Wet

[altivo]

Chilly and wet, wet, wet. I hope things aren't headed the way they went last spring. We were just getting off to a good start. Today looked and felt the way March normally would, with gray and dreary skies and cold drizzle the entire time the sun was up (but not directly visible.) Tomorrow they've backed off the rain forecast, but counting songbirds in dull light and high winds isn't going to be very fruitful, I fear. Still, I'm committed (or should be.)

Gary's school term is over for at least a couple of weeks. Looks like he aced both classes, and now we get a couple of weeks of respite. He has so many "to do" things on his list though that I fear he'll never get through even half in that time.

The news reports that the executive director of the Chicago area commuter rail service suicided today by deliberately standing in front of a train. He was under investigation for financial mismanagement and possible embezzlement. I find this stuff so difficult to understand that it makes my head hurt. Here's a guy with a six figure income, probably more than a quarter million a year, and he can't live within his means? He has to "borrow" from his employer? I just don't get it. Is this why executive salaries keep rising at astronomical rates, while the rest of us get annual increases that are less than inflation? The only sympathy I feel is for the train engineer who saw him on the track and couldn't stop, and the people whose commute was disrupted for an hour or two. Someone who does a thing like that isn't worth the cost of cremation, let alone burial. Maybe we should throw a few executive bankers under the wheels too. Day traders as well. Yesterday's fiasco with the stock markets proves that the whole thing is a sham, as I've been saying for years. They are trading monopoly money that has no real value at all, but have convinced themselves, the government, and most of us that it really is worth something. Now it has once again been talked up into a bubble of phony value, and because someone fat-fingers a keyboard, that supposed value plunges. Meanwhile unemployment continues to rise, the governments of several states are going bankrupt, and congress-critters are too busy toeing the party lines to actually negotiate with each other and get something useful done. I say hang them all. The only good Parliament is a hung Parliament. I'll supply the rope.

Comments

[hrrunka]

We had it very dry and warm the last two weeks of April. Since then, with the exception of last Thursday afternoon, it's been damp, grey and chilly.

[schnee]

The only sympathy I feel is for the train engineer who saw him on the track and couldn't stop, and the people whose commute was disrupted for an hour or two. Someone who does a thing like that isn't worth the cost of cremation, let alone burial.

I find that an extremely cold attitude, to say the very least. If he embezzled money (IF he did; without knowing any details, an investigation is not a guilty verdict), then that's bad, and if he already made a lot of money anyway, then there's no good reason why he would have to, either, but nevertheless —

— nevertheless, here's a person who felt that they couldn't take the pressure anymore, who felt that there was nothing left for them that was worth living for, and who, as a result, ended their life. No matter what, that's a sad thing.

[altivo]

Committing suicide and leaving notes that are implicit admission of wrongdoing? Committing suicide in a manner that makes people like the train engineer suffer guilt and responsibility when they had nothing to do with the situation this guy got himself into? Yes, I'm cold about it. I have no sympathy for people who receive these astronomical pay levels anyway, and live in multi-million dollar homes, then find they somehow can't make ends meet.

If he had to kill himself, he had no right to make his own employee run him down, with no power to prevent it.

[altivo]

It was similar here, though the gray and wet has only just arrived midweek. Something like that happened last year too, and then the rain was heavy and persisted well into June, flooding everything out.

[schnee]

If he had to kill himself, he had no right to make his own employee run him down, with no power to prevent it.

That's a valid point, but I can tell you that when you're actually trying to kill yourself, you're not gonna care anymore about how it'll affect others.

I have no sympathy for people who receive these astronomical pay levels anyway, and live in multi-million dollar homes, then find they somehow can't make ends meet.

An entirely different thing, obviously.

[altivo]

Remember that this was someone who had been responsible for thousands of employees, millions of commuters, a rail system worth billions of dollars (most of it public funds, none of it his own,) and daily decisions that affected all that. He held his position for a decade. This end to it speaks of an inability to make judgment calls and utter failure to deal with consequences of one's own actions. And he's been doing this and being overpaid for it for ten years.

