I'm not bagging any particular culture, more acknowledging all the cruelty that exists in most of the modern world (including the last several thousand years) that people try so desperately to sweep under the rug of culture or tradition. \"This is how it's done.\" Right, unless you make a different choice. It often seems that choices are the only freedom we have; even that is tenuous and tied up in everyone else's collective mess. Not saying that the rugs we weave aren't also beautiful, they are breathtakingly so. But in the same way as good art. The joy is woven in with the sorrow. Acknowledging this seems (to me, take it or leave it) a first step towards enlightenment, or at least towards improvement.