CNN - 'urban warfare' in New Orleans- Sep 1, 2005: "...scenes of lawlessness and desperation, with people simply dragging corpses into corners..'They have quite a few people running around here with guns,' he said. 'You got these young teenage boys running around up here raping these girls.'...Elsewhere, groups of armed men wandered the streets, buildings smoldered and people picked through stores for what they could find."
Would someone please remind me what humanism was all about? The belief that man is the source of all things right and true? It's difficult for us to swallow a 'goodness of man' mantra when we're seeing thousands go the Lord of the Flies route in New Orleans.Now, granted...these are extenuating circumstances. Under pressure, people do strange things. More accurately, under pressure, it is revealed who people really are. In this case, these people really are murders. Rapists. Thugs. My question is how many of them were well disguised as law abiding citizens only four or five days ago.
To clarify - I don't see this as a uniquely New Orleans problem. I think that given a perceived immunity, we could expect the same thing in Washington or Palo Alto or Boise or Cheyenne or Topeka. This horror in New Orleans is serving to pull back the veil that society places over the evil within us...it is revealing the heart of mankind as something less than man wishes it were. Something less than admirably. Something dark. Something unholy.
I recently read an interview with a thinker who used the phrase 'post-humanist'. Now there's something to look forward to...a day when man gets a good look, takes a deep breath, and begins to cry out for a redeemer.
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