How to Lose Friends and Alienate People

So today I made a rather glib and tasteless status update on Facebook regarding a single vehicle car accident in Melbourne on Saturday night that killed 5 teenagers. I made judgements based on their names, assumptions regarding their socio-economic status and gross generalisations as to the overall "worth" from a social-Darwinism perspective (I understand that thanks to the Third Reich social-Darwinism can be a truly horrific construct) to our community. Nonetheless the reactions to this post were to be expected, a mix of back slapping, noble condemnation and quiet opposition. I am very much appreciative that outright hostility has not been sighted as of yet, I guess my friends are well aware that everything a say should well be digested with a good solid swig from the Dead Sea. But as the commentators argued amongst each other, I felt obliged to elaborate not only on the incident that created this debate, but my personal perception of the societal and political influence that results in such an incident, that varied responses that are created from such, and the wider ramifications of these attitudes on a larger scale.

One argument raised in the post was that indeed these kids were as much a victim of environment as well as their own dangerous behaviour. Taking a holistic approach to this argument, it is first necessary to identify the "environment" in question, what defines this environment from other environments that can exist within a whole societal structure, and what are the factors that influence and create these variations across a community.

The second argument discussed primarily dealt with the philosophical question as to the "value" of the lives lost. As a supposed egalitarian society, as is often purported to be the case in Australian society, how can some lives be indeed more "valuable" than others? Is the unemployed vagrant who dies of pneumonia as valuable as the Brain Surgeon who dies in a yachting accident? How about the environmental activist versus the corporate lawyer? The famous Racing Car Driver versus the highly praised visual artist? If these analogies were presented across society, what would one make of the varied responses? How many of these people would approach this question from the perspective of firstly acknowledging the impact on these losses on the actual direct relations of these people? Or would it primarily just be from a total societal view? Then of course, what can be made of the value of whole societies from a global perspective? Are those lives lost in Haiti just last week as valuable as those whom perished from the 9/11 incident? It certainly raises a very great deal of questions.

Instead of answering these questions myself, I would love to see this blogpost become an open debate, as an example of democratic process in play. I will be happy to elaborate my point of view along with others, lets just hope we don't get all 18th Century Germanic Philosophical and prove that it is all indeed pointless, that reality is indeed a false construct and we are all hopelessly redundant within our own existence.