Dreams that aren’t self-centered
A few weeks ago, a friend asked me if I could have any job in the world, what would it be — with no thought of any limit, like education, money, or ability?
I decided I would be the lead screamer of a hardcore rock band. It would be fun to perform to loud music, write some songs and then scream my lungs out.
Of course, such a job is only a dream. I can’t scream and have little musical ability to contribute to such a band, unless trombones become the next big rock instrument.
Then, last Tuesday, I saw an article in USA Today that changed my mind. The article was about the war on child pornography.
Child pornography is a huge problem on the Internet, and it’s getting bigger. One shocking statistic the paper reported is that child porn task forces have identified 6.5 million pornographic images of children in the last 24 months — that’s up from 3,600 three years ago.
Those numbers blow my mind. How can there be so many sick and deranged people in the world? And why are there so many children being exploited in such a damaging way? The people who make these images are destroying the beauty of these children.
America is trying its best to crack down on this activity. President Bush has signed into law a bill that increases the funding for child pornography task forces to investigate and prosecute the crimes.
Internet service providers and credit card companies are working at identifying porn sites and alerting authorities if credit cards are being used to purchase child pornography.
It’s not enough. Many images are traded for free, and child pornographers are often very sophisticated technologically, and police hackers can’t find them all.
So, reevaluating my friend’s question, I think that if I could have any job in the world, I would want to be on a law enforcement task force against child pornography.
I don’t care what anybody says about freedom of speech: child pornographers don’t have any God-given right to participate in these crimes. In the vast majority of cases, the children have no opinion whatsoever in the production of this filth — it’s against their will.
For me to reach this dream, I would dramatically have to change my career plans, plus develop vast computer skills to be effective in the fight — things that probably won’t happen in the near future.
Maybe I’ll get lucky and slip into some meaningful work like this.
However, more law enforcement isn’t always the solution. It’s a start, but there are clearly underlying problems in our society that have led to the emergence of so many sick individuals who think child pornography and molestation are acceptable behavior.
Why these problems exist, I don’t know — I’m not a sociologist. However, I hope in the coming years our society steps up and really tries to solve this problem.
And this is one of those rare problems that doesn’t have bipartisan debate covering up the issue at hand — yet. Let’s keep it this way.
So, to bring it all around, if you could have any job you wanted, with no limitations, would you choose to do something that benefits yourself, or would you want something that benefits society in a great way?
Columnists' opinions do not necessarily reflect the views of The Spectrum