You know what increasingly angers me? People who post
disturbing images on social media. I find it funny that we're so worried about “offending”
people with our opinions, but that we have no concern whatever about offending
their sensibilities.
I just saw a picture (calling for the old like=prayer
thing) of a small, naked child lying in its own blood as a result of some
problem he or she has – it looked like a hideous skin condition, his skin thick and red as a hard candy. It actually made me a little nauseous, just
at a glance, and I had to scroll away from it.
At other times, people have posted articles about medical
marvels and issues, accompanied by pictures of innards and organs laid bare in
a stainless steel tray.
What’s the problem? Does no one get disgusted by graphic
gore anymore? Or is it that people need to be shocked in order to care? Maybe
it is a combination of both, but whatever it is, it seems to me to amount to a
decline in the ascent of man to a higher form. We should be able to care about
the stench of human suffering without having to have our noses shoved in it. We
should be interested in the wonders of modern science, conceptually, without
having to be elbow deep in dissection gore. (Thank goodness some people are
able to be elbow-deep in dissection gore, or we would have no advances – but that
is not the average person.)
Every night, I offer a prayer for the suffering, especially
children. Seeing a scene of the graphic suffering of a child is not going to
change me, except to disturb me. It might motivate me to weep, but nothing
changes: I still care about children and I still want to help, whether with
prayer or charity.
You know what? It is okay for us to avoid discomfort in the
face of suffering, so long as we are doing the right things to alleviate that
suffering. I don’t need someone, either purposefully or in total disregard for
my sensibilities, to determine what I should be tricked into seeing.
And, so, the waters of the social media age flood in, through the cracks in the fortress of privacy.
