Iranian Woman About To Be Stoned To Death.
i see a ton of images on tumblr
i follow artists, photographers, rebloggers galore, girls who remind me of myself when i was younger, great porn, original thinkers, brilliant programmers.
i ♥ a lot of images and i reblog many, usually on anonymous tumblrs that i keep just as archives, a few i reblog here.
i am not attracted to sensationalism and when i feel someone is posting just for effect (as opposed to creating some sort of thread that has personal meaning) i stop following.
this image stopped me in my tracks, actually the caption did and then i found myself clicking through to the full size. i couldn’t turn away from the screen for a long time and for hours i kept coming back to it. it has taken me a week to make this post public
aside from this woman’s personal plight which is heart wrenching, aside from the stark contrast to my own life with its comforts and freedom, there is the grim reality of humanity’s “shadow” side
if we accept that technological advances have brought about the phenomena of the “global village” and we embrace the concept that we are all one on this planet, we can no longer have the luxury of denying that the harsh traditions of other cultures are simply an expression of our own culture’s shadow.
looking at this begs the question:
how far have we come from the roman colosseum,
from the tortures of the middle ages,
from the salem witch trails?
and it demands that we face the answer:
only as far as guantanomo and abu ghraib,
only as far as sanctioning corrupt and inhumane governments in exchange for economic privileges
and only as far as invading other countries under the lofty goal of installing “democratic freedom” with no respect for the lives and traditions that will inherently be destroyed.
if we do inhabit a global village, it is us who is setting the benchmark for greed, power and control and we can no longer separate ourselves from any atrocities that occur in this village: this is our shadow.
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