Wal-Mart Employee Dies in Hobbesian Frenzy

"A Hobbesian frenzy," it was called, referring to the philosophy of Thomas Hobbes.

Wal-Mart Employee Trampled to Death reads the headline in the New York Times article.

A Hobbesian frenzy. Thomas Hobbes wrote: "The condition of man... is a condition of war of everyone against everyone."

The young employee, from a temp agency, was Jdimypai Damour, only 34 years old, God rest his soul in peace. From the article:

A Wal-Mart employee in suburban New York was trampled to death by a crush of shoppers who tore down the front doors and thronged into the store early Friday morning, turning the annual rite of post-Thanksgiving bargain hunting into a Hobbesian frenzy.

The article is a nightmare to read. Crowds lined up all night stampeded through the doors to the holiday sale, Black Friday sale at Wal-Mart, trampling anything in their way.

I have said all along that in this transit we will be re-thinking our attitude toward money. There are so many thoughts when you read an article like this. A temporary employee, so desperate for work that he takes a job like this. People pushing the doors off the hinges. Lining up at 9 pm the night before. Is it the economy that people would line up for such a sale, or greed, or what?

Hobbesian frenzy? David Bordwell uses this phrase in his blog on cinema.

Cheang Pou-soi’s Dog Bite Dog: This tale of a hired killer from Thailand and the raging young cop who pursues him presents a world in Hobbesian frenzy, with all against all. The most unrelentingly violent Hong Kong film I’ve seen in years...

Quotes from Thomas Hobbes

During the time men live without a common power to keep them all in awe, they are in that conditions called war; and such a war, as if of every man, against every man.

I put for the general inclination of all mankind, a perpetual and restless desire of power after power, that ceaseth only in death.

Words are the money of fools.

Thomas Hobbes (5 April 1588 – 4 December 1679) was an English philosopher, whose famous 1651 book Leviathan, according to wikipedia, established the foundation for most of Western political philosophy from the perspective of social contract theory.

In the article you also read that the police were called away from the scene to go to Best Buys and Circuit City, also having problems.

All this for a television set? A new ipod?

What on earth has happened to our social contracts?

Social contract describes a broad class of republican theories whose subjects are implied agreements by which people form nations and maintain a social order. Such social contract implies that the people give up some rights to a government and other authority in order to receive or jointly preserve social order.

And this on the following the terrorist attacks that have stunned Mumbai this week.

There is a lot of frenzy associated with this transit. Pluto has now entered Capricorn, and so the big changeover begins. Stay calm and cool. Get a reading if you need some direction. And let's pray for GOOD changes.

Frenzied shoppers even disturbed the work of police trying to give CPR.