Whatever happened to "South Park"? (video)

Entertain The Elk, 3/6/19; Dhr. Seven, Pat Macpherson, Amber Larson (eds.), Wisdom Quarterly

This is an exploration into the history of South Park, its meteoric rise in popularity from that one time space aliens gave Cartman an anal probe in the episode "Cartman Gets an Anal Probe" (S1 E1), the unique story writing style, and the episode that sparked its downfall into mediocrity.

NOTE: It's not our intention to offend anyone's religious sensibilities. Because of that, the image* of Muhammad has been blurred out in this video. The maker of this video hopes everyone can understand and respect this decision (even if one may not agree with it) so as to still enjoy the video.

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*Thou shalt have no graven images

Gandharan Greco-Buddhist art

[Everyone should know that many religions begin with an aniconic period not representing the founder or god or the ineffable. But over time this is ignored. Zen gets a zero (enso), the Tao gets a yin-yang, and Buddhism gets Greco-Buddhist statues.

The same was true of the Buddhism and an aniconic period. Apparently, the historical Buddha did not want to be glorified or limited or identified with one body.

When people in his day wanted to honor him, he redirected them to honoring the dharma, the ultimate truth, and allowed only symbols like an enlightenment tree or a symbol to represent him.

His country of Gandhara, Central Asia (hometown Bamiyan, Afghanistan, according to Dr. Ranajit Pal) loved him so much however and the population there was not Buddhist yet, so they ignored or never heard any such injunction, so the first and oldest representations we have of the Buddha as a human being are from Gandhara/Afghanistan (ranajitpal.com).

It seems "Shakya Land" was Gandhara at that time, and it is Gandharan art/Greco-Buddhist art that produced the first and quite possibly most beautiful examples of a Eurasian-looking man of 6 feet with black hair, blue eyes, and fair golden skin, as the texts describe him. But all the Asian countries have made him in their image, as happens with most icons like Issa of Nazareth (Jesus Christ), but not Mohammed, whose followers the Muslims/Mohammedans keep to the relatively new religion's injunction not to represent or make graven images and idols of religious figures and gods.

This is particularly important in Islam today because of a controversy about what Muhammed actually looked like, with Sunni and Shia hoping for their side to be vindicated, elevated, and celebrated. So to keep the peace, one must not show any image, as has been chosen here, even though we all side with Matt and Trey in their right to do whatever they want to insult, demean, or mock religions and their icons. It's funny even if it's hurts feelings, sensibilities, or religious decrees.]