What is Sacred in our world?

I get to read a lot of news and the more I read the more I wonder about what our XXI century society considers Sacred with a Capital ''S''.
Is there anything in our world left that is Sacred? I mean by that something we all hold in common and can agree upon that is Sacred.

The word Sacred as defined means: From the Latin, Sacrare, Middle-English, Sacren, French, Sacrer.
Inviolable, untouchable, Holy, worthy of veneration. Humans in all cultures and since time immemorial have held certain things to be sacred, one is life, birth, another is burial grounds, Religious Temples in every Faith are sacred, anyone performing a religious rite in a ceremonial,
a Constitution, a National Flag, Human Rights as defined in the UN Charter and recognised as such by the Nations of the World.  

However because our general culture tends to trivialise what was considered Sacred many now think that little or nothing is Sacred and can be ignored or discarded, at any rate it is open to debate on the internet where people are free to insult each other with impunity and anonymity.

Is Life Sacred? Recently a man was shot to death in a cinema for texting before the show started to his child. Some commenters, several of them, commented that he fully deserved it, he had it coming, they said. Really? A human life is so worthless today that a simple text message, a disagreement can lead to murder?

In Ottawa in the last 3 years there has been an epidemic of hit and run by careless drivers who injured seriously or killed people. After hitting someone the driver simply takes off, thinking no one will have noticed. However escaping justice is difficult since all car repairs are reported to the Police in case of accidents. Only after the drivers have been found or denounced by someone do they come forward, how disrespectful can you be towards another human being. It seems that not assuming any responsibility is the norm.

What about all the children and other people who are slaughtered in various schools or public places in the USA and still despite the horror, some people claim that their right to own an assault weapon trumps everyone else right to live in peace.  An obscene point of view based on twisted logic and depraved sense of entitlement.

Many great figures have been ridiculed and attacked publicly because they did not meet a certain modern popular idea or standard decided upon by a trendy way of thinking.

I think here of Albert Schweitzer (1875-1965) who devoted his life to others, built a hospital in Africa and cared for his patients, a visionary in his time.  A Nobel Peace Prize Winner and recognised by the World as a Humanitarian of high moral standing is brought down by an article with unproven facts, simply vague rumours claiming he was an awful person, this is trumpeted on Radio-Canada in an historical segment.

No one is safe from salacious rumours and stories surfacing decades later simply to titillate a bored public thirsty for dirt. No one will ask if it is true or not, the public appears more than willing to believe just about anything.

There are schools of thought, I do not know if you can call them that, but this is how they present themselves, who will say the harshest things simply in a crusade to set the record straight or this is what they believe. Correct the mistakes of the past by denouncing them in the present, very reminiscent of Communist Regimes like China and North Korea. Can we ever correct the past? How? What is past is past. How can anyone not living during a specific time period and born later sometimes decades if not centuries later, claim that he or she can correct or apologize on behalf of the dead. We can correct current behaviour or not repeat past mistakes, though with the prevailing ignorance of events more than 20 years old, one wonders if we are not condemn to repeating the same mistakes over and over again.

The same in the work place, we have policies on a Respectful Workplace but that is totally meaningless. No one understands what it actually means. Employees who are incompetent hide behind it. It appears that bullying by Management is now the norm, it is all passive, aggressive behaviour, lies and deceit. Management unable to provide proper guidance and a lack of interest in the job to be done. Every manager has her eye on the Media, what are they saying and how will this affect my bonus or promotion, doing the job is not even on the table. Customers and employees are abused in the worst way and no one is held responsible.

Have you ever noticed now how when you phone a large corporation who is suppose to provide a service they will address you by your first name. You have no idea who this person is speaking with you, but they treat you with contempt and provide generally poor service. You have little choice in the matter. Where is management, they are no where to be found and will not respond to any enquiry. It seems that lack of respect for people in general is the way of the world. But why have we descended to this level?

Another outrage was committed recently in a London Cemetery where the ashes of Sigmund Freud and his wife were interned in an antique Urn 2300 years old. The vandals smashed the Greek Urn at New Year in what appears to be an aborted theft. Freud died in 1939 and his wife in 1951, they had been left at Peace until now. Again what kind of mentality in our society allows people to disturb the dead and vandalise burial grounds. A total lack of respect, of consideration for others. Unable to understand the gravity of the gesture or the words expressed.

