Antinatalism and Depression XLV: Умиление
Channel: Anekantavad
Date: 2012-08-18

What is worse: physical or spiritual suffering? They are by no means the same thing.

Does this music make you imagine depression? It doesn't have that effect on me, yet it is filled with sadness, longing and resignation. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XzK5YEVMHn4

Look at this painting. http://silverandexact.files.wordpress.com/2012/07/religious-procession-in-kursk-province-illya-repin-1883.jpg
There is evidence of disgusting religious deceit and hypocrisy (the wealthy clothes of the  rich woman holding the icon and on the clergymen), violent political oppression (the mounted policemen lashing the crowd with their whips), grinding poverty (most people have rags on their feet instead of shoes), and blind cruelty (the hunchbacked boy in the foreground - the central figure of the painting - being shooed back by the man with the stick). Suffering, injustice, superstition and hypocrisy all around.

But what is the overall "feel"? What about the women on the left, their heads bowed in humility before the icon? What about the young disabled man himself? Or the bearded men carrying the icon? Their dignity and "soulfulness" seems to overcome all the other evidence of how bad and revolting life can be.

Or how about this one. Ostensibly it's even bleaker than the religious procession. But look at it with the choir clip I linked to above, and it subtly changes, doesn't it? http://www.fandresen.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/09/ilya-repin-volga-barge-haulers-1873.jpg

I tried to find the clip from "K-19, The Widowmaker" where the volunteers welded the damaged nuclear reactor, knowing full well they were killing themselves in the process. That illustrates the point very well. If anyone can find a link, let me know.

Here's an impossible situation. It's also a situation many Russian elderly can probably remember to this day http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8yOBCGwMpeo