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The boy who knew too much: a child prodigy

This is the true story of scientific child prodigy, and former baby genius, Ainan Celeste Cawley, written by his father. It is the true story, too, of his gifted brothers and of all the Cawley family. I write also of child prodigy and genius in general: what it is, and how it is so often neglected in the modern world. As a society, we so often fail those we should most hope to see succeed: our gifted children and the gifted adults they become. Site Copyright: Valentine Cawley, 2006 +

Monday, March 26, 2012

Staff Sergeant Robert Bales and the price of life.

In America, money buys everything – even forgiveness, it seems. At least, that is the implicit view of the American armed forces.

Staff Sergeant Robert Bales is being charged with the murders of 17 Afghan civilians, he shot to death in their homes, at night. There were four men, four women and nine children in the tally. He also attempted to kill six others. He faces a potential death sentence and a minimum life sentence with the possibility of parole, under military law. These facts are well known. What struck me as somewhat bizarre was what America has done in response to these killings. It has attempted to bribe the affections of the deceased’s families. The US has paid 50,000 USD to the families of those killed, per victim and 11,000 USD to the families of those wounded, per victim. Think about that for a moment. America imagines that it can buy the goodwill of the families of those it has murdered. In doing so, it is implicitly stating that it believes there is some exchangeable equivalence between money and life. There is no such equivalence, in their hearts. It is certain that not a one of the survivors would rather have the money than their loved ones back, alive, with them.

Then there is another curious fact about this. The international mass media are expressing amazement at the size of the sums the Americans have offered in compensation. They seem to be saying that these are large sums of money. Now, by comparison to past payments to those killed or injured by Americans in Afghanistan, they are. Typical prior payments have been 2,000 USD for a death; 400 USD for a serious injury and 200 USD for a non-serious injury. So, by that scale these are significant payments. Yet, there is another comparison to be made. America has placed a value on human life, called the “statistical value of human life”. Different agencies place different values on life. The Environmental Protection Agency values a life at 6.9 million USD. The Food and Drug Administration values life at 7.9 million USD. This leads to a sobering conclusion: an Afghan life is worth up to 158 times less than an American life, according to the actions of the American government, in compensating the Afghan families, whose members were murdered by Staff Sergeant Robert Bales.

Should the Afghan people ever come to understand this discrepancy between the value of an American life and the value of Afghan life, they might be mightily insulted at the compensation offered. It should be noted that the Afghans have a blood money culture in which compensation for the loss of life is expected – yet, Afghan commentators have remarked, in tune with my words, that no compensation is enough to make amends for these crimes – for it won’t bring back their loved ones.

If America really wants to play this game, of buying off the hatred of the people who have every reason to hate them, then really they should pay the same value for an Afghan life that they notionally ascribe to an American life. Each Afghan victim should have been compensated to the tune of 7.9 million USD. This would have another effect. It might make the Americans more cautious about whom they kill in Afghanistan. It could soon become very expensive to send young, anger prone, gun happy, American soldiers into a combat environment – for reasons altogether unrelated to their pay and support. Were every civilian death to require almost 8 million USD in compensation, there would, I am sure, be suddenly a whole lot fewer of them – and this could only be described as a good thing.

I shall patiently wait for the American government to pay out the balance of the 7.9 million USD payments for each victim. Until then, the US government hasn’t shown that it values Afghan life as much as it values American life – and that is a very grave insult, to this long suffering people. A life is a life – and it should be valued as much from a distant land, as from our own. That is a lesson the Americans have yet to imbibe.

Posted by Valentine Cawley

(If you would like to support my continued writing of this blog and my ongoing campaign to raise awareness about giftedness and all issues pertaining to it, please donate, by clicking on the gold button to the left of the page.

