From the U.K. Yahoos Department:
Have you ever wandered through a zoo and wondered why only animals are caged there? Did you ever wonder why there were no human beings on display, since humans are animals, too? If so, I hate to break it to you, but you’re not unique after all. The London Zoo now has people on exhibit in an attempt to display homo sapiens as a "plague species":
"The ‘Human Zoo’ is intended to show the basic nature of human beings, reported Agence France-Presse.
"’We have set up this exhibit to highlight the spread of man as a plague species and to communicate the importance of man’s place in the planet’s ecosystem,’ a statement from London Zoo said.
"According to the report, the scantily clad volunteers will be treated as animals and kept amused at the central London zoo facility with games and music. They will go home each night after the zoo closes during Britain’s bank holiday weekend.
"Dozens of hopeful volunteers applied to be part of the eight-person team through an Internet competition."
I don’t know who to pity more: The officials who dreamed up this idea; the volunteers who debased their human dignity by applying to become a zoo exhibit; or the British public who might well be funding this travesty, at least in part, through their tax dollars pounds.
You mean their tax pounds?
Humans are a plague species? Sounds like an American liberal.
I have to admit, I might have applied just to subvert the dominant paradigm. I’d stand over by the visitors, shouting out memorized poetry.
I mean, you have to showcase all of human behavior. So you need more evidence of technology than bikini tops.
“You mean their tax pounds?”
Yeah, so I made the correction. Thanks! 🙂
Last time I checked, death entered the world via man. And meanwhile creation groans in awaiting the revelation of the sons of God. We are, for the moment at least, the worst plague this earth has ever seen. Of course it is precisely because we are not merely animals that this is so. It takes something more powerful than a mere animal to royally screw things up.
“. . . or the British public who might well be funding this travesty, at least in part, through their tax pounds.”
As in pounds of flesh? Because that’s what’s on display in this “exhibit” – de-humanized humans; folks who’ve had what makes them human stripped way.
Wesley J. Smith (author of the book “The Culture of Death”) has written about this in his blog (www.jesleyjsmith.com/blog). It’s a very good blog in regards to the assault on human dignity in all forms from the medical community. Back to the zoo exibit, evidently the homo sapeans got some special treatment (as in hotel rooms at night, TV during the day and starbucks in the morning). One of the participants has a blog and wrote about it:
“OK, The new job sucks. Good thing it’s only for four days. I can’t believe that some idiot came up with this idea; all over the news (we have a TV set in the cave), they’re promoting it like this great, ground-breaking idea. Nobody is saying the obvious thing. It’s like the elephant in the living room (or the drunk uncle at the Christmas party). Nobody is willing to say: This may have been a stupid idea.” (http://elevenpointfive.blogspot.com/2005/08/i-want-my-life-back.html)
This exhibit actually indicates that humans are not like animals more than it indicates we are like them. Elephants and monkeys aren’t walking up top the ticket counter and asking to see the human exhibit, after all.
“Art is the signature of man,” says G. K. Chesterton. I guess that includes bad art, too — the animals can’t even make that.
Two dynamics are at play:
1) The more secular a society is, the more its stories (movies, TV shows, books, etc) just stink. Without that supernatural connection to the truth, everything produced by such cultures just rings false. Because it is.
2) People still want to be entertained and the low road, objectification and denigration of our fellow humans, is always an option as long as you have warm bodies around. This is where we get things like coliseums and reality TV.