Violence, Part Two

Last month, I began our two-part look at violence with a look at what it is and what it can do to a person. This month, I will conclude by picking up where I left off and looking at what violence has done to society.


Violence is all around us, and it has regrettably become a part of the life of every single person on this planet (and anyone who denies it is either ignorant or full of shit). We can easily see what it does on an individual level, how it tears families apart, how it creates pain that could never be described in words. We watch as the innocent are forced to suffer and die because of the way our society has chosen to live. But why? Why has society accepted violence as a means to solve problems?

To answer this, we must first accept our violent and brutal nature. I spoke in the first post about the history of violence; indeed, violence has been part of this world since the dawn of time, and we humans have only exacerbated it. While it is true that all animals have the capacity for violence, it is only humans that conscientiously act on those tendencies. The “lesser” animals (and I put lesser in quotes because I don’t agree with the massive superiority complex that we suffer from, but more about that another time) act out of instinct, usually to protect young or a good food source.

With humans, this is different. We intentionally act violent towards one another, usually for no good reason. This goes back thousands of years, with greedy kings seizing land and killing the occupants at every opportunity; this continues to happen today. For some reason that I cannot fathom (this is a moot point, as I believe there IS no rationalization for such behavior) we insist on using violence as a method of getting what we want, as a means to solve a problem.

Take, for example, early European colonies in the Americas. European Kings sent men to these lands for two reasons: expansion of their empire and acquisition of wealth. Whenever the native peoples stood up against them, they were killed (and those who didn’t die in battle tended to die from the diseases introduced by the settlers). Even worse, the invaders were completely blind to the natural beauty and power of the lands they fought so violently to take. If a greater power wanted something, they simply took it, using any force necessary and showing how skewed their sense of values had become.

We like to pretend that we don’t act like that anymore, but we are just as brutal as ever. Industries and governments alike destroy lands and force people to relocate so that they can drill for oil or extract a few minerals because demand has deemed them valuable. But because our lust for blood has whittled our patience down to nothing, we don’t want to wait for diplomatic solutions to pan out. Instead, we simply take.

But this doesn’t only extend to foreign lands. For thousands of years, rulers have used violence and the threat of violence to keep their subjects in line, killing or maiming those who rebelled or disagreed (insert cry of “Off with his head!” here), and this is still used today. Look at all the protesting in the Middle East. People are being killed because they no longer wish to live under the greedy warlords who govern them. Twenty-two years ago, tanks rolled over students in Tianemen Square. During the Civil Rights Movement, demonstrators were often harassed, beaten, or worse; the abuse came not only from citizens, much of it came from law enforcement and even government officials (such as Alabama Governor George Wallace standing in front of the door to the University of Alabama to prevent black students from entering; thankfully, that particular event did not result in violence); hell, even our own civil war comes down to the Union forcing the rebels back in line.

This opens the door on what I believe may be the most common reason for violence (aside from self-defense): failure to listen. Actually, I’d like to revise that statement to say that I believe the failure to listen is the root of all violence. This seems like a very outlandish claim, so let’s first look at a dictionary definition of “listen”. Dictionary.com gives four definitions:

Listen

1. to give attention with the ear; attend closely for the purpose of hearing; give ear.

2. to pay attention; heed; obey (often followed by to ): Children don't always listen to their parents.

3. to wait attentively for a sound (usually followed by for ): to listen for sounds of their return.

4. Informal . to convey a particular impression to the hearer; sound: The new recording doesn't listen as well as the old one.

Most of these describe listening in the purely physical sense, but look closely at number two, especially at the first three words: to pay attention. We’re all told to pay attention, but how many of us truly do it? I mean, ignorance is bliss, right?

Wrong.

Ignorance leads only to trouble, and it is magnified about a thousand times over when you are in a position of power. People become convinced that their point of view is the only right one and that no one else’s matters, hence the saying “in one ear and out the other”. At the least, this leads people to act like jackasses (I’m sure we’ve all known a few of those) while at the extreme, violent and destructive behavior can emerge, along with a large degree of smugness; in a person of power, this also creates fear and paranoia.

But there is more to this than just ignorance. Part of listening is to have an open mind, and frankly, most people do not. We are a remarkably close-minded species, and this is not limited to any one culture or place or even time. Our minds are more open than they once were, yes, but when faced with something we don’t understand, we retreat like a turtle into his shell. If something doesn’t mesh with our beliefs, instead of trying to understand it, we become defensive (due in part to the aforementioned lack of patience). We become ignorant and derisive of all points of view contrary to our own. Can you see now how a simple failure to listen results in virtually all violence on this planet (excepting those acts that are part of nature i.e. killing for food)?

