Pretty Pink Fairies
May 19th 2007 04:28
We live in a sad, sad world where gruesome murders in another country get more attention than their near equivalent in our own backyards. The problem here is we inherintly think were perfect beings and as such everyone else must be imperfect to a significant degree that we have to actually go out and rebuild the world in our own image.
It's obvious that were not perfect, far from it, the culture we live in, the western culture, is broken on many levels but the worst fault that inherently exists in it is the fact it produces people who think they are superior to all other people.
This occurs because we don't want to associate with people we deem bad, if someone commits a brutal murder we'll say it's just that one guy. Perhaps were right in doing so, as a culture we don't want to tarnish our own image and say 'yes, that’s how we all are', especially when were not.
There are two problems with this, first we start pretending these things don't happen, brutal murders turn into urban legends and becomes nothing more than interesting trivia. As we turn a blind eye to the bad apples in our culture the situation gets worse and worse, we start having more of these brutal murders because we pretend that they have nothing to do with us and as such they start losing their impact in the mainstream press.
Then comes the second problem, we through this self inflicted ignorance start looking at foreign cultures or people to hate. If we can't be outraged by people that live in the same country then were going to look overseas to a culture we barely understand.
Here’s the problem, while a murder in Iraq can be just as brutal and barbaric as a murder in America we think because were not of their culture that their entire culture must be broken. Like how they would think of us, since we have our own fair share of brutal murders it is just as easy for them to see us as barbaric.
We can correct them and say this isn't how most of us are, but good luck convincing them, they see violent Hollywood movies glorifying gore and violence and since that is our mainstream entertainment media they classify us all as barbaric sadistic psychopaths.
Likewise we look at them and see how they have a few bad apples, we'll just blanket label them all, call their culture 'backwards' invade their country and in the process destroy their lives. Then we expect them to thank us for it.
Perhaps the problem is that we have created an ideal world and we want everyone to fit into it. In doing so we have lost all objective thinking and self analysis and instead opted to use our imagination, where pretty pink fairies flutter around and there are no greys between the black and the white.
It's obvious that were not perfect, far from it, the culture we live in, the western culture, is broken on many levels but the worst fault that inherently exists in it is the fact it produces people who think they are superior to all other people.
This occurs because we don't want to associate with people we deem bad, if someone commits a brutal murder we'll say it's just that one guy. Perhaps were right in doing so, as a culture we don't want to tarnish our own image and say 'yes, that’s how we all are', especially when were not.
There are two problems with this, first we start pretending these things don't happen, brutal murders turn into urban legends and becomes nothing more than interesting trivia. As we turn a blind eye to the bad apples in our culture the situation gets worse and worse, we start having more of these brutal murders because we pretend that they have nothing to do with us and as such they start losing their impact in the mainstream press.
Then comes the second problem, we through this self inflicted ignorance start looking at foreign cultures or people to hate. If we can't be outraged by people that live in the same country then were going to look overseas to a culture we barely understand.
Here’s the problem, while a murder in Iraq can be just as brutal and barbaric as a murder in America we think because were not of their culture that their entire culture must be broken. Like how they would think of us, since we have our own fair share of brutal murders it is just as easy for them to see us as barbaric.
We can correct them and say this isn't how most of us are, but good luck convincing them, they see violent Hollywood movies glorifying gore and violence and since that is our mainstream entertainment media they classify us all as barbaric sadistic psychopaths.
Likewise we look at them and see how they have a few bad apples, we'll just blanket label them all, call their culture 'backwards' invade their country and in the process destroy their lives. Then we expect them to thank us for it.
Perhaps the problem is that we have created an ideal world and we want everyone to fit into it. In doing so we have lost all objective thinking and self analysis and instead opted to use our imagination, where pretty pink fairies flutter around and there are no greys between the black and the white.
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