As far as I'm concerned, he's in the same category with the bank executives who have been greedily sucking up million dollar bonuses while their responsibilities went to hell beneath their feet. Prison is too good for them. They should be fed to sharks, an inch at a time.

[schnee]

As far as I'm concerned, he's in the same category with the bank executives who have been greedily sucking up million dollar bonuses while their responsibilities went to hell beneath their feet.

Why would he be, other than that he's probably been making more money than most? I don't know about you, but *I* don't consider the fact that someone's making a lot of money a good reason to hate them.

But this isn't about him, anyway. I don't know how much money he made; I don't know if he embezzled anything; I don't know if he had other skeletons in his closet. I don't know ANYTHING about him, other than that he committed suicide.

And if you are unable or perhaps unwilling to muster even the slightest bit of compassion there or to consider him for a moment as not a rich-and-therefore-unethical moneybag but rather as a feeling person – a human being, really –, then I'm sorry, but that is a cold and (to me) unacceptable attitude, to say the least.

At the same time, I know I'm not going to convince you, or even consider the theoretical possibility that there might be a point to what I'm saying, so we'll probably just have to agree to disagree there.

Looking out for number one

[frith]

For us, it's relatively easy to be appalled at high paid execs who seem oblivious to the impact they might have on society. Easy as well to be astounded that they would feel the need to accumulate yet more wealth by any means possible. It's easy because we look up, not down.

We live better than the kings of old, we travel to the ends of the earth on whim, we have education, libraries, health services, and exotic, fresh food year round. Yet we seem oblivious to the impact we have on the world, on people and places we may never meet. Jungles burned to the ground to grow our crops, mountains laid waste to mine our minerals, sweat shops to make our goods, and people so poor and dispossessed that they clothe themselves with our rejects. What must they think of us, with our cars, our fast food, our wardrobes, our air-conditioned homes, our credit cards, our home-theaters, our fat, healthy bodies? I doubt they have much sympathy for us when we live beyond our means, accumulate debt and declare personal bankruptcy.

Assuming they are aware of our social dynamic, the plants and animals we grind under our heels as we expand our plantations and mines and fishing fleets and roadways and cities, they might as well be appalled at how greedy we are and how we consider ourselves above all else in creation. How we slash and burn instead of living in the forest, how we spray DDT, how we snare more jungle meat than we can consume, how we trample the ground into dust and desert, how we send racehorses directly from the track to the slaughterhouse when we tire of them...

It's all context. We're all in some way blissfully disassociated from those that feed us. We're all looking out for number one.

Re: Looking out for number one

[altivo]

I don't buy that. I am engaged in a continuing battle to limit my impact and balance what damage I do. To take no more than I must, and give back all that I can. If I lose the fight, it won't be for want of trying, nor for failing to be aware of the issues.

[altivo]

I hear what you are saying. I still have to draw lines somewhere, and too much is too much.

Re: Looking out for number one

[frith]

It's a very hard fight.

Re: Looking out for number one

[altivo]

Absolutely. It means reading the fine print on labels and investigating the background of places where you buy things. It means taking responsibility for the actions of your employer at times (I've actually quit two good jobs in my lifetime because I refused to be a part of something the employer was doing.) I don't put money in the stock markets because I can't keep it from being misused there. Not that I have any huge amount to invest, but it's a matter of principle. I keep my savings in a credit union so that generally it gets loaned to other members, and not to corporations or the stock market.

We do hundreds of other things here trying to be minimalist and pro-environment, and neither of us has a high paid job. I'm sure it's nowhere near perfect, but I simply have no respect for people who receive huge salaries and perks and then can't keep within their means and have to borrow even more (or embezzle it.) They are no better than any common criminal, and in some ways much worse.

[cabcat.livejournal.com]

I do feel that it is a selfish way to suicide, the train drivers suffer terribly.