This is one of the things that truly horrifies me about cultural groups that promote themselves outside of their culture and expect awareness of their culture. Evangelical religions are the most relevant example, but the same goes for any such group, for an atheistic example there is the concept of the usage of racial slurs being permitted by the slurred racial group(Which succeeds in perpetuating the presence of the slur by perpetuating its use, perpetuating its status as a terrible terrible thing by denouncing its use, and legitimises the slur by being an openly racist policy that is seen as acceptable. It is basically the worst possible thing that you can do if you want to stop the slur from being used offensively. This is mostly off topic but serves to highlight how ridiculous something can seem when viewed externally and thus serves to illustrate the issues presented by my argument.). It is inherent to the practice that people will be exposed to elements of the culture without knowing the specifics. If you go to great lengths to conceal the concept of the nativity then sure, you can complain that people shouldn't be stealing your culture. If a member of your community is misrepresenting it then you can complain that they are bad at being a member of your community. But sadly, in this instance, the nativity is being blasted out around the world in an effort to say "Look here at the incredibly auspicious beginnings of our special person! If they were so great when they were born then they must be good enough for you to sacrifice your flawed ideals and adopt their perfect ones!". Thus they have freely gifted to the world this example of an auspicious beginning. If someone then wants to reuse this example to promote something else, such as a slab of meat, or if they want to use the scene as their superhero's origin story, or if they want to use it as a contrast by having an extremely lowly entity presented in a very haughty manner for humours effect, such as "Here is this great and wonderful nativity scene... being used to extol radioactive sludge! Ha! Expectations subverted!!!" then there is really no room to complain. It lost any hope of being sacred when it was turned into advertising material and published everywhere that didn't actively stop it.
And let's not forget that advertising in this world, at this time, is inherently disrespectful. Saying that and advertiser is being disrespectful is redundant. If you want them to actually be respectful then you are going to have to hold them up to very much higher standards. Like forcing them to ensure that the cute little wildlife that they are using has a sustainable population. That the beautiful vistas they show their latest pedestrian blender car driving around aren't being destroyed by acid rain, deforestation, high-density immigration... Have their actor playing the role of the joyous friendly host only at the end of spending two consecutive shifts in public service so that they have a proper appreciation of the people they are depicting... Getting into a tizzy over this is like complaining that you don't want to marry an elephant because your children would inherit big-nose genetics. If big noses are a problem for you then yes, legitimate concern, but sort of irrelevant in context because the whole thing is a massive problem and your personal little issue really isn't relevant to addressing your situation. The advertising industry as a whole is in a constant state of demeaning anything and everything that it is aware of. They haven't actually done anything noteworthy here. Every model's image that they edit is a personal insult to everyone who doesn't have the final product, which is, surprise surprise, the entire human race. Every song-and-dance routine is a personal insult towards your relatively song-and-dance deprived life and its blandness. Every jingle, mnemonic, catch-phrase... is a personal insult towards the idea that you might be remembering things that are actually relevant to your instead of their likely inferior product. If people care about thier god's representation in this world being denigrated than they ought to be so immersed in perpetual rage over their constant state of personal and profound insults against the whole of "God's Creation" that a thing like this wouldn't even register.
Of course, the really easy target is the whole depiction of islamic prophets thing. Anyone with even a hint of awareness would plainly see that there are many people in this world who are inclined to depict things that they have heard about. Win but a trace of intellect they would further be incapable of missing that their efforts at evangelism involve constantly extolling the virtues of their religion, which is basically all based upon one guy, and that maybe, just maybe, people outside of their own little land of indoctrination about all their various rules and regulations might hear about it. If they hand even the remotest inclination towards personal integrity then they would put two and two together and realise that any depictions that occur as a result of this have absolutely nothing to do with anyone else and are entirely a consequence of their own actions, and thus any blame for it is entirely upon them for their idiotic policies and nobody else is at fault for following the extremely obvious course of action that stems from those ignorant foolish irresponsible and flawed policies.
People have to accept that in their efforts to increase membership, their religion became public domain, and it is no longer theirs to control or identify with. Feel free to claim total ownership over your own personal use of that religion, but the public image was given away and nobody has any ownership rights by which to be insulted over the handling of that public image.
Poll
71 (27.7%)
Author
Topic: Railgun and Spirituality Discussion (Read 686925 times)