"Desecration" is an interesting word. Generally it just means to vandalize or destroy. But literally speaking, it means to make a holy thing unsacred. This is where the interest comes in. You can't desecrate something that isn't holy. Rocks and sticks are already profane, so there is nothing you can do to them that will shock or offend people. And at its heart, that's all that desecration actually is: offending somebody by not treating something the way they want it treated.
You can learn a great deal about a person's interests and values by seeing what they consider desecration. If making fun of sports upsets somebody, then that person probably considers sports to be too important to deride.
Keep in mind that you can like something without consecrating it. For example, it is perfectly fine to love sports tremendously, but still be able to acknowledge how crazy it is to have multi-billion dollar industries based on groups of people throwing balls to one another.
The conflict between fetishizing and desecrating can be fertile ground to explore. What makes something sacred, and why does it so deeply upset us when other people don't see things the same way?
About Me
- Kevin Bahler
- I am a writer. A writer is one who writes. By the same logic, I am also a thinker, an observer, and a puzzle solver. I am a graduate from the State University of New York at Cortland with a degree in Professional Writing. The idea of the program is that one studies all three aspects of writing as a whole: Creative Writing, Technical Writing, and Rhetoric. The knowledge I have gained in those subjects is put to use in every aspect of my life. The worst thing a person can be is boring. I am most interested in people who can pique my interests. An example is people who can correctly use the word 'pique'.
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