Egotism, Greed, and Pride: How they are killing our society slowly

            It is said in the Bible: “Pride cometh before a fall.” If that is true then our modern day society is on the verge of taking a very profound fall from grace. It seems that nowadays every time I turn on the television I hear stories about how people kill people for selfish reasons, and to make matters worse our society has begun to consider these occurrences the new norm for living in a globalized world.

            Relisha Rudd, Monday Easter shooting at the national zoo, and the South Korean ferry boat accident all are stories that serves as examples of how our society has become overwhelmed by egotism, greed, and pride to the point of many senseless, untimely deaths. It is these three elements that ravish the core of our Christian moral beliefs that we hold as scared in this country. Long gone are the moral value and codes of: “Do unto others as you want them to do unto you,” or “if you have a coat and you see your brother in need give him one of your coats”. No, these and many other moral codes have been replaced by new codes: the laws of self-preservation, take what you want, do what you want and get rich or die trying are all things that are not only destroying the most sacred of relationships but it also forming in its wake a heartless, evil, and unrepentant nation in its path.

            “Mother is the name of God on the lips of children everywhere,” said Brandon Lee in The Crow. To me and many other people around the world this is more than just a famous one liner said by a deceased actor in a cult classic film; it is the basis of how scared motherhood really is to not just God but to people in general. However, now more than ever mothers are abusing their relationship with their children for their own personal gain.  Such is the case with Shamika Young. Shamika Young is a young mother with four children, who became infamous nationwide by breaking the scared bonds of motherhood.

Just how did she accomplish it? It is believed by many that she sold her child to a shelter janitor by the name of Khalil Tatum. Ms. Young’s story starts when her child was reported as missing too many days. When the school called her to find out why, she had missed so many days the mother came up with a clever hoax to throw the school officials off her scent.  The hoax consisted of giving the school the janitor’s number in this case Khalil Tatum’s number and telling school officials that he was the child’s doctor. The school decided to take further steps and call social services to schedule a meeting with her at the shelter she lived in which was D.C. General Homeless, but Ms. Young was a no show. That was when the social services called the police and filed a missing person report. By the time the report was filed Relisha had been missing for about a month. As time went on Mr. Tatum’s wife was found murdered in a hotel room, but there was no sign of Relisha or Tatum. Then about two to three weeks ago Mr. Tatum himself was found dead. Relisha has still not been found.

Her mother on the other hand has used her daughter’s disappearance to get her fifteen minutes of fame. She has been giving interviews commenting on friend’s photos on Facebook and talking about living her life. It got so out of control that final the blame was being put on the family where it belongs. The current Mayor Vincent Gray said that this came about because of what the family did in selling that child and not telling the cops the whole truth. In response to this the grandmother said that it is not true and she is hurt that people think that way about her family. Make no mistake: only the soulless and heartless can throw their child under the bus in order to make a profit off of it, which is a clear example of egotism, greed, pride and just plain evil. Only a coward would run from a situation instead of sticking it out and turning it into a success story.

  There is a code of the sea that a captain goes down with his ship. There have been many famous captains who have followed this code like Captain Edward Smith captain of the Titanic, who went down with his ship this captain after deployed all the life boats he had to deploy.  He made the ultimate sacrifice, which was his life, in order to save as many lives as he could. Yes, he truly lived by the code that captains go down with their ship. However, what would happen if a captain did not live according to this code. That is the heartbreaking lesson that 476 families learned the hard way when two weeks ago Captain Lee Joon-seok of the ferry ship abandoned his entire crew and passengers to die on a ship that was sinking into the ocean.

            One truly has to be evil and egotistical to lie to people’s face and tell them that they will be fine as long as they stay in their cabins. All the while knowing that the ship is sinking and if they don’t get to a life boat they will die, instead of warning his crew and passengers and loading them onto the lifeboats. He took upon himself to save himself by getting into the lifeboat and rowing away as the ship started to sink beneath the ocean. To make matter worse he is so prideful to think that just by saying sorry it could right the tremendous wrong he did to both his crew and passengers that his sorry could give the families tranquility. These people died because he could not own up to his responsibilities as captain and it needlessly cost these people their lives.

            This brings us to our final example of how these elements affect our society and that is the recent shooting at the national zoo on Easter Monday. This recent shooting marks the third time in two years that the Easter Monday events at the national zoo in D.C. have closed with a violent event following them. The police do not know what they motives are for this recent shooting, but the fact that people were injured over what may be a gang-related issue shows how greed, egotism and pride are running our country. Gone are the days when justice, peace, honest, and love run the country; they have been replaced with egotism, greed,
and pride. This is not just a national problem, but a worldwide problem. If we don’t fix this problem our children will be left to the mercy of the backstabbers, murderers, and heartless people who do anything to make a profit for themselves, and that, my friends, is no way to live.

                                                                

Reported by Nadia Johnson 

April 24, 2014

W.O.W Radio Blogger