Asia Essentials

In the 1st and 2nd centuries CE, Imperial Rome experienced an entertainment‘arms race’ of monumental proportions. Relatively sedate shows of therepublican era gave way to evermore extravagant gladiator games, publicexecutions, and chariot races. Although Rome had traditional theatres, all theaction was in the games and races. As the Emperors granted more publicholidays and the public became addicted to bloody entertainment, new andevermore cruel games had to be devised. Ad bestias became a particularfavourite of the people, with prisoners wrapped in animal skins and thendevoured by exotic wild beasts, to the cheers of the audience. Althoughmodern sensitivities would no longer tolerate such bloody spectacles, wehave migrated some of the same emotions to an artificial reality and games(zombie invasions, dead space, call of duty) while at the same time, public isbecoming so inured to news violence, that even terrorist attacks no longerseem to be able to survive for much more than one or two news cycles.