A Sad State

Today I had an interview. I live in the Bucktown neighborhood of Chicago and my interview was in the loop. Following in step with my fellow Chicagoans I made my way downtown via the El. I live very close to a stop on the Blue Line which makes utilizing the El very convenient. Usually the El is very convenient, but today it had a significant and unforeseen obstruction. It appears an individual either fell or jumped onto the tracks of the El. His/Her condition was not communicated to us passengers but once the conductor did refer to this person as "the body".

What concerned me particularly was the response of my fellow passengers during the entire experience. For the first fifteen or twenty minutes everyone was oddly calm and quiet. However updates began to be further spread out and time dragged on, a handful of passengers became repeatedly vocal about their dissatisfaction. Never mind the fact that an individual most likely died accidentally or committed suicide. These persons could have cared less. All that mattered was they were inconvenienced - such an eye-opening first-hand demonstration of the self-centeredness and self-indulgence of American culture. A person just experienced a life-altering or life-ending experience and these men and women could only see the obstruction.

I immediately thought of the raging abortion debate. Many persons cite radical examples such as incest or rape for the necessity of abortive measures. However, (and I would gladly research the numbers on this) I imagine that those reasons represent a very small minority of women seeking abortions. What is more common is the use of abortion as a method of birth control; partial birth, late term and morning after pills are one and the same though the timing of each differs. But the birth-control method displays a selfish personality. Gone is valuing the life of another person though they're arrival or presence may cause disruption. Is disrupting my life a greater evil than destroying the life of another? Can encumbrances even be given a moral value? I think not. They are simply delays or limitations.

By contrast a human life has, by mere existence, extreme value - except, as I saw today, in the case of a significantly delayed El train. It's sad really. Yet, not surprising to me. Total depravity was displayed before my very eyes this afternoon and it was very sad indeed.