Kevin's Watch

We are considering what we see as 'good institutions' being sullied by bad interpretations of their dogma. You can take this from the other side and consider say the Nazi's or the Khmer Rouge; does the same apply to them? It is doubtfull that any organised doctrine ever starts with the idea 'let's go out and kill a shed load of people'. It's a scource of amazement to me that to this day the 'Functionalism vs Intentionalism' arguments about the origins of the holocaust shine a light on the top down verses bottom up histriographies, and how difficult it is in reality, to get a clear understanding of such events after they happen.

In fact, one might go so far as to say that unless you were an active participant in an event, it is impossible to know exactly how it happened.

This does not prevent us from assuming we do though.

--A

I was thinking earlier: I love it when someone is tailgating me right before a nice S-curve. I get to laugh as i smoke them on the turn and blast away.

Saw a picture in The Groeningen Museum of a man being 'flayed' [by Gerard David and painted in 1498]. It was a horrid depiction of a brutal practice and made my stomoch turn. Later, walking throgh the streets of Bruges we saw a museum dedicated to torture, which advertised itself on the street with a billboard showing it's glowing reviews on tripadvisor and facebook.

My thoughts were immediately "Why would anybody want to go to see that." We all know that terrible things were done in the past, nauseating acts of the most egregious cruelty, and we all have it in us to voyeuristically succumb to our baser urge to witness such things - but surely the right thing is not to do so. There are those who, in professional interest, will have no choice but to expose themselves to such vile imagery, but to visit such a place out of no more than a perverse desire to see what levels we can sink to, to experience the frisson of thrill/fear from the safe distance of a different time is surely to be no better than those who flocked to see such events in real life as they were performed [and depicted in David' paintings]. This, in my view, is not appropriate material for 'entertainment', and it's presentation as such serves not only to make lesser the people who enter through the turnstiles, but also to detract from the deep and profound sympathy we should feel for those poor victims upon which such horrors were wrought.

It is possible that going to such a thing may foster that very sympathy and antipathy to cruelty though.

--A

Well, oddly it did appear to ultimately do so in the very public who used to attend the 'events'. I read that it was largely down to a shift in public opinion and a rising tide of disgust within people at the barbarity of such practice's that they were ultimately abandoned.

And yet for a long time it was considered entertainment. And even after the "barbarity" stopped, hangings and beheadings were public spectacles.

Humans. What a strange bunch.

--A

I think it's suddenly bloody quiet...

--A

The calm before the storm perhaps.........?

The last time it got really quiet around here, there was an all-hands meeting that I had forgotten about ...

I keep expecting the war drums...Where is everybody?

--A

right here

Sarge, you startled me...

--A

sorry, i usually trumble loudly.

--A

I think Mallory's is in order.

I was thinking today of how we are living in unusual times - if you consider yourself a child of the millenium, we are now into the 16th year. I gave some thought as to what I might have been doing all those many years ago when I was 16yrs of age.

Next year will be the 40th anniversary of the publication of Lord Foul's Bane - and 17 years into the millenium. As a teenager back in 1977, I was unaware of the existence of Thomas Covenant, only that I was searching for JRR Tolkien readers.

I read Tolkein shortly after my first read of the first Chrons. I'd never read fantasy before, only science fiction, and after TC I knew I needed more. Tolkein filled a gap - and wonderfully so - but the real culmination came when one day I walked by a shop window and saw a book called The One Tree sitting on a shelf in it. The rest is history. Ahhh..... to be sixteen again!

After reading the Chronicles of Thomas Covenant I thought it was pulp fiction, until I too, walking past a bookshop saw the new edition of The Wounded Land, and realized this story was very real ... istic!

I spent some quality time today locked in the mindset of, mmm...sixteenish. Experiencing memories rather than thinking about them takes a little practice, but can be very illuminating. Though having tennis elbow doesn't help. Feeling the pain of old age can ruin the suspension of disbelief.