peripathetic

I've just come across a link to this website; WARNING!: it's not for the faint-hearted. Put bluntly, it has lots of pictures and videos of things like shootings, suicides, gruesome accidents and not-quite-accidents of all kinds. I initially thought that it was just pointlessly sick stuff, and was sort of comforted and confirmed in my view when I saw lots of bad spelling and swearwords in the comments pages. Obviously, I thought, the people who visit this site are just dumb sickos.

But then I looked at a clip. It was the suicide of a guy called Bud Dwyer. He was a state dignitary of Pennslvania who put a pistol in his mouth during a press conference which aired on live TV. He was going to be sentenced the following day for a host of white-collar crimes, and it was likely he would be imprisoned for over 50 years. Apparently. Anyway. I was both repelled, and fascinated. There was no reason in the world that I'd have sought out something like this to watch: last night I spent nearly all my online time taking a look at nice things on this site. I certainly don't think that this clip was put onto the site as any kind of catalyst for law reform, or as education into the tragedies of suicide.

All the same, I was fascinated. The image of a person's death is, shockingly, special. Yes; it's disgusting as well, of course. Many of the links in the site describe only, and they were enough to stop me from clicking. But whereas we may see squashed animals on the roads every day and not be disturbed, as soon as we see another dead animal (of the human kind), we recoil. Is this instinctive? I'd say not. Is it aesthetic? I'd say it is. But are aesthetics unchangeable, set in stone, absolute? No. Therefore, although I was so disgusted by what I've just seen that I am gently sipping from a glass of water to quiet my stomach, I have to recognise that maybe the people who keep the site online might (unintentionally) be providing something of a service to those of us brave enough to look and think. That site reminds me, at any rate, that when you get down to it, all I am is a living organism. I'm not sacred. I can be pulled apart, even killed. But hell, there's so much more to me as well - and when you think about it, that's kinda special.