Thich Quang Duc

This is a photograph of a Vietnamese Buddhist monk named Thich Quang Duc (Quang Duc an honorary title) who self immolated in protest to the repression of Buddhism by the Catholic church.

I read today a letter to the editor that the Catholic Church has been the single largest promoter of women’s rights, ever. I finished reading the letter to see if its author was kidding—apparently not, and this struck me. I have no problem with Catholicism, Christianity, or indeed, any major world religion. The core tenets of the three major monotheistic faiths are pretty hard to argue with. But the cognitive dissonance some practitioners possess is astonishing. For this man to truly believe that the church has a solid history of promoting human rights implies either ignorance or irrationality. In truth, religious institutions have a very mixed record when it comes to human rights.

But while hypocrisy and religious failings struck me when I saw this photo, so too did more positive thoughts. The monk pictured undertook an act of astonishing courage, subjecting himself to unimaginable pain to protest a repressive regime. He martyred himself—and, in contrast with current usage of that term, only himself—in the furtherance of a cause in which he truly believed. It is astonishing to me the lengths to which some people will go—and that was striking.

Honestly, many of the pictures deemed the world’s most famous or influential have that same theme. Humankind finds something appealing about standing up, about promoting your beliefs even at great personal harm. From Tianmen square to monk immolations, the fact that we are moved by displays of devotion to a cause is also notable. We may retain a crust of cynicism or a guise of jadedness. But I believe that everyone wants to believe in a cause greater than him or herself, and both the subject of this photograph and its fame serve as a testament to this.