Incomprehensible
Why should any person intentionally inflict pain on another being? Does it provide some weird and twisted satisfaction to the inflictor? I find it incredibly hard to understand why people would use torture as a form of entertainment.
Recently I watched a reaction to a video of a dog being burned alive by a group of people. The first thought that I had was: “why video tape it?” In my opinion, doing something as horrible as burning a living creature shouldn’t happen at all, let alone get filmed and put online to let others live and relive the situation. Video taping things is a sign that the content of it is intended to be referenced and looked back upon. Most people record things to remember happy things, and in our digital world, to document incidents. The purpose of the video of the dog burning seems to be of neither category and its intent is the crudest form of braggery. It horrifies me that people in our day an age can find amusement in hurting innocent beings for fun, and be shameless enough to flaunt their doings.
I don’t find it morally correct to torture anything or anyone. The saying “Treat others like how you would like to be treated” is something that I live by and although it may sound a bit elementary I feel that it is very true. It really is very distressing and frustrating for me to find acts like this online and while I cannot say that I am a great lover of all animals, my heart still does go out to those that are abused and mistreated. It absolutely sickens me that people would do such cruel things to animals that have no chance of fighting back and do not understand the situation they are in. Just because people or in this case animals are ignorant, doesn’t mean that they can be or should be treated the way they were in that video, with torture.
This idea of torturing the weak can also be linked to the ridicule of people who are mentally unsound or disabled. It is not right for the conscious minded to demean and/or abuse those that have a disatvantage. In the video, how would the dog have known that it would be put through such pain? It wouldn’t have known and did not know therefore, causing it to have no reaction when it was being lit on fire. Also, in another video I saw quite a while ago, a mentally challenged girl was being bullied by her schoolmates for being different and did not know how to fight back because it was beyond her capacity to understand what was happening to her and what she was supposed to do to make it stop.
Having a clear head is definitely an advantage in any aspect of life. Many people are lucky enough to be so called “normal” and I think that this should be something that should be valued but not abused like in those videos.
Here is the link for anyone who wants to watch but I do not recommend it http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ITulPeuVpYw
4 responses so far
Your “hook, ” or the beginning of your post really caught my eye; I’m a huge believer in treating everyone how we want to be treated. However, what really captivated me, was that you were referring to a dog being tortured. Honestly, I am not an animal or pet lover, AT ALL, but this video and more specifically, this post really opened my eyes and gave broadened my perspective-all living things, whether humans or not deserve to be treated with respect.
I didn’t watch the video, nor do I intend to; to be honest, I almost couldn’t continue reading at the mention of the dog. That’s something that is so mind-boggling to me. I get that people are sick in the head and that makes them do insane and awful things, but I’m sitting in my dorm room right now missing the crap out of my dog and wondering “how could you not love that face?” I think you brought up an important issue, and I like how you linked it to “torturing the weak” because most animal abuse occurs because the person wants to feel power over something.
I’m with Polina: I basically had to skim your post and hope you wouldn’t go into any detail once you mentioned the subject of the video. There’s no way I could watch it. For me, the important question you ask is: why videotape this horrible act? And further, I’d add: why post it online? You’re absolutely right, I think, about the bragging aspect. The Internet has become, among its many uses and services and identities, a location for posturing–and some of it is posturing of the most grotesque sort imaginable. The Facebook hate pages that Jackie D wrote about, for instance, and other acts of degradation, cruelty, insensitivity, intrusions of privacy, etc. etc. etc. I suppose any human platform becomes, by its nature, a space that contains the full spectrum of human behavior. If only these people who post videos like this could put their time and effort into bragging about how they helped build a school, take care of their little brother, got an A on their essay, gave up their seat on the subway… Yeah, your title basically captures it.
This is terrible! I watched the first minute or so before having to shut off the video. (I watched “Human Centipede” recently and cannot afford another night like that.)
I like how you used this video as a starting point to talk about the broader issue of celebrating attacks against the helpless.
The Motion Picture Association of America’s film rating system (G, PG, PG-13, R, NC-17) puts violence as low priority to censor, whereas nudity, sex, and language are judged harshly. This sadistic system is a sad commentary on American film.