If you don't experience seeing an American contractor getting decapitated by ISIS, then you may never have the gut-punch visceral understanding of how certain parts of the world works. Aside from actually getting kidnapped by ISIS, you can't experience it and truly feel the emotions of that act. Until you see a grainy, badly-compressed mobile phone video of someone slicing through cartilage and bone and sinew, a body twitching, blood trickling out from under the knife, a bunch of guys screaming and hollering and celebrating the victory of a murder. The body, headless, lifeless, being picked up and tossed in a ditch.
Now, watching that video won't help you understand ISIS at all. It may even completely color your interpretation of why the events took place, or who was doing it, or why. Is it better to walk around ignorant to a visceral understanding of horrible things? Or to walk around with new biases, after having seen something horrible with no context? Even if the "truth" is lost somewhere in between, I would rather know a little than know nothing.
We live in a world of "Nightly News" and platforms full of rules and restrictions. "Truth" will always elude us there, as long as someone else is deciding for us what we are allowed to see. It's nice to have at least one place where you can remove the filter.
Now, watching that video won't help you understand ISIS at all. It may even completely color your interpretation of why the events took place, or who was doing it, or why. Is it better to walk around ignorant to a visceral understanding of horrible things? Or to walk around with new biases, after having seen something horrible with no context? Even if the "truth" is lost somewhere in between, I would rather know a little than know nothing.
We live in a world of "Nightly News" and platforms full of rules and restrictions. "Truth" will always elude us there, as long as someone else is deciding for us what we are allowed to see. It's nice to have at least one place where you can remove the filter.