Unfortunately there is more and more lack of respect in our society for people, ideas, or what was considered until now as Sacred by all. We strive so much to push the real accepted rights and the made up imagined rights of the individual over those of the collectivity that our shared values are forgotten. What hope is there for any Civilization amid such confusion.

Tiepolo, Pulling teeth.

Salute to a brave and modest nation!

Salute to a brave and modest nation - Kevin Myers , 'The Sunday Telegraph'
LONDON :

Until the deaths of Canadian soldiers killed in Afghanistan , probably
almost no one outside their home country had been aware that Canadian troops
are deployed in the region.

And as always, Canada will bury its dead, just as the rest of the world, as
always will forget its sacrifice, just as it always forgets nearly everything Canada ever does..
It seems that Canada's historic mission is to come to the selfless aid both
of its friends and of complete strangers, and then, once the crisis is over,
to be well and truly ignored.

Canada is the perpetual wallflower that stands on the edge of the hall,
waiting for someone to come and ask her for a dance. A fire breaks out, she
risks life and limb to rescue her fellow dance-goers, and suffers serious injuries. 
But when the hall is repaired and the dancing resumes, there is Canada, the wallflower
still, while those she once helped glamorously cavort across the floor, blithely
neglecting her yet again.

That is the price Canada pays for sharing the North American continent with
the United States , and for being a selfless friend of Britain in two global
conflicts.

For much of the 20th century, Canada was torn in two different directions:
It seemed to be a part of the old world, yet had an address in the new one,
and that divided identity ensured that it never fully got the gratitude it deserved.

Yet its purely voluntary contribution to the cause of freedom in two world
wars was perhaps the greatest of any democracy. Almost 10% of Canada's
entire population of seven million people served in the armed forces during the First World
War, and nearly 60,000 died. The great Allied victories of 1918 were spearheaded by
Canadian troops, perhaps the most capable soldiers in the entire British
order of battle.

Canada was repaid for its enormous sacrifice by downright neglect, its
unique contribution to victory being absorbed into the popular memory as
somehow or other the work of the 'British.'

The Second World War provided a re-run. The Canadian navy began the war with
a half dozen vessels, and ended up policing nearly half of the Atlantic
against U-boat attack. More than 120 Canadian warships participated in the Normandy
landings, during which 15,000 Canadian soldiers went ashore on D-Day alone.

Canada finished the war with the third-largest navy and the fourth largest
air force in the world. The world thanked Canada with the same sublime
indifference as it had the previous time.

Canadian participation in the war was acknowledged in film only if it was
necessary to give an American actor a part in a campaign in which the United
States had clearly not participated - a touching scrupulousness which, of course,
Hollywood has since abandoned, as it has any notion of a separate Canadian
identity.

So it is a general rule that actors and filmmakers arriving in Hollywood
keep their nationality - unless, that is, they are Canadian. Thus Mary
Pickford, Walter Huston,Donald Sutherland, Michael J. Fox, William Shatner, Norman Jewison, David
Cronenberg, Alex Trebek, Art Linkletter, Mike Weir and Dan Aykroyd have in
the popular perception become American, and Christopher Plummer, British.

It is as if, in the very act of becoming famous, a Canadian ceases to be
Canadian, unless she is Margaret Atwood, who is as unshakably Canadian as a
moose, or Celine Dion, for whom Canada has proved quite unable to find any takers.

Moreover, Canada is every bit as querulously alert to the achievements of
its sons and daughters as the rest of the world is completely unaware of
them. The Canadians proudly say of themselves - and are unheard by anyone else - that
1% of the world's population has provided 10% of the world's peacekeeping
forces.

Canadian soldiers in the past half century have been the greatest
peacekeepers on Earth - in 39 missions on UN mandates, and six on non-UN
peacekeeping duties, from Vietnam to East Timor, from Sinai to Bosnia.

Yet the only foreign engagement that has entered the popular non-Canadian
imagination was the sorry affair in Somalia , in which out-of-control
paratroopers murdered two Somali infiltrators. Their regiment was then disbanded in
disgrace - a uniquely Canadian act of self-abasement for which, naturally,
the Canadians received no international credit.

So who today in the United States knows about the stoic and selfless
friendship its northern neighbour has given it in Afghanistan ?

Rather like Cyrano de Bergerac , Canada repeatedly does honourable things
for honourable motives, but instead of being thanked for it, it remains
something of a figure of fun. It is the Canadian way, for which Canadians should be proud,
yet such honour comes at a high cost. This past year more grieving Canadian
families knew that cost all too tragically well.

Lest we forget.