GOING MEDIEVAL: VARIOUS FORMS OF TORTUROUS DEATHS

fonzie rides a motorbike, richie does not

recently we have mentioned routine decapitation in saudi arabia, a u.s. ally in the 'anti-isis' effort and the syrian/iraqi sunni rebels propagandistic decapitations...... and also the famous guillotine of the french revolution along with the name Robespierre, being well known even to lay students of the french revolution, like the Benji, who know next to nothing about it

still, if you can imagine you are facing your death, not on your motor scooter, but in some medieval fashion, let's consider two popular forms of execution, slow and tortourous, in medieval europe, and this is no defense of the french's panache for decapitation, but it is worth mentioning that decapitation, by guillotine at least, is a rapid and painless death........

nobody cares to think about death.....consider how many times you will crap in your lifetime? how many times, possible 3-6 times a week, you will go through the ritual of wiping your arse........ of cleaning yourself in your shower, if you have one........ or cleaning yourself somewhere else if you're one of the millions of people (not so much in china where running tap water is the abundantly had) in nepal or india or wherever else there's no running water.......... how many times you will sit down to eat........ how many times you will do various things that are rituals in your life: jerk off, talk to your mother, sit down with pen and paper to write an old-fashioned letter, lick a stamp, spend over an hour preparing  a proper meal............. or are you one of those people that spends their days in internet cafes playing computer games

nowadays, even in communist china, where 3000 people are put to death by the State every year, more than the rest of the world's governments combined, although paling by comparison to the war dead in syria and iraq in the past few years and paling also in comparison to africa's war dead

so sorry to digress friends, the matter at hand was imagining two common forms of tortorous executions, well three if we count staking, four with crucifixion (which ISIS is carrying out now in iraq)........... possibly the worst was the german practice of slow boiling in oil........ a very german form of punishment.......... this is an absolutely horrifically painful way to die.......... you would absolutely not want to experience this, death would by excruciatingly slow and painful -- very possibly better to be crucified

another horrible form of death is quartering, a common form of quartering was to tie all four limbs to four different horses, then have them gallop off in opposite directions.........this would not be such a painful death -- there would be pain but it wouldn't be slow and excruciating like being boiled alive slowly in oil........ staking is a way of killing someone by staking them, often around the anus area, impaling them, as it were.........this death while painful, is relatively rapid

we mentioned above our common rituals as humans: crapping, jerking off, talking to our mothers, cooking, writing to pen friends, etc

but when do we consider our Death? when it should be? where we should go afterwards, etc.........with the average christian, it's anathema to talk about the afterlife involving taking on a new body on this or some other planet......... only abstractions such as heaven / hell / resurrection in unclear, unspecified, un-scientific terms are permitted, making Christianity distant and navel-gazingly remote and fearful about death

what about Death is fearful, even given an understanding that we are here to evolve as Souls and have experiences and then move on

putting outside medieval fears like painful/tortured deaths, or painful deaths dying of bubonic plague, apart from that, and fear of the unknown in general, and losing our material wealth, a great many people fear losing their loved ones

the question of relationships enters the equation......for non believers in reincarnation, it's hard for them to understand that the relationships and personalities that they currently know as their mother, father, wife, children, brothers, sisters, in-laws, etc; will not be the same personalities in future lifetimes.......and in one lifetime the soul might bother to marry and have children, but in the next lifetime may decide to pass on that......... at the end of the day, the Soul only has itself in its never-ending pilgrimage...... only fools reckon on only one lifetime...... at the very least people should try to do some good for the sake of not having to live out bad Karmic consequences in a future lifetime

is it difficult for a man at age seventy, to die, saying goodbye to his wife, children, grand-children, say, in some small village in italy.........and then 50 years later, for example, to be born, let's say on some other planet similar to Earth, and there have to build new relationships with different souls, most importantly, in the beginning, a new mother or mother figure

obviously a human cannot go through his life wondering these questions every single day, but no doubt at some point, especially among the elderly, these questions become relevant...........can you imagine a society, here on Earth, let's say a million years from now, for example, where the Souls are able to remember themselves in such a way that they are able to contact their former friends and family even after death, perhaps as a young adult of 20 years of age, from the perspective of their next lifetime, such a future is actually inevitable, albeit in a very distant way

wouldn't it be better to focus on this kind of thing, the ability to self-remember and become self-aware than fidgeting around with facebook all day long and playing clan-member?

this then seems to beg the question: when is it worthwhile to choose suffering over non-suffering for the sake of advancement...........

sorry to wax so philosophical, maybe it's because riding a motorbike brings me closer to death