Horrible. Shameful.

I'm 40 and I can't ever remember kids behaving this way when I was a teenager. It's almost as if the world is just toxic and breeds contempt and violence in youths. Or maybe I'm just getting old.

Great, though sad, post.

Remember "A Clockwork Orange?"

I remember reading an interview where Anthony Burgess said that he had based Alex and his Droogs on the smart-dressing, incredibly violent street punks who prowled the streets of London in the 50s (Although it seems likely the book was at least as much influenced by the four U.S. GI deserters who attacked and beat his pregnant wife in 1943, forcing her to miscarry.)

And so I often wonder if it is that the youth of today are honestly more violent or not? It might help to clarify that the shooting I witnessed did not happen yesterday or even last year: if that young man survived he's since had time to marry and have children of his own. Can I blame it on the age? Or on the general poverty and inequity of the area in which I live? Has not crime gone hand in hand with poverty in every age, in every culture, throughout history? The gangbanger phenomenon is starting to span generations — with older members (who have survived) settling down and denouncing the violence of the gangsta life even as their children and sometimes grandchildren are running with the pack. It's easy to forget that the Bloods and Crips were being founded around the same time I was being born, and they themselves were the children of gangs formed after World War II (probably in response to the rise of racist violence directed against black communities by whites who were unhappy to see so many blacks moving to LA from the South.)

How chilling is it to realize that one of the most infamous and violent of youth gangs in operation in Los Angeles in the 1940s was called the Spook Hunters? And that violence went largely unreported or unrecognized...

It doesn't excuse the violence today (there is NO excuse) but I'm more inclined to blame youth, period, than today's youth. I think the argument can be made either way of course, but personally I suspect that we have always had a problem with "today's youth" in every age and every generation.

But I don't honestly know which idea is more depressing.

"I see no hope for the future of our people if they are dependent on frivolous youth of today, for certainly all youth are reckless beyond words... When I was young, we were taught to be discreet and respectful of elders, but the present youth are exceedingly wise[disrespectful] and impatient of restraint" (Hesiod, 8th century BC)

That was a beautifully written and saddening post.

What I'd like to think is that the world is getting better, actually. After all, right now violence makes headlines - at least, thank goodness, in Ottawa it does. Only a few decades ago, and it is still that way in many places in the world, if someone got killed, people would just shrug: kids got killed every day. Only a few decades ago, people dying of flu, plague, smallpox, polio, take your pick, were the norm, and people who lived to 50 were the exception. Now someone dying of a heart attack or cancer at fifty gets mourned and buried and people have walks and campaigns for heart disease; only a century ago it would probably have been viewed as dying of "deserved old age."

If we are sensitive enough to notice something and be shocked by it, that means it is not the expected thing; that means it occurs rarely. I can imagine, though I don't want to, a world where the shooting you saw would only get press if it was a white man getting shot: the deaths of blacks, Asians, women would be beneath notice. I can imagine, though I do not want to, a world where you would not even rush to the window when you hear a gunshot, and simply say "Oh, those (insert epithet which is now, thank god, unprintable) are at it again," and get back to your work, and the very idea that this situation is wrong, that those (insert same epithet) are people with dreams who do not want to die, would not cross your mind.

It does in this place and at this time. We have built a world where people do care about those less well off than them, and have enough energy left from scrabbling after their own survival to be indignant at the plight of the less fortunate and to take action about it. There are places where this is still not the case, and it is a sign that we have done well that we can actually see that this is wrong, and those places are growing fewer with each passing year.

We may not have seen that we still have a long way to go. And I do not want to imagine that.

That is an excellent point, Indicolite, and one I had not considered. Thank you.

Perhaps someday we will bridge that gap between a world where we can be shocked that people are being killed, and a world where they would not be killed in the first place.