To read about my fundraising campaign, please go to: http://scientific-child-prodigy.blogspot.com/2011/01/fundraising-drive-in-support-of-my.html and here: http://scientific-child-prodigy.blogspot.com/2011/01/fundraising-drive-first-donation.html

If you would like to read any of our scientific research papers, there are links to some of them, here: http://scientific-child-prodigy.blogspot.com/2011/02/research-papers-by-valentine-cawley-and.html

If you would like to see an online summary of my academic achievements to date, please go here: http://www.getcited.org/mbrz/11136175To learn more of Ainan Celeste Cawley, 10, or his gifted brothers, Fintan, 7 and Tiarnan, 5, please go to: http://scientific-child-prodigy.blogspot.com/2006/10/scientific-child-prodigy-guide.html

I also write of gifted education, child prodigy, child genius, adult genius, savant, megasavant, HELP University College, the Irish, the Malays, Singapore, Malaysia, IQ, intelligence and creativity.

There is a review of my blog, on the respected The Kindle Report here:http://thekindlereport.blogspot.com/2010/09/boy-who-knew-too-much-child-prodigy.html

Please have a read, if you would like a critic's view of this blog. Thanks.

You can get my blog on your Kindle, for easy reading, wherever you are, by going to: http://www.amazon.com/Boy-Who-Knew-Too-Much/dp/B0042P5LEE/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&m=AG56TWVU5XWC2&s=digital-text&qid=1284603792&sr=8-1

Please let all your fellow Kindlers know about my blog availability - and if you know my blog well enough, please be so kind as to write a thoughtful review of what you like about it. Thanks.

My Internet Movie Database listing is at:http://imdb.com/name/nm3438598/

Ainan's IMDB listing is at http://imdb.com/name/nm3305973/

Syahidah's IMDB listing is at http://imdb.com/name/nm3463926/

Our editing, proofreading and copywriting company, Genghis Can, is athttp://www.genghiscan.com/This blog is copyright Valentine Cawley. Unauthorized duplication is prohibited. Use only with permission. Thank you.)

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Sunday, March 11, 2012

Eden Wormer: when bullying should be a crime.

Eden Wormer, 14, committed suicide on Wednesday, after being relentlessly bullied for two years, at Cascade Middle School, in Vancouver, Washington.

From her photos, in the article I saw, in the Daily Mail, in the UK, Eden seems like a bright girl – at least her eyes tell such a tale. Those who knew her referred to her as “talented”. She was also evidently quite good looking. I am led to wonder if it was these attributes that led to her being bullied: the fact that she was most probably brighter than the others, and better looking than some of them. It is said she struggled to “fit in”, trying by changes of personal styling, hair colour and the like, to do so. So, it is clear that she was “different”. She paid a high price for her difference. She was bullied mercilessly by her fellow students – until she could take it no more. Her final words to her father were, “I love you Daddy, goodnight”...followed by a goodnight kiss. She was found dead in the morning.

Now, what gave me pause about all of this, was a statement from the Vancouver police. “We haven’t found any evidence that the bullying rose to the level of a crime.” Really? How much evidence do you need...the girl is DEAD! The stupidity of the police statement really gives credence to their image as donut eating dopes. Eden Wormer felt that the bullying was of such an unbearable intensity that she preferred not to continue living...her own action, in killing herself, is irrefutable proof that the bullying was of a criminal level. I realize that the world’s police forces typically do not attract the brightest people, but even they should understand that the effects of bullying are subjective – they are determined by what is felt by the victim. In this case, the victim was persecuted to death. Her death is proof that a crime took place, in my view.

The Vancouver police have seemingly indicated that they are not going to do anything about this death. Well, they should. Every one of Eden Wormer’s bullies should be arrested and charged with murder – for that is what they have committed. They murdered Eden Wormer and their weapon was psychological abuse. They abused her to death, abused her so much that she could not take it anymore and fled life, to death, to escape it. They murdered her as assuredly as if they had shot her. So, they should face the same penalty as murderers in her nation. I also believe that they should be charged as adults, since anyone, even a teenager, can understand that bullying is hurtful – after all, that is its intent and purpose, so, of course, they understood that they were hurting Eden Wormer.

