So anyone who dies ever is a martyr as long as someone talks about them?A martyr to me is as successful as their ability to be the topic of conversation.No, they have to die as some sort of sacrificial lamb towards the conversation.
I agree
But I don't agree that choosing public suicide accomplishes this goal. A viral video of a human on fire brings more atten to the human themself. A viral video that captures the injustice they protest could bring attention to the conversation without making it about themself because they selfishly choose to be imortalized with the cause.You are aware that it's a cause related to monks in Vietnam,
bold of you to assume, I didn't know that until reading that very sentence. For all I know he commit sui for BLM
It's, uh, in his video's title?
Video title "Vietnamese Buddhist Monk Self Immolation" doesn't say why though. For all I know he commit sui for BLM.
Because it is a video of himself and not of what he was protesting that reached me. His face, his image has reached me over here in America, with absolutely no hint of whatever drove him to sacrifice himself ever mentioned during the act.
It doesn't take much to find it.
Wouldn't have taken much to find whatever cause he is protesting even if he hadn't killed himself. His act of suicide did not, within the act itself, bring attention to his cause.
PalePeach said:You only even looked up his name because I said suicide is an ineffective form of protest, not because his actions worked in bringing the information to you.
You seem to have misunderstood my point. I'm not saying what I know or am aware of determines what is meaningful, I'm saying his goal of bringing attention to his caused failed because commiting suicide took attention away from the cause and directed it at himself. I used myself as an example because i am a human who received more information about this person than the topic he was trying to spread information about.
You're mostly reflecting on how it didn't have you put down your chips until it was spoonfed to you.
I watched the video. This man gave his life to make less of an impact than Kony 2012.
No way, his death was "In Project Mayhem", and if something else killed him it'd mean roughly the same thing.
yes, if he died of a bomb or in a fight or something he would still be a martyr, because he was killed by an external force. If bob decided to stand on a street corner and shoot himself while calling people snowflakes he would not have been a martyr- unless killing himself had been an "assignment" for Project Mayhem. In this case, the assignment would be the external force driving death.
It'd likely have lost a lot of the poetics, but in theory... considering how freeform their assignments for Project Mayhem are, and that Bob was a former TV personality for steroids with a well known name?
In this case I could consider Bob a martyr then, just like the hypothetical famous-monk mentioned previously.
A human coming to their own conclusion to kill themself is not a martyr just because they sad it was "for" a cause. A stalker once killed herself "for" Paula Abdul. No one told her to, she just decided to. I would not consider her a martyr either.
Well yeah his PR didn't spur some #MeToo movement.
If he were presented in a more sympathetic light while she were presented as a monster he could have been taken as a martyr.
I disagree. His cause was for Paula to love him and instead she moved and stopped making public appearances/ inerracting with fans. I don't think his death could in any way be painted as martyrdom. It was mental illness/ a desire for attention.
The point still stands, a person killing themself "for" a cause does not automatically make them a martyr unless the death is forced upon them.
Just look at cult leaders and celebrity icons, even those of lower castes try to emulate the glitz and glare that'll make people notice, and what's shinier and more identifiable than a loosely relatable death?
Did you just make a 180 pivot and start agreeing with me?
No, my point is that it's about PR. PR doesn't have to be solely about self-promotion, the imagery could just as easily be BLM paraphernalia for instance.
Alright, by that logic then suicide is not ass effective at generating PR, and this monk is not a martyr bc a significant amount of the PR he generated was directed at his own existence and was fueled by a primal instinct to be remembered. He had more potential to drive PR to his cause if he was alive, instead of pushing the cause out of the limelight and scooting himself in.
By choosing suicide he chose to put self-promotion before cause-promotion
I think the motivation of a martyr is important. Public suicide is not martyrdom because rather than really doing everything he could to bring attention to the cause he used it as an opportunity to be remembered.
Being remembered can cause changes though. Imagine if Martin Luther King for example lived long enough to pick up a drug habit or something, it'd be a different future.
Martin Luther King was shot, he didn't commit sui on stage.
Not the point, the point's more about the idea that lives beyond them, succeeds them. If MLK lived long enough to do something heinous, he'd be remembered differently.
Therein is the power of "Martyrdom".
Martin Luther King suffered at the hands of other's for what he believed in. I still do not agree that choosing to inflict pain upon yourself holds nearly as high a level of influence as having pain inflicted upon you by others.
A person inflicting pain on themself gets to decide that they want that pain inflicted. A martyr is someone facing circumstances beyond their control.
