Do you have morbid curiosity?

[wtmusic]

Poll question: Do you have morbid curiosity?

I believe I used to but no longer. Have no interest in seeing the entire Berg video, rubbernecking at traffic accidents, etc. This is not a value judgement--I understand why people are curious about that stuff. It's just too disturbing for me now.

[nothingshocksmeanymore]

1. Did The Passion of the Christ sell a bazillion tickets?

[wtmusic]

4. LOL fundies eat that stuff up

with a big helpin' o' guilt on the side

[democracyindanger]

2. fascinoma

An actual medical term. Something that's so bizarre or revolting that you can't help but look.

As for me, not particularly.

[nini]

3. I HATE it when people have to look at car accidents..

give those folks a bit of privacy and move along your way.


that's one of my pet peeves.

[IronLionZion]

5. Well, I want to see the new Iraqi abuse photos

I don't like seeing that kind of stuff, but I still want to see them. my curiosity is morbid alright.

[MrSlayer]

6. Yes, I have a morbid curiosity.

And I'll tell you this Berg video is one of the worst things I've ever seen. Definitely in the top 5.

[DS1]

7. The Berg video was unpleasant, I wish I could undo seeing it

:shrug:

[boobooday]

8. I can't even handle fake violence in the movies

The pictures I've already seen are burned in my brain. Some of the most disturbing are the least gruesome.



http://www.wgoeshome.com

[SheWhoMustBeObeyed]

15. You and me both

I have no stomach for violent movies.

When the TV show or the website or the thread is prefaced by WARNING: GRAPHIC IMAGES, I have learned the hard way that they're not merely being sensational.

Sadness, madness, badness. What a world, what a world.

[Piperay]

9. Yes

unfortunately I do. I always have to look and regret it later but I am just such a curious person that I never learn and look the next time even though it will give me nightmares. :shrug: :-(

[Westegg]

10. "Morbid curiosity" has negative connotations...

...as in: "Stuff you don't need to see but still want, or feel compelled, to seek out ." For some, I'm sure, this is the case. For me, it's not that. I personally want to see all of reality, because I know it's out there ANYWAY, and if I'm to fully understand what the reality is, then I need to see that reality, in certain situations.

Would be happy to discuss. I surely do understand arguments to the contrary. But what I said above---that's the way I'm wired.

[wtmusic]

12. Fascination with death

goes beyond stuff you don't need to see...

[Westegg]

13. I'm not sure I get your post... What is "fascination with death"?...

...Okay, I kinda know what it is. I guess. But do you mean, like, serial killers who start out torturing/killing animals when they're children and then grow up and move on to humans? Or do you mean the kind of people who are obsessed wih serial killers, etc.? The former are dangerous sociopaths; the latter need more life-affirming, positive hobbies.

I believe there is generally---but indeed not always---a pretty firm line between the two types of people.

[wtmusic]

14. Well put it this way

Fascination and curiosity with death and dying beyond your fascination with the rest of 'reality'.

[jobycom]

11. Sometimes I feel it's my duty. If we can't even look at the Hell we create

Then we are weak.

I don't plan to watch the Berg video, I've seen similar. But I force myself to watch them sometimes, to remind me that it isn't a game, that my protests are not academic theories, that I can't be neutral in this, and that I have no right to remain unaffected or unsickened by it.

I'd like to see it mandated that every American be forced to watch it, and to view the equivalent tapes and pictures of what we have done. The American soldiers upon discovery of the bodies of the Holocaust asked those in the surrounding town if they knew what was happening, and they all said no. So the troops forced every German in these towns to march through the camps, to view the pyramids of bodies, so they could not deny knowledge of it.

That's what it will take for our nation. I'm so saddened because I believe we are hopeless, that it will take a catastrophe like a million American dead to make us understand the cost we have on the world. To make us grow up and understand what the rest of the world knows about war. Until it actually hurts us, we won't get it. And that is exactly what the terrorists who plot events like 9-11 and the eventually nuking of one of our cities are trying to do. It makes me hate them and understand them at the same time.

Maybe a great filmmaker could pre-empt it. Maybe we need another of those cheesy Day After movies with full realism, in IMAX, to head off that type of catastrophe. Because otherwise, and I mean this with every bit of emotion I have and with an historian's background and understanding of the full implications of what I say, we are NO better than the Nazis, every last one of us.

[Rabrrrrrr]

16. Nah. I used to, but now that I've seen everything, it isn't so interesting

Couple murders on my block...9-11 experience...working in a hospital...rubbernecking a lot of accidents...being with my mom while she died from cancer...

the morbid curiosity just isn't there any more. Death is death, you know? Not that I think a morbid curiosity is wrong, it's just that mine has been sated. :-)

Though I am very fascinated with our human responses to death, anthropologically and religiously and ritualistically (funerals both private and state, reponse to holocaust, genocide, etc.), and also societies' ideas of ritualistic violence and death (wars, executions, scapegoating, sacrifice, genocide, pushing the onus of killing off to the police and/or military professionals, etc.).

Our response to death and violence is fascinating, but the death itself, from a prurient persepective, no longer so interesting.