And The Verdict Is... We Just Love Death!

Humans don't change. That is about the only thing I can say with almost sincere confidence. Some would argue that this is not so and that they know someone who has changed. For instance, recovered alcoholics. But most addicts of any kind usually find another addiction that is more "healthy". Tobacco chewers often start chewing gum (which is why every baseball player in the dugout chews gum). Some fill all their time with their family, in which obsession turned from a substance to children, which is seen as a good thing. The fact still remains that the addiction / obsession changed forms. But the underlying mental necessity of attachment did not.

One thing that has never changed throughout human history is our love and addiction to violence, death, and suffering. (Faces of Death, need I say more? I will.) This masochism is rooted very deep within us all. Although we don't actually watch people getting slaughtered in mass numbers like the Romans, we still have a more "civilized" form of fulfilling our love of death. That civilized mechanism is called a television, which allows us to spectate actual or fictitious pain of others at the center of our homes (newspapers and the internet are alternatives). Some would claim they don't watch such sick forms of entertainment, but realize that we all do. Whether it is watching the news, Law & Order, Lifetime Channel, medical shows, et cetera. The latter is probably one of the strongest amongst us. The band Tool uses this idea in their song Vicarious, in which "Vicariously I need to watch things die! From a good safe distance." From a political stand point, as Neil Postman so elegantly puts it, we are "amusing ourselves to death."

Not only is it entertainment, it is also one masochistic form of humor. I recall seeing a book on a display table called The Little Book of Bunny Suicides, which depicts comical illustrations of bunnies killing themselves. Not only did I find this book humorous, I stood aside for a while and perused another book close-by to see if others would be drawn to it. They were. And all found it hard to put it down. But none bought it, probably remembering the stance social concerns have on such a book.

But even the horrors and excitement of the Roman Colosseum still echoes today with backyard wrestling, boxing, professional wrestling (fake or real), dog fights, cock fights, and the likes. It is necessary for us to see things suffer. It makes us feel dominant. It makes us feel alive. Some take this too far and start raping and murdering. Some prefer to be safer and enjoy hearing about how horrible their ex-girlfriend's life is (something I am guilty of).Others like to be in the middle and watch it happen on TV or in books (something I am definitely guilty of). No matter which part of the spectrum you lie in, we are all guilty.

Our love of death may not be Roman, per se, but we still love death. As Private Joker once put it : "A day without blood is like a day without sunshine."