What has been getting my attention lately is an amalgamation
of thoughts related to the callousness with which people, and men in
particular, tend to treat each other these days. Men have always killed other
men, women, and children, but there are more killers (men and women) today than
ever before. There is no doubt
about that. With men the violence
can be traced back to the beginning of recorded history (I’m not sure about
women). But anyway, today it seems
as if killers are not satisfied with just killing someone. They need to torture and maim them as
well. They need to inflict
unspeakable pain upon them. Women
are not just raped and murdered these days, but brutalized beyond recognition
and discarded in a dumpster or dumped in the woods like the proverbial pile of
garbage, as if life were nothing more than that.
Where does such unspeakable callousness come from? How has it come to be born in the souls
of men (and women) to the degree that it has today?
Are there just too many movies, video games and TV shows
depicting such mayhem? I don’t
know, but it begs again the age-old question, Does art imitate life, or does
life imitate art? My question, however, is How can anybody
mistake butchery for art?
Love, it has been
said, is the answer. Love conquers all. All
you need is love. We’ve all heard the biblical commands to love your
neighbor as yourself, and to love
your enemies. Greater love hath no man, the bible also says, than to lay down his
life for a friend. And, of course, the Good Book’s
description of love that we hear at so many weddings, Love is
patient, love is kind etc. . . . . . . .
There is a lack of love in the lives of people today. And I
mean a lack of authentic love, not the kind that is sold wholesale by
Hollywood. I’m talking about love
that impacts and endures rather than the pretend love that serves only as
instant, but temporary, gratification.
But this hate and mayhem goes way beyond a lack of
love. There is a lack of common
decency as well. Even if you do
not love someone you can still find it within yourself to relate to them with
decency. In fact, even if you hate
someone you can still treat them with a measure of decency. Decency is a choice that every one of
us make every time we choose to interact with another individual. The problem is that in our increasingly
impersonal culture we make fewer and fewer choices to engage with dignity. Is it any big surprise that those among
us who are inclined towards violence would ramp it up as well, to the point of ferocity and brutality even,
just as they would ramp up a verbal interaction with someone they might
encounter along the way?
Something’s wrong with this picture. Something’s terribly wrong.
Now I’m not one to subscribe to the thinking that if someone
watches violent movies, or plays violent video games that he’s necessarily
going to become violent himself.
Some will, and some won’t.
Some people never would under any circumstances. But others would even under the most
innocuous of circumstances. For
many it is a matter of becoming what you are inundated with, whether you are
fed this trash by others or choose to feed it to yourself. People tend to become what they indulge
in. It becomes what they identify
with. I don’t really want to
identify with killing, with depravity, debauchery, or wickedness of any
kind. I’m sorry, but y’know it
just makes me feel kind of . . . . . . . . . . . . oh, I don’t know. . . . . .
. . . . . . . . kind of. . . . . . . . kind of. . . . . . . . . uh . . . . . .
. . . . . . . . . DIRTY!
