Why a beheading makes us feel different [Opinion piece] - Polidicks

[QUOTE]Like everyone, I was revolted by the beheadings of the American journalists James Foley and Steven Sotloff (and now British aid worker David Haine).It wasn’t just that they had been killed — though that is horrendous enough — it was the monstrous way the deed was done. I’ve been trying to understand why the act of beheading arouses this strong visceral response. Why does separating a head with a knife feel different from a shooting, or a bombing? Does this reaction contain some hidden intuitive wisdom, or is it just a blind prejudice? First, a beheading feels different because it reveals something about the minds of the killers. The journalist Lance Morrow once wrote that “evil is often happiest when it operates in the autonomy of the gratuitous”. By going beneath even the minimal standards of modern civilisation, the militants of the Islamic State group get to show contempt for us and our morality. They get to deny the slightest acknowledgment of our common humanity. They can take the bully’s maximum relish in their power over the weak and innocent. The purpose of terrorism is to terrorise and the Islamic State means to show violence unbounded; the Islamic State will get inside our heads in the darkest way. Second, a beheading reminds us of something disturbing in ourselves. We want to watch and we don’t want to watch. Because of some warp in human nature, millions of people will go online to watch a beheading video though they might not even read about a simple shooting. But the revulsion aroused by beheading is mostly a moral revulsion. A beheading feels like a defilement. It is not just an injury or a crime. t is an indignity. A beheading is more like rape, castration or cannibalism. It is a defacement of something sacred that should be inviolable. But what is this sacred thing that is being violated? TRIUMPH OF THE FAITH Well, the human body is sacred. Most of us understand, even if we don’t think about it, or have a vocabulary to talk about it these days, that the human body is not just a piece of meat or a bunch of neurons and cells. The human body has a different moral status from a cow’s body or a piece of broccoli. We are repulsed by a beheading because the body has a spiritual essence. The human head and body do not just live and pass along genes. They paint, make ethical judgments, savour the beauty of a sunset and experience the transcendent. The body is material, but surpasses the material. It’s spiritualised matter.This infusion of the spiritual and the material is mysterious. Some Jews use the concept of tzimtzum, or “contraction”, to describe the mixing of the finite and the infinite. Christians have the larger concept of incarnation. Most of us, religious or secular, have some instinctive sense that there is a ghost infused in the machine. And because the human body is a transcendent temple, it is worthy of respect. It is offensive to treat it the way you would treat an inanimate object. Even after a person is dead, the body still carries the residue of this presence and deserves dignified handling. Because we have this instinctive sense, we feel elevated when we see behaviour that fuses the physical and spiritual. We feel elevated when sex is not only physical pleasure, but also a communication and spiritual union. We feel elevated when we read about the Jewish rituals of tahara, when members of a synagogue tenderly wash the body of a congregant who has died. We feel repulsed — a little or a lot — when the body’s spiritual nature is gratuitously and intentionally insulted. Our revulsion makes us different from the religious zealots who are prone to commit or celebrate acts such as beheadings. The zealots often hew to a fringe of their faith that holds that the spirit and the body are at war with each other. They have a tendency to extreme asceticism, to seek to deny themselves pleasures of the living world, to celebrate the next world at the expense of this world, to oscillate between masochistic self-flagellation, when they think they have been sensual, and bouts of arrogant spiritual pride, when they convince themselves they have risen above the senses. It does not matter to them what they do to their enemy’s body, because this physical reality is not important.If the Islamic State is to be stopped, there will probably have to be some sort of political and military coalition. But, ultimately, the Islamists are a spiritual movement that will have to be surmounted by a superior version of Islam.[/QUOTE] [url]http://www.todayonline.com/commentary/why-beheading-makes-us-feels-different[/url] Just thought this article was interesting.

Honestly I don't feel this way. I have the same reaction to the killing of innocent people regardless of then being beheaded or not. The act is no less barbaric because of the method.

I feel a beheading is "worse" than a shooting because it has the implications of being far more bloody and mutilating.

[QUOTE=Emperor Scorpious II;46145764]I feel a beheading is "worse" than a shooting because it has the implications of being far more bloody and mutilating.[/QUOTE] not only that but it requires a lot more effort than just "Shooting them and then its done" unless you have a device made for it, it isn't a matter of just pulling a trigger. IMHO it's a bit more personal and direct. It's going out of ones way to mutilate someone via physical force or actually making a device SPECIFICALLY for that. (although saying that is just echoing your post) that and collecting heads on poles sometimes comes with it. A lot more berserk than seeing a pile of bodies.

They had me in agreement until they started with all the spiritual stuff.

[QUOTE=Falubii;46145779]They had me in agreement until they started with all the spiritual stuff.[/QUOTE] I think you're misunderstanding it if you're taking this at face value of being pro-religion in some way.

[QUOTE=Emperor Scorpious II;46145783]I think you're misunderstanding it if you're taking this at face value of being pro-religion in some way.[/QUOTE] No, they flat out said that there's more to the human body than flesh, something transcendent, and that's why we find mutilating it to be so offensive. I find beheadings abhorrent, but not for that reason. I think it's terrible because they've killed someone in a particularly painful way and they've made a spectacle out of the whole thing.

I think its worse than shooting them to death, because well, in a shooting, your body stays intact. Even if you got the body back, the burial of the body will be much more proper in some sense, as compared to ripping someone's head out, you separate an important part of the person. Even if you got it back for a burial, it'll never feel as proper.

