[quote]LIFTICVSMAXIMVS wrote:
etaco wrote:
Somehow for millions of years our species survived with the young seeing death, violence and sex (one room huts) not just on a frequent basis, but as a part of life. Now with society making this stuff outright taboo to the young I think it has a fetishizing effect for many. The effect these things have on kids have as much to do with the reaction of their parents and the kids’ socialization as it does with the material itself.
I don’t think violence was as prominent in the average daily life of a typical person in history as we may have been led to believe. History, I think, gives a biased view because conflict is always framed as the crank that turns epochs. Ideas, any and all of them, are much more important and play a larger role to society than war. History is human action in the past; human action is the culmination of ideas. Yes, wars have been fought over ideas but all products of humanity are also the result of ideas.
I think violence didn’t become really understood by regular non military society until mass warfare was brought about by mechanization. Before that battles were fought up close and personal and the average person didn’t take part except when they were invaded and or conquered. There is also a real difference between witnessing violence first hand and being desensitized by it through repetitious fake murder.
I think violence is detrimental to the natural progression of ideas which is the essence of humanity. Without ideas we are just monkeys.[/quote]
Wars have typically been tangential the average person’s life-- frequently there but not a daily sight up close for most-- but the relative peace that has come from relatively pervasive rule of law is a very new phenomenon. For nearly all of human existence, crimes, “wrongs” and personal slights within a community were dealt with in up close and personal ways. Moreover people of all ages saw death up close on a frequent basis, with larger families having drastically higher mortality rates and even small children needing to kill dinner with their bare hands on a routine basis.
You may assert that violence is a detriment to progress, but violence, and in more general terms aggression, has always been a critical driver to the advancement of humanity. You may argue that scrubbing all violence and expressions of violent instincts from society will help it ‘advance’, but this is a radical proposition that’s wholly lacking in evidence to suggest its efficacy. I would argue that such an effort to extinguish these instincts would be just as likely, if successful, to retard human advancement. Don’t mistake what I’m saying; actual violence is typically a detriment, but our violent and aggressive instincts do drive us to useful ends as often as to destruction.
If kids are going crazy with video games and movies that go beyond the pale in terms of violence, I’d suggest that it may be their lack of familiarity with the real thing and their general sheltering underlying it. Without question though, the violence is in our DNA. Do we encourage people to do the equivalent of jerking off by playing video games, go out and do the real thing with either war or street fighting, or try to snuff out all thoughts and urges, successful as that would be?