I did some background research on this story by entering the terms “bullying and suicide” into Google. I was disturbed at the vast number of bullying related suicides that came up as news items...some of them from kids as young as 10 years old. Yet, it is clear that very little is done to stop bullying. Bullying was rampant at my school, King’s College School, Wimbledon – both of the physical and the psychological kind. I personally experienced one or the other (usually the latter) on most days of my entire school career in the senior school there. The culture was truly awful...one of bullying the brightest or those who stood out in some way. It was mindless, cruel and malevolent – and ever persistent...it just went on and on, on a daily basis, grinding away at one’s core. Somehow, I endured it...but it wasn’t fun being the brunt of so much hostility. So, I can fully understand what Eden Wormer went through. I fought back in various ways and adopted an outward persona that was so intimidating, in its own way, that it made many of my bullies back off...it worked. I created a barrier for myself, that kept away much of the bullying...a psychological barrier of my own – one in which it became less likely that anyone would challenge me. Yet, of course, though the physical bullying was snuffed out by this, mostly, the psychological bullying remained – the sneers, the whispered words, the social exclusion, and so on...that was unstoppable...but at least I found my own way to close down the physical aspect of the bullying. Eden Wormer, it is clear, found no way to deal with what she was going through. She found no means to protect herself. So, in the end, she felt she had no choice but to kill herself.

Schools, in general, the world over, seem to do little to address bullying. They seem to see it as an accepted part of the child’s world and don’t intervene too much. Yet, bullying is highly destructive. It can make childhood hell for its victims. King’s College School, Wimbledon, was hell for me, for much of my time there...but I endured it, because I had a very strong sense of myself. I understood that those who disliked me, did so out of jealousy for what I had shown I was able to do. Intelligence was not a characteristic that made one popular at my school. Indeed, it seemed to be a liability, particularly if combined with enough creativity to make one “different”. That always courted a venomous response. I remember one other boy, who was physically and psychologically different – though I shan’t name him to spare him embarrassment. He was laughed at, on many occasions...the other boys (it was a boys’ school), would just jeer at him, when he opened his mouth, when he expressed his view, when he simply talked. Partly this was because his speech was odd, in sound – but in general I think it was because he was different. He seemed to ignore it all – but really, it must have been hell for him, to have such almost universal disdain directed at him, on a daily basis. The one thing that seemed to protect him, was that he believed he was smarter than other people. I thought this a little misplaced, at times, though. He once said to me, when I asked him about a physics question: “Oh, you wouldn’t understand.”. That was funny because in S level physics, I received a grade 1 Distinction – and he ended up with a grade 2 Merit...so perhaps he was the one who wouldn’t have understood! Nevertheless, though he was not quite right in his view of superiority, it was good that he had this belief to protect him – for no-one ever intervened on his behalf.

It is time for bullying to be treated as a crime. If a victim commits suicide owing to the bullying, then the bullies should be arrested and charged with murder – for their psychological and perhaps physical abuse, had killed someone. Ethically, and legally, bullying should be regarded as an attack with a psychological weapon, where no physical attack is involved. It should be recognized that psychological abuse, on a persistent long term basis, can destroy a person’s will to live. In short, bullying can kill. It should, therefore, be treated in the same way as all other intentional behaviours that lead to the death of another. It should be treated as murder. Were bullying punished in this way, by those sentences appropriate to murder, whenever it results in a death, bullying would rapidly decline, in all nations that implemented such punishments. If the bullies understood that they could spend a very long time in prison, or in some severe cases, perhaps, receive the death penalty themselves, they would not be so keen to bully others. The world’s bullies must be led to understand that they place themselves at personal risk of very severe punishments, whenever they bully anyone else. There are simply too many deaths related to bullying, for the world’s societies to stand idly by. Punish bullies for their very real crimes. Stop bullying now – and save the next “Eden Wormer” from suicide.

