming more and more desensitized to violence. What could have shocked us a few years ago, now seems like an everyday occurence. Even though atrocities have always been committed, I mean you only have to look at the world wars in the 20th Century, what is different this time is that the cancer of terrorism has no end in sight. There wont be a treaty of versailles or an official silencing of the guns. There will be people out there who have no respect for human life and distorted beliefs who will promote carnage everywhere else. I can honestly say the world at large is a less safer place than before and this current campaign against terror will define our lives for many years to come. And that is a freigtening prospect!
 
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