Stampede at Love Parade
Out of context: Reply #45
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- lukus_W0
As our working lives become more restrictive, dull and monotonous - the need to play hard and enjoy ourselves becomes exaggerated .. the two extremes become polarised opposites.
A few years ago I lived in Berlin for a short while - partying from Friday night until Monday morning. To me, it really feels like the kind of unadulterated abandon and nihilism that the party lifestyle brings, has come about as a direct result of the predicaments that modern-life brings. We're told to fit in, to conform - and to model our lives along a path deemed acceptable by the framework that commercialism provides.
In the face of this kind of pressure, I really think a nihilistic attitude is understandable. When our lives are reduced to commodity parts in a far larger scheme (to which we have little influence), why not drug it up in abandon and have as much fun as possible?
Society has become fixated on superlatives - we want the fastest, largest, highest .. to be the thinnest, richest, most strong. The pursuit of visceral pleasures at a festival is only going to increase .. the range of what's acceptable to participants will only widen.
I've been to a lot of festivals in the past, and I've done my fair share of nihilistic partying .. but at the end of the day, the disconnect that we feel at these places - making us feel like anything is possible and normal rules don't apply - is perhaps something that needs to be revised? Otherwise, problems like this are probably going to increase.
These deaths were completely avoidable.
- Interesting comments...but I think it would be more relevant in this case if there had been a mass OD or somethingukit
- Also, I think just as a counterargument, people have engaged in this kind of stuff for a long time.ukit
- Yeah, I can see what you mean - but cynically, I do think society is heading further along a fairly fixed path.lukus_W
- I suppose I'm making the assumption that it's difficult to look after yourself (let alone others) in an emergency situation, when high on class A drugs + that a large % of people there would have been high.lukus_W
- situation, when high on class A drugs + that a large % of people there would have been high.lukus_W
- I don't have a problem with people choosing to take recreational drugs - but I think that in a situation where people are being crushed, the use of such drugs would impair peoples ability to respond positively.lukus_W
- are being crushed, the use of such drugs would impair peoples ability to respond positively.lukus_W
- berlin is excess, but in that excess comes the thing most people look for.. freedomautoflavour
- Completely agree.duckofrubber