Posted by Valentine Cawley

(If you would like to support my continued writing of this blog and my ongoing campaign to raise awareness about giftedness and all issues pertaining to it, please donate, by clicking on the gold button to the left of the page.

To read about my fundraising campaign, please go to: http://scientific-child-prodigy.blogspot.com/2011/01/fundraising-drive-in-support-of-my.html and here: http://scientific-child-prodigy.blogspot.com/2011/01/fundraising-drive-first-donation.html

If you would like to read any of our scientific research papers, there are links to some of them, here: http://scientific-child-prodigy.blogspot.com/2011/02/research-papers-by-valentine-cawley-and.html

If you would like to see an online summary of my academic achievements to date, please go here: http://www.getcited.org/mbrz/11136175To learn more of Ainan Celeste Cawley, 10, or his gifted brothers, Fintan, 7 and Tiarnan, 5, please go to: http://scientific-child-prodigy.blogspot.com/2006/10/scientific-child-prodigy-guide.html

I also write of gifted education, child prodigy, child genius, adult genius, savant, megasavant, HELP University College, the Irish, the Malays, Singapore, Malaysia, IQ, intelligence and creativity.

There is a review of my blog, on the respected The Kindle Report here:http://thekindlereport.blogspot.com/2010/09/boy-who-knew-too-much-child-prodigy.html

Please have a read, if you would like a critic's view of this blog. Thanks.

You can get my blog on your Kindle, for easy reading, wherever you are, by going to: http://www.amazon.com/Boy-Who-Knew-Too-Much/dp/B0042P5LEE/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&m=AG56TWVU5XWC2&s=digital-text&qid=1284603792&sr=8-1

Please let all your fellow Kindlers know about my blog availability - and if you know my blog well enough, please be so kind as to write a thoughtful review of what you like about it. Thanks.

My Internet Movie Database listing is at:http://imdb.com/name/nm3438598/

Ainan's IMDB listing is at http://imdb.com/name/nm3305973/

Syahidah's IMDB listing is at http://imdb.com/name/nm3463926/

Our editing, proofreading and copywriting company, Genghis Can, is athttp://www.genghiscan.com/This blog is copyright Valentine Cawley. Unauthorized duplication is prohibited. Use only with permission. Thank you.)

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Sunday, July 24, 2011

The Utoeya Shootings and the Price of Legal Leniency

It is needless to repeat the details of the Utoeya shootings in Oslo. As I write, 93 people, mostly teenagers, have died and as many again are nursing injuries, of varied degrees of severity. The shooter, a far right white terrorist, Anders Behring Breivik, age 32, was apparently – and bizarrely – motivated by an anti-Islamic, anti-multiculturalist, anti-left ideology. He is a Christian fundamentalist.

Now, I am not going to delve into Anders Behring Breivik’s motivations, in this post, nor, even, his sanity, which is clearly questionable – no, I wish to address a problem, in Norway, external to Anders Behring Breivik, himself. You see, in one very real sense, Norway’s legal system made Anders Behring Breivik’s act palatable to Mr. Breivik, himself. You see, I understand that the maximum penalty under Norway’s legal system is just 21 years in prison. That stunned me, for it has a very real implication: people like Anders Behring Breivik, driven by extremist ideologies may consider 21 years in prison a fair price to pay, for committing their atrocities. They may say to themselves: “I have killed 93 people, and counting…for which I shall pay 21 years of my life: that is a fair exchange.”

The consequences of committing appalling crimes, in Norway are not severe enough to deter motivated people from committing them. Under the law, as it stands, Anders Behring Breivik, could quite easily have thirty years of life and freedom left to him, after paying the price for his crimes. This strikes me as both wrong, and abhorrent. In a way, it is as much a crime to punish Anders Behring Breivik so lightly, as the crime he is to be punished for.