[QUOTE=Falubii;46145801]No, they flat out said that there's more to the human body than flesh, and that's why we find mutilating it to be so offensive. I find beheadings abhorrent, but not for that reason.[/QUOTE] I'll pick "Metaphors" for $100, Alex.

I think it is worse than shooting simply because you are experiencing more pain in the time it takes them to cut off your head

[QUOTE=Emperor Scorpious II;46145811]I'll pick "Metaphors" for $100, Alex.[/QUOTE] [quote]The human body has a different moral status from a cow’s body or a piece of broccoli. We are repulsed by a beheading because the body has a spiritual essence. The human head and body do not just live and pass along genes. They paint, make ethical judgments, savour the beauty of a sunset and experience the transcendent. The body is material, but surpasses the material. It’s spiritualised matter.This infusion of the spiritual and the material is mysterious. Some Jews use the concept of tzimtzum, or “contraction”, to describe the mixing of the finite and the infinite. Christians have the larger concept of incarnation. Most of us, religious or secular, have some instinctive sense that there is a ghost infused in the machine. And because the human body is a transcendent temple, it is worthy of respect.[/quote] yeah ok

[QUOTE=Emperor Scorpious II;46145811]I'll pick "Metaphors" for $100, Alex.[/QUOTE] Wow good one. No they were pretty clear in the article, but now that you've called me out for some reason you had better try to shoot down my comment by claiming it was just a metaphor. Give me a break.

[QUOTE=J!NX;46145776]not only that but it requires a lot more effort than just "Shooting them and then its done" unless you have a device made for it, it isn't a matter of just pulling a trigger. IMHO it's a bit more personal and direct. It's going out of ones way to mutilate someone via physical force or actually making a device SPECIFICALLY for that. (although saying that is just echoing your post) that and collecting heads on poles sometimes comes with it. A lot more berserk than seeing a pile of bodies.[/QUOTE] it's also slower and more painful than a bullet, with more time for the executioners to scream "god is great"

[QUOTE=Jund;46145834]yeah ok[/QUOTE] [QUOTE=Emperor Scorpious II;46145811]I'll pick "Metaphors" for $100, Alex.[/QUOTE] [QUOTE=Emperor Scorpious II;46145783]I think you're misunderstanding it if you're taking this at face value of being pro-religion in some way.[/QUOTE] [QUOTE=Falubii;46145779]They had me in agreement until they started with all the spiritual stuff.[/QUOTE] To put it into better perspective, I'll use my own views as an example. I take the would "Soul" and "Spirit" as a persons very being/personality, nothing physical at all or existent, none of that "Ghost" crap, just an idea. I take the word as what basically makes them, THEM, and what makes them the only existing copy of them that can exist. Cows wouldn't really have a metaphorical 'spirit' because well, they're too stupid. "Breaking ones spirit" to me basically means they've been mentally destroyed and won't really recover and be who they used to be, and are totally scarred for life. And mutilating a body would be insulting to everything that person tried to be and was. To copy someones entire body and personality in a clone or robot wouldn't be the same because it doesn't "Share their spirit", it's not "Quite the same, doesn't have the essence of their soul" because it still wouldn't [I]be them[/I], it's just some artificial mimicry. "Spirit" doesn't really have to be religious at all, for me it's just a metaphor (I really doubt a lot of people have the same views). But it sounds like they pretty much are entirely talking from a religious standpoint, which is totally and complete speaking of a literal soul attached to someone. Either way however, the idea is the same. You're going out of your way to desolate their very being. So imho it really shouldn't matter if they're getting into religious/spiritual stuff, as spirits are really in the end, a religious metaphor for someones very being in a physical ghost.

Execution-styled murders are generally more horrifying than other forms of murder because of both the fear inside the victim and the coldness of the killer. Put onto video, it's made into a twisted spectacle. Yes people are shot everyday, but the circumstances aren't as claustrophobic and calculated. It's still awful, but the killers don't seem as monstrous.

Beheading is the old tradition method of execution that is quite very old and ancient uses... Beheading has so many symbolism towards it then what most people realise... When we cut off the head of a tyrant, we relish in glory as his terror has ended on that day. When we cut off the head of an innocent, we display fear and terror upon the watchers. When we cut off the head of someone both innocent or evil in secret, the people will feel terror and paranoia, as it a sign of a bloodthirsty serial killer, a sign of conspiracy, and something that smells like deception. Beheading was often carried out during the French Revolution, as people rose up in defiance after so many people got tired of the terrorism that the higher monarchies put under their own citizen that they rose up and take the head out of almost everyone who suppose the monarchy causes... when the head is displayed upon the crowd of all of the villains who terrorized us daily, we relish in glory that his/her terror has ended and vengeance has been done. Beheadings will never go away because either a freedom fighter searching for vengeance or a cruel asshole who like to take people's head off to display his power or dispose terror upon the watchers, will want their head nonetheless. As people may cry out that this is barbaric... should known that this execution has been around for a very long time and shows no signs of going away, no matter who or where you are from, it still exist, and it still has it uses... People these days who are not as peace-loving individuals still believe in the motto "An Eye for an Eye, a Life for a Life"... when Gandhi said that "An Eye for an Eye makes the whole world blind", not a lot of people actually believes that sadly...

What an awful article.