okay, okay… when i started a blog, i promised myself that i wouldn’t do what other people do and fill it up with crap. however, since then, i figure, what’s a blog for, if not to load the interblag with cyberlandfill? so, here i go.
i’ve had a couple of thoughts and revelations while i was on vacation in canada over the past 7 weeks. most of these, maybe all, are completely fluffy (hence the designation of cyberlandfill)…
let’s picture ourselves a couple of thousand years into the future. one of the major world religions comprises a couple of billion followers and they ascribe to the teachings of someone that lived a couple of thousand years before, which is to say, today. what’s curious about this religion is that their primary symbol displayed in their places of worship and in their homes is what we would, today, immediately recognise as an electric chair. the simple reason for this is that the prophet that they follow was a person who was executed in our time as a criminal of one type or another. seems strange, looking from the present time into the distant future, to see a device for executing criminals used as a symbol that inspires religious devotion and spiritual awe for billions.
however, how is this different than the present case where a billion christians kneel in front of a cross? 2100 years ago, a cross was simply a structure used by romans to torture and execute criminals. the reason it’s the primary symbol for christianity today is that one person in particular was executed on one. however, the simple fact is that an ancient execution device, the time’s equivalent to an electric chair, is the symbol that many use as symbol, if not an object, of worship.
nothing new here, just something that i realised lately that made me raise an eyebrow.