The first principle of an effective legal system should be that there should be penalties commensurate to all degrees of crime. Clearly, that is not the case in Norway. Twenty-one years in prison is too little a price to pay for quite a few categories of crime, in my view. Norway needs to reform its whole penal system, in response to this crime. At the very least, they should bring in true life prison sentences, which last for the entire life, no matter how long, of the criminal. That, in itself, would deter quite a few potential criminals, from committing the crimes that carry such a sentence. Other countries have the death penalty - but, in some ways, life in prison can be a lot worse than death, particularly if the prisoner is consistently ill treated by the other prisoners – as Anders Behring Breivik is likely to be.

Any country which is soft on crime – as Norway is seemingly – can expect to learn some pretty hard lessons.

It is possible that 93 Norwegians would be alive today, if Norway had full life prison sentences for murder, as an option. It is clear that Anders Behring Breivik considers 21 years a price worth paying, to further his “vision”, of the future of Norway. It is up to legal systems everywhere, to institute penalties that as few people as possible, would ever consider worth paying for their crimes. Maximal crimes, deserve maximal punishments – the more severe the punishment, the less likely the crime will occur (for all but the irrational).

Then again, if Anders Behring Breivik is not placed in solitary confinement, for the duration of his sentence, it is very likely that another prisoner will kill him, instituting an effective death penalty, that Norway does not have. Perhaps Anders Behring Breivik didn’t consider that. Or perhaps, like the Islamic fundamentalists he oddly resembles, in his deeds, if not in his beliefs, he doesn’t really care. Either way, the fact remains that Norway’s legal system seems rather naïve as to the motivations of men. Can they not understand that the punishment must be great enough to deter the crime?

Anders Behring Breivik was not deterred. It is now up to legal systems everywhere, to ensure that they have a sufficiently deterrent punishment on their statute books, so as to dissuade as many Anders Behring Breivik’s as possible, from becoming known to us, by their atrocious deeds.

Posted by Valentine Cawley

(If you would like to support my continued writing of this blog and my ongoing campaign to raise awareness about giftedness and all issues pertaining to it, please donate, by clicking on the gold button to the left of the page.

To read about my fundraising campaign, please go to: http://scientific-child-prodigy.blogspot.com/2011/01/fundraising-drive-in-support-of-my.htmland here: http://scientific-child-prodigy.blogspot.com/2011/01/fundraising-drive-first-donation.html

If you would like to read any of our scientific research papers, there are links to some of them, here: http://scientific-child-prodigy.blogspot.com/2011/02/research-papers-by-valentine-cawley-and.html

If you would like to see an online summary of my academic achievements to date, please go here: http://www.getcited.org/mbrz/11136175

To learn more of Ainan Celeste Cawley, 10, or his gifted brothers, Fintan, 7 and Tiarnan, 5, please go to: http://scientific-child-prodigy.blogspot.com/2006/10/scientific-child-prodigy-guide.html

I also write of gifted education, child prodigy, child genius, adult genius, savant, megasavant, HELP University College, the Irish, the Malays, Singapore, Malaysia, IQ, intelligence and creativity.

There is a review of my blog, on the respected The Kindle Report here:http://thekindlereport.blogspot.com/2010/09/boy-who-knew-too-much-child-prodigy.html

Please have a read, if you would like a critic's view of this blog. Thanks.

You can get my blog on your Kindle, for easy reading, wherever you are, by going to: http://www.amazon.com/Boy-Who-Knew-Too-Much/dp/B0042P5LEE/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&m=AG56TWVU5XWC2&s=digital-text&qid=1284603792&sr=8-1

Please let all your fellow Kindlers know about my blog availability - and if you know my blog well enough, please be so kind as to write a thoughtful review of what you like about it. Thanks.

My Internet Movie Database listing is at:http://imdb.com/name/nm3438598/

Ainan's IMDB listing is at http://imdb.com/name/nm3305973/

Syahidah's IMDB listing is at http://imdb.com/name/nm3463926/

Our editing, proofreading and copywriting company, Genghis Can, is athttp://www.genghiscan.com/

This blog is copyright Valentine Cawley. Unauthorized duplication is prohibited. Use only with permission. Thank you.)


