I was very disturbed by a photo in yesterday's newspaper of the bodies of two children left to lie covered by towels on a beach in Italy while all around them the beachgoers went on with their games, sunbathing and swimming. I certainly wouldn't have expected the beach to have been closed but at the least I would have thought someone would have sat with them. These were children. Did nobody think they warranted some respect? Personally I would have found it too distressing to stay there amusing myself in close proximity to their bodies but it didn't seem to bother the locals. It took the authorities over an hour to come and take them away and all that time these pathetic little scraps of humanity lay there in the sun, feet jutting out from thrown over towels. Would it have taken too much effort for them to have been carried to somewhere more protected? It wasn't as if it was a crime scene.
This is by no means meant as a comment on Italian behaviour. I see it more as symptomatic of a world where we see dead bodies - real or fictional - on television every day. Somewhere along the line we have been desentsitised to the point that people act as they did on that beach and that is something we should all be ashamed of.
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