(November 5, 2012 at 10:30 pm)Ciel_Rouge Wrote: A while back I read an article about the shock experienced by Europeans who found graphic depictions of torture "ornamenting" everyday objects used by the Aztec natives in America and how gruesome that civilization apeared to them. But hey: when you think about it, there is another civilization where people put graphic depictions of torture over their doors, hang them as pendants on their mirror in their cars or even on their neck. It is OUR civilization.
We got so used to it that we do not even notice or think about it. But really: a man dying in course of gruesome torture (on the cross)... hanging as a pendant from a young girl's neck? Same depiction... placed in front of a huge building (church) in the city center? Same thing on top of a stick held by the pope? I mean really...
When we are about to see graphic images on the evening news, viewer discretion is advised etc. But even small children are exposed to 3d depictions of a man dying from torture on the cross! Is this a bit crazy or what?
Such depictions are surely mentally disturbing. Furthermore, they appear to have deeper significance - they are constantly showing us another human being suffering and are trying to talk us into thinking that THIS is what life is about. That life is about suffering, that it SHOULD suck. Sure it does sometimes, but is THIS what we WANT? What if everybody wore pendants showing men hanged by their feet and disemboweled or men hanged by their neck or men in electric chairs? Don't you find this a bit... sick?
