In Case You Still Had Any Faith in Humanity

[JOHN72]

I lose faith in human beings. When I go to the supermarket on Saturday afternoon, it seems like the Walking Dead series.The forms are lost, they look at each other. Everyone is in a hurry.

 

[Briar Lee]

Part of my upbringing was that all the events described in the Gospels involved people who looked and acted and lived and thought exactly, precisely, and absolutely as we do today, wearing different clothes and speaking Aramaic, Latin and Hebrew instead of modern English.

The antidote to evil was taught to me as being universal public education. When everyone learned to read they’d read the Gospels and might follow the Master instead of the man in the mirror a little more.

It was all sort of utopian. When the Master walked the earth they made fun of Him and eventually murdered Him.

But people do seem to steadily become less and less violent and more and more civilized.

U.S. Mass Shootings And Gun Deaths Fell To Lowest Level In Five Years In 2024

The U.S. has seen 491 mass shootings as of Dec. 18, according to Gun Violence Archive, a national nonprofit that defines mass shootings as those in which four or more people—not including the shooter—are killed or injured.

www.forbes.com

There are a third of a billion people in the United States, in a society with more guns than people.

About five hundred run amuk with a gun each year.

Those 500 or so, sell a lot of newspapers, which only the literate can read.

What the newspapers and television commentators never mention is how a third of a billion people carry on normal lives every day with less than a couple of them each day running wild.

We’d not read or watch boring news.

 

[lraisch]

This has to be the case mentioned.

Another delay in the court case of accused serial killer Fredrick Scott

It's been almost seven years since Fredrick Scott was arrested and almost eight years since the first of six murders he's accused of committing.

www.kshb.com

After 41 years behind a law office desk I’m utterly convinced human nature has not changed since Cain killed his brother for no apparent reason:

I had three clients commit suicide and all three AFTER I’d successfully helped them out of their relatively minor legal troubles.

One of them was found with my letter announcing I’d won his case. Another took the money I’d won for her and paid up her rent, a month in advance.

And my first wife’s sister, who was a part time fashion model with a face any woman would die for, whose father was the second wealthiest small bank chain owner in Missouri, at age 25 gassed herself to death in her brand new car her father gave her, and wrote a fantastic note she was in the final stages of leukemia, which was a total lie.


Sometimes for no reason anyone can fathom people run amuk and do evil to others.

Running Amok: A Modern Perspective on a Culture-Bound Syndrome - PMC

Running amok is considered a rare culture-bound syndrome by current psychiatric classification systems, but there is evidence that it occurs frequently in modern industrialized societies. The historical origins of running amok as a psychiatric ...

pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov

They are truly out of their right minds.

Why the authorities in Kansas City are delaying the trial is he must be sane enough to help his lawyer defend him.

As to the Kitty Genovese syndrome, that’s old as time as well.

Kitty Genovese ‑ Case, Murder & Bystander | HISTORY

Kitty Genovese was a woman whose 1964 murder in Queens, New York, sparked false reports about neighbors who witnessed the crime but refused to get invovled.

www.history.com

Better hope there’s only a few bystanders.

If there’s a crowd it’s likely nobody will help you. They wait for the other guy to stick his neck out, not them.

Humans are not always human in how they act.

The best way to get people in New York to leave you alone is to run down the middle of the street yelling "Help, Help".

 

[Briar Lee]

The best way to get people in New York to leave you alone is to run down the middle of the street yelling "Help, Help".

The best way to combat evil is to always stand up to it, if you are able.

When my mother was diagnosed with advanced congestive heart failure, she had me drive her over for her to interview what she called a potential babysitter for the elderly.

The middle aged lady came out and my mother spoke with her at the passenger window, and the lady looked at me and said, you don’t remember me, do you?

My reply was you’re embarrassing me in front of my mother, it’s been over thirty years since I left Humansville and I should remember an old friend.

She looked at Mama and said

I was a little girl and two boys were pestering me South of the school, and your son drove up in his Mustang and got out and kicked both those boys with his cowboy boots, slapped them with his cowboy hat, then helped me gather my books, and drove me home, after he circled downtown so I could wave at my friends. You raised a hero.

My mother hired her to babysit her, and on the way home, she didn’t say much.

Finally she said, I much prefer those stories than the ones where they tell me how that you and them were good drinking buddies,

Is there even a grain of truth to that one?

I said Mama, that would have been over thirty years ago. I can’t remember.

She said that sounds just like something I’d have been pleased to see you do, so let’s call that legend true.

I said please don’t have me abusing a good cowboy hat. I’d have knocked knots on their heads with my class ring turned over.