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posted by Valentine Cawley @ 11:47 PM  1 comments

Wednesday, May 12, 2010

Of responsibility and humanity.

The level of a civilization may be determined by the degree of care people have for each other. By that measure, Great Britain is in severe decline.

Last night, Scotland was hailing three 18 year old students as heroes, for saving the life of a drowning woman. Graham McGrath, Rosie Lucey and Rhys Black spotted a 37 year old woman in the water near the Albert Bridge in Glasgow. She was crying out for help and getting lower and lower in the water. She was obviously drowning. Lifebelts had been thrown towards her, but she was too far from them, to reach them. This lady had mere moments to live.

Luckily, one would have thought, the police had reached the scene. I say "would have thought" for a reason. What do you think the Strathclyde police did when faced with a drowning woman? Have a good think.

Well, they decided to hold back the crowd. Apparently, saving a drowning woman is "not our responsibility...it is for the fire and rescue service to go into the water."

Wonderful. So, what do we have here? A variation on: "That is not my department".

So, the Strathclyde police force think that because jumping into the water to rescue drowning people doesn't fall into their job description, but is the job of "fire and rescue" that they should stand idly by and watch a woman drown? The fire and rescue service had not reached the scene. By the time they did, this woman would be dead. But what did the police force do? Control the crowd (because that IS in their job description).

Fortunately, three students, who didn't have jobs or job descriptions to limit their behavioural choices, decided that, since no-one else was doing anything to help her, that they would save her. Graham McGrath and Rosie Lucey, jumped into the water, swam out to the lady and pulled her back to the bank, as far as they could. Mr. Rhys Black then waded in to help them pull her out.

Now, the formerly drowning lady's lips were blue and her tongue was white. This is not surprising since, according to Mr. Rhys Black, she had been under the water for two minutes. She was in dire need of CPR.

Who do you think stepped forward, at that moment, to save this woman's life? Was it the policemen, all of whom were, no doubt, trained in CPR? No. The students set about performing CPR on the woman. At first they could find no pulse, no sign that she still lived - but they persisted. After a few minutes of CPR, she gurgled and a large amount of water came out of her mouth. She was alive.

The lady was taken to hospital where she is now recovering. Throughout all of this, the policemen took no steps to save her life.

Please reflect on that. Reflect on what it says Britain has become. Somewhere, along the way, it has lost its soul. Once upon a time, the lowest policeman would have done his utmost to save that woman. Indeed, once upon a time, anyone in the land, would have jumped in, to stop her from dying, unaided. Not anymore...now, several members of the police force and a WHOLE CROWD of onlookers, can stand idly by, curious to see, perhaps, what a drowning person looks like - but NONE of them tried to help - until three young students, perhaps too young to have been indoctrinated by the national indifference, jumped in to save her life.

Once people were guided by their basic humanity, in their conduct with others. They made moral choices, based on moral centres, built up through a life's experience of what is good and right and moral. Now, however, we have "public servants" without any heart or soul at all. They are guided, not by a common inner morality, but by RULES and REGULATIONS and JOB DESCRIPTIONS. They are no longer human. They have become a variety of fleshy automata.

Any policeman who can stand by and watch someone drown just because it is not in his "job description" and is not his "responsibility" therefore, is inhuman. Life is the most precious gift any of us have. To stand by and watch someone lose that...lose EVERYTHING, just because nothing in their job description says they have to save her, is beyond belief. Those policemen have forgotten the most basic ideal of their profession "to serve and protect". To stand by, whilst a lady drowns, neither serves nor protects. It, in fact, shows an indifference to the value of human life, an attitude of cold uncaring for one's fellow humans, that is quite beyond belief.

