Economic downfall bares its ugly face

Commentary by Emily Plihal

Does anybody else get really frustrated with the world sometimes? It is amazing the turmoil felt throughout the world on a daily basis. I am shocked by how naive, and in some cases, downright stupid people can be. Last week a TV anchorwoman from Arkansas, Anne Pressly, was beaten and stabbed in her home. Her mother phoned to wake her up at 4:30 a.m. with no response from Pressly. Her mother decided to trek to her daughter’s house to get her up for work. The anchorwoman remains in critical condition in an Arkansas hospital. This is just one of the many recent events that have made me start to question the human race. Sure, there are a number of great people in the world, don’t get me wrong. However; sometimes our best intentions are at the demise of someone else, most of the time unintentionally. A man from British Columbia had to kill a black bear by clubbing and breaking its skull cap. The man is now being heckled by anti-hunters who claim the man should have ran! Do they not realize the man had no choice? If he had ran, the bear (which I must mention can run for a short distance faster than a horse) would have caught him and eaten him. The man claims he is sorry he had to kill the sow, who had cubs, but she left him no choice. Is it fair for him to be harassed because he was protecting himself? The one thing every human being has in common is the animal instinct to protect themselves and their loved ones. I will never fully understand how chemical imbalances work, or even if it’s the cause of human outbursts. In the case of the anchorwoman, she must have had a stalker or someone watching her knowing what she had in her home to rob. What possesses people to be jealous of what others have? Is this the pattern we’ll notice in our lives because of the economic bust? Are people going to start stealing and killing to meet their basic needs? I think a huge part of the problem begins in parts of the world, especially places like Alberta, where everything has been so simple, economically speaking, for many years. Now there is an economic crisis in the United States which will have a huge impact in global trade. We are already feeling the brunt of the economic bust in Canada. What with fuel at outrages prices, increasing all of our goods prices, it is becoming very difficult to live comfortably like we did even two years ago. People are looking for anything to complain about that they can actually try to resolve. Unfortunately, most people do not have the skills their grandparents and great-grandparents had in their youth. If there should be an economic downfall of great proportions, most people will not be able to survive. Skills as basic as planting a garden are not generally used. Hunting has become taboo in many urban communities. Maybe I have become negative in my lifetime, but I can see people taking from others what they need, neglecting to consider how they’ll hurt the other person. I am a firm believer we are only responsible for the skills we acquire in our lifetime. To prepare for the economic crisis, and perhaps prevent brutal beatings and verbal harassment like the two above cases, we will have to be accountable not only to ourselves but also to everyone else.

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