I was struck by a sudden thought. I had a brief flash of what the last bit of life must have been like for this woman. How she was terrified, screaming, begging for her children, her husband, perhaps even her mommy and daddy to save her. I can imagine them telling her that she was going to be killed for lottery numbers. And then - they butchered her. And there was silence.
And then, as I thought about the worthless excuses for humans that would sacrifice a mother of three to the “spirits” to get lottery numbers, I realized that I hated these people. I hate them, I hate their culture, I hate their twisted belief in “magic” or “religion” that led them to human sacrifice. In fact, this thing has created a whole new hate in me that did not previously exist.
I guess I’m a hateful person. Maybe I’ll re-think this by morning’s light, but for right now…just like the Offspring song…I hate.
Well, Uma, that’s what happens when you think of the “modern world” as of the rule, rather than the exception. Human civilization has changed much less than you’d think over the past thousand years.
You know about coal and stuff. You’re not useless.
**
I don’t exactly know why but depending on the murder I’m either very angry about it or very sad. When I heard about Matthew Shepard I had the same thoughts you did about this woman. I just imagined him sitting there begging for his life while other human beings ignored his pleas and tortured him to death. It boogles my mind that a human being can do that to another who caused them no harm.
Anger and hate are emotions which are just as valid as love and happiness. I find no fault in a value system that breeds anger and hatred for those who would wantonly murder and cause misery.
I know very little about Malaysia, but the concept of killing a person for lottery numbers seems a little ULish to me.
In the United States, the vast majority of the time when a woman is murdered, the killer is her husband or boyfriend.
Without hearing more, it’s hard to guess, but I wonder if her husband killed her (or arranged for the killing) and had enough influence, as director of a hospital, to have the story pinned on a lottery number killing.
In the “could this happen?” department of human experience, I have to say I’m not surprised… how is killing someone to coercerce “spirits” into giving them lottery numbers different than kidnapping, and subsequently killing people to get large randsoms (RE: the Phillipenes, certain Central American countries)?
In the “how could civilized people DO this?” department, all I have to say is: welcome to the third world. Let’s face it, people who grow up in abject poverty and are inundated with propaganda (religious, political, etc.) think differently than people who were raised well-fed and relatively free-thinking…
Yes, all people are the same in a fundamental way, but poeple differ in huge ways due to economic/political/religious/philosophical ways…
Not meaning to say that I agree with them… but I DO understand how differently they view the Universe…
I’m familiar with Malaysia, at least from the stand-point of having spent a fair amount of time there, and I’m inclinded to believe.
Until you’ve been into the third world, and Malaysia in particular, it’s not something you can “get”. Not even in the the strangest corners here in the states can you find the mix of modernism and backwardness, rationality and superstition, that you’ll find in Malaysia. They are simply different. Not necesarily better, or worse, just different.
[sub]Well, OK: In this instance, far, far worse. But it’s not typical of them.[/sub]
Far be it from me to approve of this sort of thing, but the fact that it happened in a third world country makes me less angry than I would be if it were down the street. Extreme poverty changes everything, and while I am not going to say that anything could make what these men did right, thier motivation may well have been very different from that of a suburbanite who already had all the bare nescesities of life. I can’t helkp but wonder if these people had, say, starving kids. And if you had starving kids–your own kids who you watched hurt every single day and whom you knew might die soon, if not to actual starvation then to the diseases that near-starvation makes you so suceptable to–I wonder if, in those circumstances, we might all weigh the life of an innocent stranger against the life of our kids, and at least be tempted. That still wouldn’t make it right, of course, but it makes it a little more easy to understand than “They killed her because they wanted more cars and a nice house and the money to hire hot prostitutes.”
What is the inherent difference between this case and anyone who murders an innocent victim for their money (a practice which is all too common in the good old USA)? Is it because this murder won’t actually work? Or is the OP supposing that the notion of human sacrifice for lottery picks is considered morally OK by large segments of Malaysian society and is appalled by this? I doubt if this is the case.
Say what?? Human sacrifice is understandable if you’re poor?
That’s ludicrous! I’ve spent a fair amount of time in South-
east Asia, including Malaysia, and they have the same sense of right and wrong as we do (perhaps even more so–it’s a Muslim nation).
Extreme poverty changes nothing–it’s not OK to sacrifice human beings to “spirits” to get lottery numbers.
Muslims countries are a lot more conservative than Western nations, and they have a dim view of religious pluralism. Unlike Western hippie liberals, Muslims would absolutely disapprove of human sacrifice.
Muslims countries are a lot more conservative than Western nations, and they have a dim view of religious pluralism. Unlike Western hippie liberals, Muslims would absolutely disapprove of human sacrifice.
Note: I’m all for religous pluralism and differing schools of thought. My acceptance of differing religions tends to fall short of tolerating human sacrifice because “hey, they’re poor third-worlders who don’t know any better, and besides they really need that lottery money.”
Of course it isn’t ok, but if one’s family was starving to death and one truely believed that sacrificing another would allow one’s family to eat, then the motivation is understandable. Desperate people often resort to desperate measures and people who believe absurdities will commit atrocities.
Goboy, I took care to say in three different ways that I did not any any way think that killing an innocent woman was right, nor do I think that your avarage citizen of Malaysia would think it was right. All I was saying is that hunger and desperation can really change the way formally rational people look at the world, and that if this is the case here (which we don’t know: not everyone in Malaysia is living in deep poverty, obviously. The woman who was killed wasn’t) then their motives are more understandable than if they were wealthy people seeking more wealth.
What I was really trying to get at was that there exisits in the third world a level of poverty that is totally unknown here in the West. I do not think there is anything wrong with suggesting that as we cannot grasp that level of poverty, we perhaps cannot appriciate the extremes to which one may be tempted to go to avoid it. That dosen’t make it right, but perhaps more understandable: desperate people tempted in their despiration to commit evil, not senseless, faceless evil for the hell of it.
And I agree with IzzyR that it is hard to say how this is any worse than murdering someone for their insurance money. The important thing is that they didn’t win the lottery (I assume? Wouldn’t that suck.) so there won’t be alot of incentive for copying the ritual.
Manda JO, would you have the same feelings if the woman had been kidnapped, tortured until she revealed her ATM number, and then killed? Goboy, would you?
I don’t see a big distinction between trying to lift yourself out of poverty via human sacrifice and trying to lift yourself out of poverty via torture and murder, assuming you really believe that human sacrifice will work.