Surely everyone was astonished by the news:

http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/htm...4_shop290.html

of the young employee in the New York Walmart being trampled to death at work this past Friday morning. I think Black Friday and our savage consumerism mindset is rather barbaric. I've never been less in the mood to "go buy stuff" than this year. I find this phenomenon to be a national embarrassment. Seriously, does this kind of thing happen in other countries?

The 2008 incident was not the first Black Friday trampling incident to happen at a Walmart....


http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2003/11/30/national/main586013.shtml?source=search_story

Bah...humbug!

[This message has been edited by Anne Bryant-Hamon (edited December 02, 2008).]

Actually, I wasn't astonished by it in the least.

Dwindling economy + low prices + sale + holiday + Christmas hype = mob mentality.

Is it tragic? Sure. But these sorts of things happen regularly, and are all quite preventable. The dark side of human nature is nothing new.

Many hundreds are killed frequently in stampedes at religious pilgrimages in India and the Middle East.

And soccer stampedes with many deaths are common in Latin America and Europe.

Each culture has its own crazies. By most standards of mob behavior, America is actually placid.

E. Shaun,

'Astonished' was the wrong word choice for how I felt. I was grieved by it, not surprised. Perhaps in the natural realm we are appointed to be perpetually grieved by the dark side of human nature. I suppose talking about it doesn't really help anything.

Anne

Michael,

Yes, I thought about the religious stampedes and the stampedes that have happened at rock concerts and sporting events. It just struck me as unfair for someone to have to die in their early 30's working at Walmart on Black Friday. These things strike me as unnecessary tragedies. But really, what do I know - maybe everything that happens is necessary. Maybe in truth, it doesn't matter how or when we die.

Anne

Anne,

Of course it happens--or can happen--everywhere. In November 2007, for example, three people were trampled to death in a stampede in Chongqing, China.

If there's a difference, I suppose it would lie in the merchandise being sought more than anything else. In Chongqing, they weren't lining up for DVD players or flat-screen TVs. They were lining up for cooking oil.

* A contemporary news article from BBC Asia

* A thoughtful blog on the subject of "boorish" Chinese consumers . . . and the consumption of "grease"

Bah humbug indeed. Check those packages folks. If it says "Made in China" . . . well, you might want to watch this, before you buy:

* Santa's Workshop

"Merry" Christmas.

Steve C.

I had to go and look up Black Friday, as it's used in this context (around here, it usually refers to any Friday the 13th).

We have a similar mad rush at retail stores for the post-Xmas sales, which start around December 27 and continue for a week or two (I believe it's officially a half-financial-year stocktake sale). The opening day of the sales is chaotic and there have been injuries as people barge through the doors at 9am. Haven't heard of any deaths, though, but it could easily happen.

Yes, it's crazy, all right.

Yeah, it is the lusting for merchandise enough to trample someone to death for it that I find shameful. Thanks for the other links. Buying and selling, buying and selling certainly occupies us much in this world. It seems to me that in this communication age, it has become an obsessive/compulsive thing.

Anne

This seems like a good place to insert my favorite quotation from George Bernard Shaw. (Shaw, of course, is talking about the shop-till-you-drop, eat-till-you-bust version of the holiday):

"Christmas is forced on a reluctant and disgusted nation by the shopkeepers and the press; on its own merits it would wither and shrivel in the fiery breath of universal hatred; and anyone who looked back to it would be turned into a pillar of greasy sausages."

Gail,

I've never heard that quote before. Thank you. It does seem like "Doing Christmas" is a trance-like, group-think sort of thing in the commercial sense of it. Can you imagine the Christmas carols being played inside the Walmart store.... "It's the most wonderful time..... of the year......!" as the mob of 'shoppers' continue obliviously stomping the poor man to death in order to get to the electronics department before all the flat-screened T.V.s deals have been sold out. Surely those very same people would not act like that in a normal state of mind!