Riot violence. Gun violence. MMA violence. Cinematic violence. Video game violence. Street fight violence. Violence, violence, violence. Everywhere, **everyday**.
Aggression. Hostility. Anger. Rage. Hate. Dominance. These emotions are often linked to violence. They are embedded in our biological makeup. We are complex beings; we have a wide range of emotions, all of which have their place in our ability to express ourselves.
And there is such a thing as necessary violence. Through biological evolution, we are programmed to put in our best efforts to survive in this world of duality. Not so much the duality of “pure good versus pure bad”, or in the Abrahamic religion sense (which has not been empirically proven anyway) – but in the danger versus survival sense. In the world of nature, we are either the predator or the prey. We humans have secured a place at the top of the food chain, though we are not immune to its dangers. Life is primarily about survival. We sometimes have to defend ourselves to survive. Self-defense is often justifiable.
Some people will say life is about love, or about having a family, or about having a purposeful career or passion. However, no matter how you slice and dice it, our main objective in life is to survive it to the best of our ability, for as long as possible.
That means that throughout your life, you will face a lot of near misses with death. It may be that time when you were a kid and played chicken with traffic, and a car slammed on the breaks just inches from turning you into roadkill. Or you had appendicitis and required emergency, life-saving surgery. Or you got in a physical fight with a bully, and the bully pummeled you into next week, and possibly caused irreversible damage. Or perhaps it was the other way around: you knew how to defend yourself and therefore took care of business.
Media / news outlets compound the dangers of life by broadcasting all day long, every day, stories of violence. Homicidal maniacs, thugs who beat up convenience store clerks and take their money, brawls during Black Friday shopping bonanzas, road rage, and shooting after shooting after shooting.
We are so saturated with stories and images of violence, that there must be a link between that saturation and how we have become paradoxically desensitized to it. What is that contradiction? That so many people in our society lament about all of the atrocities that occur, yet those same people also enable violence in many areas of their life experiences.
Our real problem right now is that we **glorify** the hell out of violence. We can’t wait to watch our favorite action heroes pulverize their enemies – even pausing, rewinding, and replaying some of our favorite scenes of blood and guts.
Video games aren’t necessarily a gateway to violent acts – however, we do have a culture now that blatantly gets off on watching CGI humans and fantastical creatures get blown to bits with non-stop rounds of ammunition. We laugh when we sneak up behind our online friends in a shooter game and watch their head pop off their neck at point blank shooting range.
We watch UFC / MMA in a colosseum matter. Remember when martial arts were supposed to be a form of ancient wisdom, of being a dangerous, yet peaceful warrior who doesn’t look for trouble and will only fight when absolutely necessary? Or how about the earlier iterations of competitive martial arts? They were more on the lines of somewhat aggressive sparring, but more to make a “point” (and literally score a point too) based on the accuracy of the attack, without need to prove that you can knock your opponent out cold, or smash their face in with a flying knee kick followed by ground-and-pound finale.
And them there is boxing, which has been around for quite some time, and comes with its own brand of macho mentalities. One sort of positive about boxing, though, is the workouts involved are super examples of building a solid combo of strength, speed, agility, and power. Yet, like UFC, boxing enables a colosseum mentality of blood-thirsty, testosterone-fueled spectators – many of whom have an insatiable desire to watch people physically punish each other. Call them sadistic. Even call them a bit sociopathic in the moment.
Of course, some people will debate this, explaining how the various fighting strategies are an art form, or an extension of manipulating the human anatomy. No matter how the argument is spun, the fundamental problem is the same: Glorified violence provides no real value to society or human progress. Rather, it is just a way to keep us in a more unevolved life of beating our chests and baring our teeth to show we are not to be messed with.
Then there are the good ol’ memes that we maniacally use to nourish our views on life and, well, violence. Do you have a lot of friends/connections on the social media apps you use? See how many share boastful memes about what they would do if someone were to break into their house. So many itchy-trigger-finger gun owners, particularly here in the U.S., apparently love to talk about the hypothetical bad guys they would shoot if said bad guys ever decided to mess with said gun owner. It’s now even everyday speak to hear people emphatically talk about how going to shooting range, owning a gun, “blowing up shit” is so *empowering”. And just look at all the selfies of gun enthusiasts proudly displaying their firearm prowess.
Yet when the occasional riots occur, generally over an social issue that has gone viral, it’s confounding how many armchair observers rise up and complain about all of the violence in the world, how we are in apocalyptic times, how the world is proverbially going to hell in a handbasket.
But who are the *real* enablers of that violence? Sure, many of us don’t have a strong desire to go out and destroy people’s property, drive trucks full speed through crowds of people, or burn buildings to the ground. Yet are also not completely off the hook about the violence that we find disdainful. That’s because as long as we live in a Western society of “I am so tough and ‘badass’”, and we continually reflect that in our speech, the memes we share, and the barrage of threats we make to each other on social media – really, count how many posts you see in a week where an argument is not only filled with insults and vitriol, but a whole lot of people threatening to “kick ass” – WE are also to blame for the problems we despise.
Here’s another homework assignment: In your conversations with people, whether that be in-person, over texting, or on social media, observe all the people who give disclaimer after disclaimer about how they are not the person to be messed with, or what they will do if someone does mess with them.
As long as we are hungry for violence, we will remain in a destructive, backwards thinking rut. A large portion of humans have the ability to foster a more peaceful existence. Yet do we ALL really want that?