Is human life even sacred at all?

It is to the people who are exploited. Unfortunately it's not to the people who exploit. But that's nothing new.

I'd concur with Aroud's statement concerning the importance of differenciating between the 'sacred' and the 'valuable' (although for the purpose of the orignal thread, I think it sufficient).

My take on it is this: Humanity tends to valuate/deem sacred those things which are not so profuse - plain and simple. Pave all our streets with diamonds, see the hills and mountains strewn with them, and the diamond would hold much less value - be pursued and extolled that much the less.

Bodies everywhere, flesh, hair and the smell of perspiration... packed lines, hovels and villages crammed like sardines... apartment buildings like compressed honey combs.... traffic lines.... miles-long streams of starving refugees... images of blood-strewn concrete on our televisions 24-hours a day. It'd seem one couldn't swing a dead cat and not hit a human being. So profuse are we, so ensconed in our own mental fortresses of religion, politics and race we've become jaded/blind to the value of the individual.

So yea, there is a contradiction there. I believe it has to do with our sheer numbers and the bigotries within.

That sounds an awful lot like an overgeneralization to me. There's a difference between something being very valuable and something being sacred, for one thing.

Of course it's an overgeneralization, but it was meant to communicate that people value their own lives more than the lives of those they exploit (in whom they value the spoils of the exploitation more). I'm not operating with a fixed definition of what 'sacred' means here, though, other than it being similar to 'irreplaceable', i.e. more than highly valuable.

I'd concur with Aroud's statement concerning the importance of differenciating between the 'sacred' and the 'valuable' (although for the purpose of the orignal thread, I think it sufficient).

My take on it is this: Humanity tends to valuate/deem sacred those things which are not so profuse - plain and simple. Pave all our streets with diamonds, see the hills and mountains strewn with them, and the diamond would hold much less value - be pursued and extolled that much the less.

Bodies everywhere, flesh, hair and the smell of perspiration... packed lines, hovels and villages crammed like sardines... apartment buildings like compressed honey combs.... traffic lines.... miles-long streams of starving refugees... images of blood-strewn concrete on our televisions 24-hours a day. It'd seem one couldn't swing a dead cat and not hit a human being. So profuse are we, so ensconed in our own mental fortresses of religion, politics and race we've become jaded/blind to the value of the individual.

So yea, there is a contradiction there. I believe it has to do with our sheer numbers and the bigotries within.