We may be dead and we may be gone
Apr. 19th, 2010 11:30 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
ventaAt the end of last week, there was a story in the London Evening Standard about some workmen causing havoc in a Paddington graveyard.
"Workmen have desecrated an 18th century burial ground by destroying scores of ancient tombs," trumpeted the opening sentence, "some of which belonged to children."
Now, really this is quite a dull story. Some workmen had to dig out a wall, they uncovered some ancient gravestones, they smashed them to continue their digging. Not really what they should have done (in my opinion), but hardly screaming-banner-headline stuff.
What confuses me is the idea that, to make things worse, some of the graves belonged to children. I understand the LES wants to try and make every story as dramatic as it can, but is there actually anyone, anywhere, who thinks it worse to desecrate a child's grave than an adult's?
I've always struggled with the idea that a child's death is more tragic than an adult's (in the abstract, I mean - I understand it's a tragedy to, say, the child's parents). But that this should carry on into the hereafter to make a child's grave more sacred than an adult's... well, I just don't get it.
"Workmen have desecrated an 18th century burial ground by destroying scores of ancient tombs," trumpeted the opening sentence, "some of which belonged to children."
Now, really this is quite a dull story. Some workmen had to dig out a wall, they uncovered some ancient gravestones, they smashed them to continue their digging. Not really what they should have done (in my opinion), but hardly screaming-banner-headline stuff.
What confuses me is the idea that, to make things worse, some of the graves belonged to children. I understand the LES wants to try and make every story as dramatic as it can, but is there actually anyone, anywhere, who thinks it worse to desecrate a child's grave than an adult's?
I've always struggled with the idea that a child's death is more tragic than an adult's (in the abstract, I mean - I understand it's a tragedy to, say, the child's parents). But that this should carry on into the hereafter to make a child's grave more sacred than an adult's... well, I just don't get it.
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Date: 2010-04-19 07:10 pm (UTC)I think a major part of the story may actually be related to the ES having recently run a campaign against *new* unmarked graves for newly dead children. But that may just be my cynicism.
Cynic, n: a blackguard whose faulty vision sees things as they are, not as they ought to be. -- Ambrose Bierce
1 I'm slightly worried by my first interaction with an LJ user being halfway to facetious.