I just finished watching the movie "Braveheart" and was considerably shaken by the torture scenes at the end, when William Wallace is put to death. He is hung by a rope and then cut down while still alive, quartered (his limbs stretched in all four directions by horses), eviscerated with surgical-type tools, and finally beheaded.
This got me to thinking about torture in general. Well-wrought scenes like those in "Braveheart" give some sense of what experiencing this ultimate horror must be like.
Then I did a little Wikipedia research and learned more about torture. William Wallace got off fairly easily, at least in the movie (in real life some of his organs were removed and burned before him, apparently). People have invented and manufactured an incredible array of torture technology and devices, from thumbscrews to tasers. It is a branch of human knowledge to which considerable thought has been devoted.
I've seen worse things, such as in a gangster movie in which a guy's head is put in a vise and slowly crushed. Almost unbearable to watch.
This stuff is still going on, all around us, in the basement next door, secret CIA prisons, weird churches . . .
Sometimes it's depressing and shameful just being part of the human race. Why did we have to be this way. Sometimes I long for death as a means of separating myself from my own kind. But no torture, please!
link