Human reliance on technology, especially to such great extremes, has become a tired cliché. We allow ourselves to be chained, or more aptly wired, to our laptops, mobile phones or personal computing tablets. What we justify as alarming is a technological advancement that sees conservationists receiving text messages from wild lions. In our darkest hour, man and beast seem to collide in sharing a primitive survival instinct. Emotion is unbridled and what emerges is a necessity to do whatever is in our power to express or protect ourselves, no matter what the cost to those around us. This union of humanity and the animal kingdom has manifested itself in a way that is unexpected, to say the least. The protected species wears a collar which sends a text message to a server, which in turn alerts experts to their social habits, daily movements and notifies their human minders if they wander too close to farmers’ livestock. “No, the lions haven’t somehow morphed into thumb-happy adolescents, texting messages such as ‘Just 8 a gazelle. Yum. LOL,’” according to a CNN article. Well, that’s a relief I suppose. The last thing our world needs now is a group of phone-crazed big cats prancing around in the wild.
It appears that animals have crossed into our human threshold. But are we prone to a descent into animalistic anarchy when faced with discontent or unrest? Widespread protests have skyrocketed, with the conception of the Occupy movement being most prevalent. A spirit of dissatisfaction has manifested itself in London as over two million workers in the public sector strike for twenty-four hours. Dubbed “the walkout of a generation,” more than one thousand protests will sweep through the capital city’s streets. Bubbling anger has been the reaction to governmental proposals to make public sector workers work for longer and pay more into their pension fund. Many hospitals and school will be temporarily out of operation. Border control offices are set to experience serious difficulty. London, it seems, is under siege from the inside; crumbling amidst chaos much like a scone as you douse it in clotted cream and jam. Ambulance services are trying their utmost to cope under strike conditions. The BBC reported that protestors already stormed an office – a gesture reminiscent of anarchy in London this past summer. Images of buildings burning to the ground, as looters plundered stores, are still fresh in many minds.
Social unrest isn’t the only storm brewing on the other side of the Atlantic. Paul McMullan, the former deputy features editor at the now deceased News of the World newspaper, openly admitted to hacking into celebrities’ phones, bribing officers of the law and stealing documents meant to be retained in confidence. Is he remorseful? Absolutely not. As this journalistic scandal unfolded over the summer, strategy of choice was to deny all possible accusations – the main goal being to try and keep jobs intact and salvage the integrity of British journalism. According to an article in The New York Times, McMullan delighted in filling the judicial inquiry with tales of his antics. One included being faced with a cocaine and marijuana mixture amidst drug dealers and fleeing from asylum-seekers who had intentions of murder. As expected, he defended his actions as being the means to a truthful end. Journalism has enough integrity as a profession to stray away from sifting through other people’s garbage. Quite literally. When probed about his argument, McMullan simply stated that if the public didn’t like the ethical ambiguity of these practices, they wouldn’t indulge in reading these stories. A ridiculous argument to say the least; much like saying ravenous teenagers will stray away from hamburgers because they grimace at the thought of animal cruelty.
It appears as if in the face of austerity and adversity, many have chosen to react in aggression. Never mind braving a savannah filled with endangered lions or navigating undomesticated jungles; a real danger is ever-present on urban streets. A shift away from negotiation means we are slowly, but surely, resorting to grand displays of dissent in order to call attention to a cause. Oddly enough, that facet of human expression isn’t most alarming. The fact that there are people who believe bribery and corruption can be justified as beneficial to the cause of being informative is distressing. On a brighter note, in Spain a group called the Animal Rescue Media Education instigated a Beagle Freedom Project, which helped release beagles being used in lab experimentation. Their sad eyes glistened in wonder as they were released from their dungeons and felt sensations of grass beneath their paws and sunlight beating on their backs for the first time. Maybe we should emerge from the cage of despair we’ve trapped ourselves in and relish the grass underneath our own feet as if it were our very first time.
Sofiya Mahdi is a sophomore in the College of Arts & Sciences and a weekly columnist for The Daily Free Press. She can be reached atsofiya21@bu.edu.
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