The fine line between being salt and being ridiculous

Interesting to hear of West Sussex RC Cleric, Christopher Jamison, who has come out strongly against the Disney corporation. He accuses them of "exploiting spirituality" to sell its products and of turning Disneyland into a modern day pilgrimage site. Pointing out the tendency for Disney to give children morals, he points out their underlying aim to sell a lot of merchandise, thus making lots of money and helping to drive a materialistic culture.

Innevitably, of course, he has come in for a lot of stick over this - see Damian Thompson of the Telegraph for one, although I think his main point is that if we are to be critical of Disney in this way, there are plenty of other equally worthy targets. Many will be less balanced in their criticism of this stance, but it does cause me to ask a question. Where is the line between challenging our culture, especially with a spiritual motivation, and just looking (or indeed being) ridiculous? Of course, at times we need to be prepared to say things that are unpopular and risk ridicule.

Is it so awful that Fr Jamison has suggested true happiness may involve living more simply? Is that not a Biblical message? It is not possible to truely judge what he has said second hand from the press, but it did make me think. I wonder if I was important enough to have my comments ridiculed, would I say anthing worth making fun of?

Youth voice needs heard in an insane world

The current financial climate has caused people, especailly as they approach Christmas, to rethink their values, assess whether they are too materialistic and, as well as tightening their belt, reorder their moral and social priorities.


Ok, I wish that was true; sadly people (and by people I mean you and I) are still materialistic, consumer driven and sinfully selfish. there are degrees however, and it is always the excesses which stand out and leave us in danger of feeling complacent. Could we find a more horriffic example of that than the shocking death of a Walmart worker, tranpled to death by a stampeding crowd of "Black Friday" bargain hunters in Long Island. By the way, lest we be guilty of making him a statistic, the man's name is Jdimytai Damour. For the record, Jdimytai was 6 feet 5 and 270 pounds - not only does that make his death harder to get your head round, but there is a suggestion that his size was the very reason he was there, not because he was trained to deal with crowd, unfortunately for him.

What is the worst aspect to this? Is the most callous thing that some of the shoppers who poured over, and in fact on top of, him as they rushed on their way to scrap for a morsel of bargain? "I look at these people's faces and I keep thinking one of them could have stepped on him," said one employee. "How could you take a man's life to save $20 on a TV?"



What about the people who even stepped on those trying to give him medical attention? Or is the most sickening thing the people who then objected when asked to stop shopping in the aftermath of the incident?

Or is it worse that there is also a link at that story, and other places on the net, where we can watch the aftermath and despearate attempts to resuscitate this poor man? Does it feed our need to have as much of the gorey detail as possible, one of the more disturbing aspects of our mass media?

Each of us needs to reexamine our attitudes in the light of this. At least there is one young person who is prepared to speak out and show that he is thoughtful and is trying to evaluate it from a more balanced perspective. A young man who goes under the nicname of KeyboardDP took 10 minutes away from his obvious love of music to show how young people are not prepared to allow such scandalous things to happen unchallenged. He has recorded a brief monologue video which, while it will not solve everyone's problems, shows a thoughtful and wise approach that many of his elders could learn from. We need to give young people more opportunites to have their voice heard as they have so much to say that is helpful.

Morality, media and generational worldviews.

It appears from, where I swim, that the world has gone a bit mad this week and it all revolves around the individuals pictured here. I am sure enough words have been penned about the actually commotion without me adding to it. There were one or two things that caught my attention and may be worthy of futher ponderance, however.

As the world was informed how they should react to this by the tabloid media as usual, even the BBC seemed to give it unwarranted attention in a week when horrible things are happening around our world - there was little attention given to the situation in Congo until the weekend which is very hard to understand. Who decides what gets in the news and what gets left to the back pages of the broadsheets? Who gives the media the right to tell us what we should be outraged about anyway?

Also, what I am about to say is unjustifiably generalised and ageist but has been presented in some of the debate over the issue. Various reports are suggesting that the older generation seemed to express outrage and disgust, while Younger views inteviewed seemd to be less conerned; of couse that is a bit of a media hype "contrast for effect" in itself, but Torin Douglas, not prone to hysteria, also reports that younger Radio 1 listeners are less concerned about what Mr Brand and Mr Ross did.

If there is any truth in this, it causes me to ask the question - is this about young peope having more of a sense of humour as they suggest? Or is it about the younger generation being steeped in post-modern relative morality which means they are less likely to be "ouraged of Epping" and more likely to expect people to be allowed to "live and live"? Perhaps it is more likely that younger people just tend to be more balanced about something that, while it was unacceptable, shouldn't cause an over reaction? Maybe trying to generalise by age is just a waste of time in itself....

Dr Sharky is more concerned that this week has shown, yet again, how the media can dominate the agenda, work hard to manipulate priorities and even create it's own news.