But this doesn’t just affect one side of the coin. When someone fails to listen to you, you also become irate and lose patience. When diplomatic communications break down, the results can often be disastrous. Countries can end up going to war, the ultimate illustration of what a failure to listen can do. Countless lives could be lost, and many more could suffer untold horrors and pain. It has happened thousands of times in our history, it is happening now, and if we don’t change, it will continue to happen.

It doesn’t have to be this way. Above all else, we must open our minds to other points of view. We continue behaving so arrogantly and pretending that we know everything, because, simply put, we are fucking stupid. In a previous entry, I compared the current state of the human race as being analogous to that of a teenager. Extending this analogy, we can see just why we are so violent to each other; we need only look at an average high school to see how cruel teenagers can be to each other. The human race is just like this, torturing one another out of ignorance, lack of patience and an inability to accept those who are different.

There is, regrettably, one other reason that we act with such violence and cruelty towards each other and that is that some people actually enjoy it; in the recent film “The Dark Knight”, Bruce Wayne’s butler Alfred sums it up by saying “some men just want to watch the world burn.” In some people, the lust for violence has become so thoroughly ingrained that they no longer need any kind of reason for it, they just do it for entertainment. They enjoy watching people squirm. Such people are rare, but they can cause great damage nonetheless; think of brutal dictators like Hussein and Trujillo. Such people revel in destroying the world around them.

But now we are seeing a fascinating change. People are standing up to such dictators. They are sending a clear message that they no longer wish to live in a violent, oppressive society (ironically, through the use of violence, which in this instance I will neither condone nor condemn). As more and more peoples and nations begin to stand up for what is right, perhaps we will finally begin to usher in the era of peace we’ve looked for so many centuries. If we can continue down this path, we can finally begin to eliminate greed and corruption.

This will not be an easy path, nor will we be able to traverse it quickly; it is bound to be fraught with further horrors and will likely take several more generations in the least but it will all be worth it. The first step is to educate. Education will combat ignorance, which in turn will create acceptance, patience and understanding. If we can simply learn to listen, we can throw away the need for violence. Set an example for your friends and neighbors and for our children. Pass down a legacy of acceptance and kindness instead of one of ignorance and cruelty. Stop fighting over ridiculous things like resources and religion.

The greatest value is not in the ground, it is in life.

Violence, Part One

So I'm going to do something a bit different with this month's post. I have been meaning to post about this topic for some time, but there is a great deal I want to talk about, so I'm going to break it up into two posts. This month's topic is our obsession with violence.


“No one has the right to take the life of another.”

--Rem Saverem




Violence. We see it all around us, each and every day, in the forms of wars, crime and protests gone awry. We can't turn on our televisions without seeing it. Almost every news report has to do with it. Our TV shows and movies are filled with it. Even our great works of literature are filled with it. But why? Why do we have such an obsession with violence?

Firstly, this obsession is nothing new. For as long as humans have existed, we have been a violent and savage species. However, in the early days of humanity, violence actually served a legitimate purpose. We had to kill in order to survive, and to an extent, that is still true. We slaughter and butcher plants and animals for our food. But somewhere along the way, we started to slaughter and butcher for fun. We started to enjoy violence.

Some would say that it was only natural that we would grow to enjoy violence, seeing as the universe is an incredibly violent place. But I disagree, because the violence of the universe is a natural process, whereas the violence we obsess over is engineered for our entertainment; however, a hundred thousand years ago, it was a natural process, but that changed somewhere along the way.

Though it is difficult to determine precisely when violence made the jump from necessity to entertainment, it can be speculated that it occurred as tribal society began giving way to civilizations. There had already been a good amount of violence and warfare between tribes, but I consider that natural, akin to packs of animals fighting for hunting grounds. But as civilizations emerged, crime and violence also began to emerge. These two words are not quite synonymous, but they are symbiotic. To have one without the other is impossible, and one did not come before the other; rather, it's like the chicken and the egg.

However the two evolved, it was crime that was responsible for generating an interest in violence, thereby precipitating further crime. As crime became more prevalent, legal codes were created to aid in keeping order and to discipline offenders. Most codes prescribed various terms of imprisonment that were dependent on the crime committed, just like our legal codes in the United States. Many cultures instituted the famed “eye for an eye” policy, while virtually all codes, including religious ones, prescribed execution. Even in the earliest codes, capital punishment was highlighted, and as time wore on, many cultures began to exhibit such punishment in public, culminating in events such as the gladiator battles of ancient Rome.

