On Hanging

Evidently, people in America think that hanging is an uncivilized way to kill someone. To which I say: why, because it's old? Because, a long time ago, it was the only entertainment people in some villages had?

Let's look at the 'modern', 'civilized' alternatives.

Lethal injection: takes a few minutes to work. Worse yet, it doesn't always go quite right--it takes a physician to set things up, and physicians are forbidden from participating.

Gas chamber: does Holocaust come to mind? Also, there are spectators for these things...and I have to say, filling a room with gas doesn't seem like a very civilized thing to do to someone. Wait, killing someone doesn't seem very civilized at all...but that's a different story.

(Firing squad: cool. Can we relegalize it? Silly Utah-ites.)

And then there's hanging. Two seconds, all you do is open a trapdoor and voila! instant neck breakage. Just make it private and it's civilized. Oh, and I suppose we can have the rope made out of polyester or something instead.

Anyway, hanging is as good a way as any to destroy a symbol. Though I suppose Saddam Hussein, even when incarcerated, was also representative of the potential for things to blow up in the U.S.'s face again. And, honestly, it was the most humane thing the Iraqi government could do to him. The media isn't going to do follow-ups on the status of a dead man; I highly doubt 'Corpse Continues to Decay' would make a very good headline. Just one last, big review of the man's life and opinions from every corner of the world and it'll all be over for most of us.

It's kind of funny, though, how much more significant he is than Gerald Ford was. Oh well--this country has had many insignificant presidents. And is it always bad to be forgotten? Remembering that certain Roman emperors were only noted for the total stability of the Empire during their reigns...I think not.

Why Christianity?

Over the past millennium, Christianity has risen rapidly to supersede traditions that were not only religious but also integral parts of culture.

How?

I've noticed that, compared to other religions with a reasonably sized following, Christianity is the only one that focuses so emphatically upon the future. The Day of Judgement, Rapture (yes, I know that one isn't in the Bible), the emphasis on prophecies for future greatness, for instance in Genesis, where Abram is promised that his descendants will eventually be great. Christianity looks at time very differently: rather than one mortal lifespan, people have to wait several generations. Nor is the cosmos of Christianity like the Hindu one, where worlds rise and fall in cycles of tens of thousands of years.

Christianity, in fact, barely emphasizes creation. It's the kind of religion that had to come after other religions were already established, so as to allow for a focus entirely upon the human community and, more significantly, upon the individual. While polytheistic religions allowed families to select a main god that would appeal most to their needs, Christianity can be custom-tailored to the individual's desire: look at the amount of sects that have sprung up, all claiming the Old and New Testaments as their foundation texts!

Also, Christianity has no cultural ties. It doesn't hurt Christians to absorb the vernal equinox, Mithras' birthday, and a thousand other feast days and agriculturally (okay, lunar calendar) significant events into something only vaguely related to Christ. What's more, they are able to market the events in such a way that they become more popular than the original--all because Christianity is so malleable. People in Indonesia can celebrate Christmas without feeling compelled to do things exactly the way they're done in, say, Pennsylvania.

My favorite example of Christianity's massively successful eclectism, though, is Hell. I sincerely hope I don't have to explain why.


I have also noticed that blogs attempt to lend significance to the author's life by making everyday events significant in weirdly symbolic ways. So: I was coming down the stairs today, and I noticed that having to coordinate the efforts of my legs and balancing was representative of how we go through life: steady, but still unsafe, dependent on the whims of our nervous system--or, on the larger scale of things, fate.

Eh, I'll leave it to Bill Watterson.

A Christmas Blog

First things first:

Yes, I said Christmas. C-h-r-i-s-t-m-a-s. I refuse to delude myself into believing that the celebration with food on December 25th, along with requisite tree, gifts, and red and green, is truly a non-denominational 'holiday'.

Christmas has a denomination, and that denomination is Western, just like the rest of the 'Christian' holidays out there (Easter, anyone?).

Let's look at what Christmas is all about: families getting together, eggnog, lots of food, trading presents, traditions like TV shows and telling kids a jolly fat man brings their goodies but only if they're good, and even the post-holidays complaining about things like weight gain, irritating relatives, messes, greedy children.... All of these things are peculiarly Western. How? I can't explain it; I suppose I could make a small effort though, and here it is: Eastern culture is not one for undeserved miracles; you earn your way into the stories and, basically, everything else, whereas Western culture is all about democracy. Everyone has an equal chance of being showered in gold or struck by lightning.

I hope that made sense. But it probably didn't, because Westerners don't need to understand why the majority of the world really can't celebrate Christmas, Easterners already know these things and wouldn't have to read about them, especially not from what I'm sure Indians think of as an 'ABCD' (to which I say, I'm neither confused nor much of a desi), and if you're from Russia...ouch. Have fun with the perpetual European-Asian conflict.

Anyway, that's Christmas in a nutshell: a cultural holiday, fun for everyone, though in the Eastern tradition it turns into something different--the decorations go up and the presents sit under the tree, but there's no sense of 'spirit'. And we like it that way.

****

It has come to my attention that this blog is peculiarly lacking in one of the features of any reasonable blog: namely, the complaining. Well, not just the complaining--the ranting, done in the style of "I feel..." and "I think..." and so on, as if anyone actually cared and as if the sympathy from strangers online were really worthwhile.

So: I think that laptops are the poopy.

The end. See you next year.