SPECTACLE AND VIOLENCE
BLOODSPORT is the term for events of spectacle involving violence to the point of bloodletting. While violence and bloodletting are probably as old as humanity, they are said to have became a spectacle with the ancient pre-Roman Etruscans in or around 600 BCE — https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/s... and http://thespectaclesofapuleius.weebly... — and later the Greek Olympics begun in 770 BCE — https://olympics.com/ioc/faq/history-.... In fact, the ancients Etruscans were know to both the later Romans, and the ancient Greeks as Tyrrhenians, scenes from Etruscan tombs sometime portraying gladiatorial-style funeral “games” on behalf of the privileged dead. Bloodsport was said to become a professional sport with the establishment of the Greek Olympics, popularized further and with significantly more brutality by the ancient Romans.
Bloodsport is said to have become most diverse and reached its highest level of popularity with ancient Rome, where the “games” were often purely staged spectacles whereby viewers, “like the gods,” participated in the decision as to whether individual participants, human and animal, survived or died. Pankration, bullfighting, boxing, wrestling, fencing, weaponed combat and today, stealth murder or assassination, typically in portrayed in films, are all modern forms of bloodsport. Bloodsport, typically accompanied by visible and auditory expressions of the victim’s horror and pain, are held by some to be re-enactments of human mortality and morbidity, supposedly “celebrating” life.
Some would consider the “documentation” or news on television of the war for the Ukraine as a contemporary expression of bloodsport, playing directly to spectacle and violence. Others might remark that the contribution to bloodsport of modern civilization is a portrayed total lack of empathy for the pain and suffering of the victims by perpetrators referred to as sociopaths. Yet others would say the scale and suddenness of mass deaths and destruction since the beginning of the “nuclear” age has elevated bloodsport to a new level deserving of a new name.
For me, the bottomline isn’t the weapons, sociopathology or scale of the violence, but simply its perpetration and its surprising acceptance and willful perpetration by humans that underlies bloodsport. I’ve heard it said that of the two — experiencing bloodsport directly as a victim, or indirectly being experienced by another without taking moral action — the latter may actually be the most damaging. Either way, violence is quite easily done, but recovery difficult, expensive, time-consuming, and possibly impossible to “erase.” More likely it represents a loss of innocence that can never be reclaimed, only at best reflected upon in the hope of imparting knowledge and wisdom, and hopefully breaking the cycle of violence that seems so firmly embedded in human society.
Unlock the Genius Within: Neurobiological Trauma, Teaching, and Transformative Learning
#RaymondGaynor #DanielSJanik #spectacle #violence #bloodsport #UnlockTheGeniusWithin #book #ebook #trauma #bloodsport #Roman #Greek #Olympics #film #movie #television #news #sociopath #MassCasualties #violation #recovery #knowledge #wisdom #cycle #circle #innocence #R&LEducation #perpetration
Bloodsport is said to have become most diverse and reached its highest level of popularity with ancient Rome, where the “games” were often purely staged spectacles whereby viewers, “like the gods,” participated in the decision as to whether individual participants, human and animal, survived or died. Pankration, bullfighting, boxing, wrestling, fencing, weaponed combat and today, stealth murder or assassination, typically in portrayed in films, are all modern forms of bloodsport. Bloodsport, typically accompanied by visible and auditory expressions of the victim’s horror and pain, are held by some to be re-enactments of human mortality and morbidity, supposedly “celebrating” life.
Some would consider the “documentation” or news on television of the war for the Ukraine as a contemporary expression of bloodsport, playing directly to spectacle and violence. Others might remark that the contribution to bloodsport of modern civilization is a portrayed total lack of empathy for the pain and suffering of the victims by perpetrators referred to as sociopaths. Yet others would say the scale and suddenness of mass deaths and destruction since the beginning of the “nuclear” age has elevated bloodsport to a new level deserving of a new name.
For me, the bottomline isn’t the weapons, sociopathology or scale of the violence, but simply its perpetration and its surprising acceptance and willful perpetration by humans that underlies bloodsport. I’ve heard it said that of the two — experiencing bloodsport directly as a victim, or indirectly being experienced by another without taking moral action — the latter may actually be the most damaging. Either way, violence is quite easily done, but recovery difficult, expensive, time-consuming, and possibly impossible to “erase.” More likely it represents a loss of innocence that can never be reclaimed, only at best reflected upon in the hope of imparting knowledge and wisdom, and hopefully breaking the cycle of violence that seems so firmly embedded in human society.
Unlock the Genius Within: Neurobiological Trauma, Teaching, and Transformative Learning
#RaymondGaynor #DanielSJanik #spectacle #violence #bloodsport #UnlockTheGeniusWithin #book #ebook #trauma #bloodsport #Roman #Greek #Olympics #film #movie #television #news #sociopath #MassCasualties #violation #recovery #knowledge #wisdom #cycle #circle #innocence #R&LEducation #perpetration
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