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Displaying the best and worst of human nature

By Theresa Fritz Camoriano

The past couple of weeks have been an opportunity for us to see some of the best and worst of human nature. 

The best:

The best has been displayed by the University of Louisville men’s baseball team.  Their hard work, teamwork, and excellent attitude have brought them much success – taking them all the way to the World Series.  It has been a great pleasure to me watching the good guys succeed. 

One of the players has lived across the street from us for many years, and we have watched him grow up.  We have always known that he was smart, hard working, and had a great attitude, so we expected him to be successful in life, but we never expected him to be a first round draft pick in professional baseball!  As I write this, the team has lost the first game to Rice, and we don’t know whether they will advance or lose the next game and be out of the series.  However, either way, they are true winners as human beings and are excellent role models for us all.

The worst:

On the other hand, the pleasure that so many people have taken in the misery of Paris Hilton serves as an example of some of the worst of human nature.  Why do otherwise good people enjoy seeing this young lady endure so much pain?  And why are they so willing, even gleeful to see her being treated unjustly? 

This young woman was sentenced to an excessively harsh penalty for the very minor crime she committed, just because she was rich and famous.  That is an injustice, and anyone who cares about justice and fairness should condemn such treatment, not condone it, and certainly not take pleasure in it, whether or not they sympathize with the victim of the injustice. 

However, instead of protesting the excessive harshness of Hilton’s sentence, commentators and the general public have laughed at her situation, with some even suggesting it would be funny if she became so depressed in prison that she killed herself.  The obvious pleasure taken by the general public in Hilton’s suffering, and their willingness to use the “justice system” to impose injustice, make me sick. 

Don’t people realize that the people who are laughing at Paris Hilton’s suffering today are not that far removed from the Arab mobs who cheered the murders of 9/11, the Germans who accepted the Holocaust, or the American mobs who cheered the lynchings of innocent blacks in the South? 

Watching people take pleasure in injustice and in the suffering of others is not a pretty sight for me.  In fact, it makes me very angry and concerned for our future.  I do not want to live in a society in which justice is only for the popular people and the unpopular people can be persecuted with impunity. 

Even if we don’t care about justice for others, we ought to care about justice for ourselves.  We may think we are popular, in the majority, and therefore safe from persecution one day, only to find that we have become members of an unpopular minority group the next, with the majority laughing about our misery. 

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