When I was younger, the news papers were filled with stories of the heroism of police officers, fire officers and other public servants in the course of their duties. Remarkable acts of courage were quite commonplace. Now, we have, in their stead, a regulated indifference to human life - a police force that will first check its rule book, it regulations and its job descriptions, before intervening on the behalf of another human life imperilled. This just cannot be right. Worse, perhaps, than active evil, is passive indifference. At least the evil man acts out of some kind of inner principle, or motive force - all those policemen were acting out of, was a self-justified cowardice. The most likely underlying truth of the situation is that not a one of those policemen wanted to jump into the water, to save her, lest they might endanger themselves. So, what did they do? Checked their rule books for a reason to GET OUT OF DOING SO. Their job description didn't include such tasks - so they wouldn't do it, even though a woman was busily dying whilst they discovered that they didn't have a conscience to argue with.

I don't know why those policemen became policemen. I know this, though: it cannot have been for the reasons that policemen, of the past, used to do so. Policemen of earlier generations, genuinely seemed to have a certain nobility about their role in society: they were there to fight crime, protect and serve the people - and generally do what good they could, to ensure that the nation was safe to live in. Any policeman of earlier generations would, most definitely, have jumped in to save her. Not now...now they would rather not get their clothes wet: after all what does the life of some stranger matter to them?

Technically, it may not have been their "responsibility" in terms of job description and division of labour, to have jumped in to save that woman. Technically, it may, indeed, have been the "responsibility" of the fire and rescue service. However, MORALLY, it WAS their responsibility to save her. It was essentially wrong for them to do nothing to help her, when not doing so would mean her death, when they were, quite clearly, in a position to help: they were standing by the body of water, in which was drowning. Basic humanity, and concern for our fellow human beings, should have guided them to save her. Yet, they had neither responsibility, nor humanity. They did not feel bound either by the rules under which they worked, or any sense of the value of human life. These policemen lack basic humanity.

It concerns me that they felt their job descriptions took precedence over their humanity. No job description should take precedence over humanity. That is the route on which the Nazis trod. They justified their inhumanity, by their job descriptions. So, too, were these policemen. Their indifference to that woman's life, was just as much a crime, as anything Germans managed to do a few generations before. The same thought process is at work: they justified their lack of action to save a life, based on their job descriptions and the division of labour in the emergency services. The value of a life, had no value for them. Only the rules under which they operate had value. There is something profoundly disturbing about that.

No rule should take precedence over human life. No job description should ever lead to inhuman acts. Yet, for the British police, rules do take precedence over life - and they do lead to inhuman acts, or inhuman inaction.

I must say, I don't recognize what Britain has become since I left it, in 1999. The place has been transformed into something I do not know, anymore. I feel the country of my birth has died, since I left it. It is no more. In its place we have something rather disturbing, if you care to look at it, with any perception.

I hope the publicity attached to this near drowning leads to a change in the rules that govern police action and inaction. Those rules cannot be allowed to stand unchanged if they lead, directly, to an indifference to basic humanity and the value of human life.

All Britain has to do, is to remind its public servants, that humanity should take precedence over any rule or regulation that has been, is, or shall be ever invented. Call that Rule No. 1.

(If you would like to learn more of Ainan Celeste Cawley, 10, or his gifted brothers, Fintan, 6 and Tiarnan, 4, this month, please go to:
http://scientific-child-prodigy.blogspot.com/2006/10/scientific-child-prodigy-guide.html

I also write of gifted education, child prodigy, child genius, adult genius, savant, megasavant, HELP University College, the Irish, the Malays, Singapore, Malaysia, IQ, intelligence and creativity.

My Internet Movie Database listing is at: http://imdb.com/name/nm3438598/
Ainan's IMDB listing is at http://imdb.com/name/nm3305973/
Syahidah's IMDB listing is at http://imdb.com/name/nm3463926/

Our editing, proofreading and copywriting company, Genghis Can, is at http://www.genghiscan.com/

This blog is copyright Valentine Cawley. Unauthorized duplication is prohibited. Use only with permission. Thank you.)

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posted by Valentine Cawley @ 11:56 PM  4 comments

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