Alter of Blood

In the age of the Conquistadors when the Spanish first explored the lands of South America, they observed in horror as the Incas would offer human sacrifices to their gods in order for the sun to rise the next day. With their warring with neighboring tribes, their prisoners would be taken to the top of a stone pyramid and their beating heats removed from their chests. It was a fate some of the Conquistadors would experience firsthand. While many other cultures throughout history offered human sacrifice to appease their gods, the Incas were among the last. Or were they?

In this age we still offer prisoners for sacrifice to the gods of ineptitude. As atonement for mans inability to understand himself as a species. These prisons falsely call themselves correctional facilities when in reality they are nothing more than waiting rooms to a human waste disposal unit. A place to take human refuse that cannot be handled or corrected. For those countries that still practice capital punishment, we indulge in our ultimate failure. Here the ancient laws of Moses are evoked where vengeance is exacted on one by an inherited or elected aristocracy and the contempt for the precious gift of human life is displayed. While the condemned finds themselves in this position because they are convicted of committing a crime the powers believe the cost of human life is atonement for, it is a total contradiction to the ethos that no man is beyond redemption.

But where is the failure? Is the failure in the fact that it is so much easier to dispose of than to repair? That as we become more and more of a “throw away” society, that we can apply this practice to human life as well. After only decades from the horror of arbitrary extermination of a race because it was easier and more economical than the cost of relocation, has the human race not learned anything. Are the gods of economics so great that they should govern over life itself and if so what is the value of a human life?