But this was not the only thing that contributed to our bloodlust. There is another, arguably larger contributor: we are warmongers, and always have been. We have warred with one another since the dawn of time, but for reasons noted above, I believe that our true lust for war came with the dawn of civilization. As kings and pharaohs came to power, different cultures began to fight over the land, resources and religious beliefs. As time wore on, belief systems would become one of the most common excuses for war. Rulers believed that they had some god-given right to conquer new lands, not unlike Manifest Destiny in the 19th century. Even Popes used this as an excuse, sending European troops to take back the holy land during the crusades. Kings and Emperors alike would continue using this excuse for centuries and even in the present day. They fervently believe that they must unite the world under their “perfect” system of beliefs. Two world wars were fought over it. Countless lives have been lost because of rulers who are ignorant, selfish and fallacious.

But we cannot simply blame our governments for wars, because in many instances, people push them to declare war. Perhaps the finest example was the Spanish-American war, which only erupted as a result of newspaper owners such as Joseph Pulitzer and William Randolph Hearst using their newspapers to push us into it. But sometimes, it is the government that pushes the people into revolting, such as our own revolution or the revolutions currently happening in the middle east.

While war is driven by our lust for violence and bad reactions over petty disagreements, it unfortunately also helps us develop new ways of killing each other. Virtually every war ever fought has seen new innovations in weaponry, from the longbow to the atomic bomb, each new invention being deadlier than the least. Current weaponry innovations focus on how to kill with precision so that innocent bystanders aren't injured. I suppose this is useful, but you're still trying to justify killing someone, and no one has the right to snuff out someone else's life.

We have lived with this savagery for thousands of years and now, inevitably, it has become a vital part of our entertainment. Our most popular video games and television shows are filled with horrific, brutal acts of violence. Many of the highly regarded films are based upon wars. Our entertainment industry makes the gladiator battles of Rome look like two kids roughhousing. We delight in watching people obliterate each other and even in causing it in video games. I may be lecturing against this, but I am by no means an exception to this rule. I thoroughly enjoy putting Grand Theft Auto IV into the Xbox and shooting up the town or initiating large police chases that end in death and destruction. I am by no means a violent person; anyone who knows me knows I'd never hurt a fly. But I am human, and I regrettably have the same taste for violence as the rest of society. But why have we developed such a taste for blood? At first glance, it seems to defy any sense of logic, but upon further reflection, answers can be found.

The most obvious answer to this question is that we have become desensitized to violence. Our video games, movies and television shows are centered around it, and so are books, radio plays and news reports. We routinely see huge explosions in movies that make us shout “Dude! That was awesome!” We even invest millions of dollars in special effects to make the violence more realistic, and we are left wanting more. And this desensitizing isn't limited to violence; it extends also to swearing, sex, immorality and destruction of common sense.

We are becoming an even stupider and more violent species than ever. What's worse, we don't seem to mind our children being exposed to violence. Parents do what they can to shield their children and obviously no one is perfect, but they still let their children watch violence on television and in the movies. I recently heard an anecdote about a father who called into a PR department to complain about two women that kissed each other on a TV show, saying that it was immoral and that he didn't want his children to watch that (likely out of homophobia, but I will save my opinions on homosexuality for another day). Now, that right there shows that parents need to take more responsibility for their children. If you don't like something on a TV show or in a movie, don't let your child watch it! But an even better point was made by the operator. She asked if having the two women shoot each other instead of kiss would be more appropriate, to which the father responded yes, it would be.

Wait . . . what?

If that doesn't show desensitization to violence, I don't know what does (again, I'll dissect the homophobic point at a later time). What the hell kind of parent would willingly expose their children to violence without even considering the possible ramifications. I'm not a parent and clearly I don't have any frame of reference, but it seems like common sense dictates that we think before we act. But this obsession with violence, death and destruction is destroying our common sense. One only needs to read the Darwin Awards to see how stupid we are becoming. Worse yet, I fear we may be developing a severe sense of apathy. So few people give a damn about anything other than themselves anymore, and I know that we are so much better, both as a society and on an individual basis, but I will go into more detail on what our obsession with violence is really doing to us in next month's post.

This is the part of the post where I'm supposed to wrap things up and leave it with a nice moral at the end, but there are so many unknowns that there's really no clear cut path to an answer. I'm not trying to write an expose decrying the use of violence; rather I am trying to get an understanding of what it does to a person and to society and what we can change for the better.

Violence is indeed very damaging to a person, but just how damaging and in what context? Certainly witnessing a massive explosion or gunfight would be far worse than watching it on television. But does that mean we should stop showing violence completely? I don't think it does. I think that we need to gear it in a way that makes us learn from our past in order to prevent mistakes from being repeated because, at its core, violence shows us what happens when society breaks down and runs on primal instincts.

But it doesn't have to be this way. Ever. We have the potential to erase the need for violence and to be more than we are and more than we can possibly imagine. We only need to look inside ourselves to see it.


Stay tuned for next month's post, where I will delve into our brutal and violent nature, looking at our past, present and, if the trend continues, our future.