I read a rather disturbing article this weekend on the Huffington Post that for one reason or another spurred a lot of emotions for me over the Thanksgiving weekend. On Black Friday last week, a crowd of over 2,000 people in New York State stormed through the doors of a local Wal-Mart at 5am and trampled an employee to death in their rush for the early bird sales. I’m sorry, but where is the outrage over this? We’re talking about a guy who was working hard to provide for his family and then you have a crowd of suburban folks who are worked into a frenzy for a bunch of meaningless objects that are on sale, pushing him to the ground and crushing him. For what? Tropic Thunder on DVD for 9 bucks, a discounted TV, some cheap plastic toys for the kids? The report continues on that the mob became angry that they had to leave the store after the death was discovered.
I could possibly understand how this could happen in a third world nation where one truck of food and water relief arrived for the whole village and it was a matter of life and death, but we’re talking about America here. There is absolutely no reason why something like this should happen in a “civilized” country such as ours, especially over some plastic crap that is by no means essential for survival. It’s another sad reflection of how we as a society have to purchase meaningless possessions to fill our lives with meaning and how deep consumerism is entrenched.
The stores who limit quantities on highly prized goods, drop prices dramatically and then offer no way to effectively control a crowd who are whipped into a frenzy also share some of the blame. There is no reason why Wal-Mart should not have allowed that many people to fall into mob hysteria. Very sad.
For me, this event has me rethinking my giving this holiday season, giving presents that have more meaning and originality than the latest deal at Wal-Mart.