In My Language & being an unperson

Watch these video clips, then think. Afterwards, if you wish, post a comment.

Women encouraging toddlers to fight

It's a shocking story. Four women were in court the other day, on child cruelty charges, after film was found showing the women goading toddlers into fighting with each other.

In one scene, a three year old girl punches a two year old boy in the face. As he walks away crying, he is called 'a wimp, and a faggot' for not fighting back.

You cna read detail on the story over on the BBC website.

Even after arrest, the women appeared not to understand what they were doing was wrong, saying:

"I didn't see any harm in toughening them up. I done the same with my own children."

When you read such things you do really wonder about some people. What kind of family could they have grown up in themselves, that allows them to see no harm in these actions?

The things we do

I just received an email, and it talks about the silly, foolish, stupid and sometimes downright evil things we do:

The range of foolish and evil things of which we human beings are capable of never ceases to astonish. We destroy our bodies and sometimes our brains with controlled substances, even though we know better. We make stupid choices that we know in advance will lead to trouble. We devastate our marriages and friendships by repeating the same mistakes again and again. How often we've heard it said, quite correctly, 'she's married the same man again.'

And that's just the stupid part. There's also the downright evil side of us, the lying, cheating, stealing and killing, the willingness to wage war for no good reason, the willingness to tolerate an unjust society, the willingness to turn our backs on the poor and the suffering. All in all, between stupidity and downright evil, this human nature of ours seems a fairly nasty piece of work.

It's not wrong, is it? How much of yourself do you see in that quote? What could you do to make the changes, to be a different person? Very often it is the minor changes we make in our behaviour and our attitude that make the biggest differences.