Thursday, September 2, 2010
Kevin Myers: 'Our society must stop celebrating lives of reckless car-crash teens'
In today's Independent Kevin Myers writes a provocative article about our attitude to young people who die in road traffic accidents. It's strong stuff and liable to provoke some controversy. I might 'blog in more detail about what he says when I've had the chance to reflect on it a little more.
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Off-the-top-of-my-head thought:
Funerals and memorial services aren't for the dead, they're for the living. They're group therapy, and a celebration of life, however that life may have been taken or lost. I don't believe the dead attend their own funerals, and I'm not sure exactly what it would accomplish to discourage the natural grieving process, which frequently comes with displays of sorrow, affection, and loss.
I'm not sure it would send an effectively discouraging message to reckless youth, anyway. I'm fairly certain that, to engage in really dangerous and reckless driving of a sort that could be called *not an accident*, they don't have the thought of their own funerals in their minds at all.
My priest (who is also a judge) was telling me that, for awhile, there was a local judge who would sentence people (youth included) who had been convicted of reckless driving to do community service in the ERs of local hospitals. And there was very low recidivism for that judge's offenders.
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