Have we as a people
Have we as a people become so desensitized that our “news” can show pictures of bloody human beings, blown apart, dead…and we do not flinch in awful shock nor do we avert our eyes from the horrific images.
Yes, we should be informed. Yes, justice should be served. But No, it is not a necessity for deaths’ gruesome portrait to be displayed for the masses.
Maybe it is not an issue of desensitization. Maybe we have simply become obsessive. Maybe gluttony has replaced objectiveness.
EL
Yes, we should be informed. Yes, justice should be served. But No, it is not a necessity for deaths’ gruesome portrait to be displayed for the masses.
Maybe it is not an issue of desensitization. Maybe we have simply become obsessive. Maybe gluttony has replaced objectiveness.
EL
Amen to that! I get sick to my stomach watching the nightly news sometimes.
There’s no such thing as objective news anymore, or at least not from the big providers. Everyone’s got an angle or an agenda. For most it’s ratings and/or advertisement exposure. Stories are filler between ads. Juicy stories keep you watching/reading so that you can be exposed to more ads.
I think there has been a gradual desensitization to the gruesome over the past several years.
As citizens of a free country with a free press, we have a right to see the images and information that our government is showing to the Iraqi people on our behalf. We also have a right to NOT look at them. It is good that we find these images appalling. I feel better knowing that at least SOME of the voters who put our government officials in office are caring, feeling, and thinking people.
I think it’s a cultural thing. In India and Tibet, for example, images of death and dying are part of the religious practises. Some practitioners spend time in charnel grounds trying to overcome their fear of death and thus gain the understanding that death and destruction are a part of the world that can never really be escaped. By accepting this, they believe, one is therefore better able to appreciate the here and now. In the middle east, they are fairly used to images of death and for that reason, I believe, do not shrink from it.
Of course, here in the west, it does appear to be more like morbid curiousity for the most part, but as for me personally, I subscribe to the first and don’t really consider myself desensitized as much as pragmatic. Hopefully. :-)
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