RE: How Far, How Far We've Fallen: An Open Discussion Pertaining To The Decline Of Society
You had nightmares and they didn't negatively affect you: you got a good night sleep and had insightful things to ponder over with your very impressionable and malleable view of the world, from a nightmare. How can you argue that nightmares are not negatively affecting you, its insane to say that or even hint at that. In the end you half agree that it is not ok for this kind of art in closing, you start with "i don't think" that this would do ANY harm to children but equate this to a lesser form of "homelessness being normalized" which you say is affecting children negatively, without argument of how, because a child has no moral or good sense to see that being homeless is not something that garners cold, or callous and uncaring attitude but instead compassion and understanding which if they don't see it from society (huh?) they will undoubtedly have innately like animals:
Empathy, Compassion, Altruism isn't thought or learned (1), (2), (3). Those things are self evident not only to rats but to children as well and not affected by some kind of normalization mechanism that could undo things hardwired into each and every being.
When I do good, I feel good. When I do bad, I feel bad. That's my religion.
~Abraham Lincoln
How is empathy, compassion, altruism something that gets "denormalized"? That is you're argument, not reaching, not logical leaping, just rephrased, but even so at the end you equate that "art" with normalized homelessness which you view as "more negatively affects our children", which is counter to what you began with, or advocating that negative things like nightmares and horrible imagery doesn't negatively affect us AT ALL, so is it a degree of grey or none at all, it has no effect at all as you began. Does it affects us positively?
I need to reiterate how absurd that sounds: it doesn't affect us at all, but maybe it's a lesser form of normalized homelessness, irrational to the core!
You think a child is a small adult? Is that even an argument, how can one be a small adult? You mean children are children, and not any kind of adult. They don't drink because they have little self control, they don't have sex because they can be easily manipulated and controlled and don't have the intelligence to recognize that, but they are "small adults", because they can participate in adult things and engage in adult themes without any kind of negative effect..
How do you normalize homelessness, is that a group effort you're hinting at?
How do you paint a giant disturbing mural on a building? Because it's art and nobody is affected?
But it's irrelevant, moot points really because they are two distinctively different scenarios that cannot be compared, at all, one is a platitude, the other is visceral and very disturbing.
PS, I was homeless and I have a uncle who is a drunk living in the streets in Rome, by choice, not because of society's cold callus and uncaring attitude towards him, but in spite of the warm and welcoming, understanding family and kids he has abandoned. And nothing excuses indifference to children, art the least, and arguing that children aren't basically susceptible to predators, to negative and disturbing scenarios is ludicrous.
How so? I will concede that my dreams were based on fiction, and in that sense they provided me with entertainment more than anything. I had nightmares as well unrelated to these films, one involving a bleach bottle in a trench coat. That was more scary, and not based on anything I saw.
Children are small adults in the idea that they can reason and think just as well as us. They don't drink because they have small bodies and psychoactive drugs such as alcohol are bad for developing brains. They don't have sex because they are not sexually mature. Apart from their lack of experience and their still developing minds and bodies children can be just as smart as adults. I think to keep children away from art like this is the same as saying we should ban alcohol because some people will become alcoholics.
Rising hatred to Immigrants for example... Islamaphobia also. Homeless in the UK are 47 more times likely to be victims of violent attacks than other people. We dehumanise these people who challenge our perceptions of a just world. "They deserve to be there" "They are lazy drug addicts" etc. This is based on the just-world fallacy, a cognitive bias that many people have. It helps them normalise things that would otherwise hurt their view of the world "Good things happen to good people, bad things happen to bad people."
Personally I find the bodies on the streets to be visceral and disturbing.
PS, I've worked on homelessness campaigns have have friends affected by homelesness. It's all anecdotal.
I don't think these images provide a negative and disturbing scenario, but instead creates an awareness. I would rather educate my kids than keep them in a bubble state where they can easily fall into the trap of predators.
Hopefully because it is art everyone is affected ^_^
Al Capone thought he was a good guy. So did Hitler. We can be hardwired towards normalisation of bad things from the cognitive biases within our brains. "Them Mooslims! Them Immigrants! My great country! Their barbaric lands!" Etc Ad Infinitum nauseam.