Violence Begets Violence
Violence Begets Violence
The Enduring Concept Remains Irrefutable
This article examines the foundational structure in our society that promotes the cultural acceptance of violence and damage to the innocent. The thoughts herein can be extended to many of the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune that we see before us, in addition to what has been described as repeating random acts of violence.
Presidents, governors, religious leaders, teachers, and parents have continuously lamented the mass shootings in the United States — which have only increased over decades. In all of the explanations, there remains a blind spot to the direct connection between a nation that supports vast international military operations and the relentless tragedies within the country.
A recent President of the United States responded to the shootings at a community college by saying that people had “become numb to this” and that “we are the only advanced country on Earth that sees these kinds of mass shootings every few months.”
The immediate debate and the all-too-familiar commentary about gun control that follows every shooting remain perennial — and certainly have had little effect in limiting mass shootings.
A weaponized society is dangerous. The right to bear arms comes with a great responsibility to understand the limitations of using them to resolve disputes or vent frustration. Economic forces allow the gun industry to interpret the right to bear arms for their own gain. This ensures the availability of weapons for everyone, including the misdirected souls who cause so much harm.
Blame is often focused on the lack of gun control, and although access to weaponry by the unbalanced is relevant, it is certainly not the central explanation for these continuing atrocities. In other attempts to understand them, there is conjecture in the realm of psychology, aimed at considering the motives of deviant individuals.
The simplest reasoning is rarely applied; these crimes are engendered within the accepted morality of a brutal nation.
Relentless news about domestic mass shootings along with hostilities abroad blind us to the overt relationship between events in the headlines. There is little effort in any analysis to explain how international interventions are related to the increasing number of mass murders in the United States, but the connection only becomes more apparent.
Just observing most news websites, it is easy to find reports of more armaments being sent to faraway places on the same page discussing the latest mass shootings.
A few years back, a headline read, U.S. Is Blamed After Bombs Hit Afghan Hospital, saying the military had conceded the attack might have been collateral damage. On the same day there was a seemingly unrelated story, Killers Fit a Profile, but So Do Many Others. This analysis of the psychology of mass shooters concludes, “With many of the killers, the signs are of anger, disappointment, and solitude.”
At first glance, these articles may seem unrelated. Responses to single events usually focus on finding or explaining individual causes. The relevance of these stories to each other is not complicated; our country is so immersed in violence, we fail to recognize the simple association.
Although seemingly disparate, reports of war and damage abroad and mass killings at home describe disturbing acts engendered by the same forces. Yet these events are treated as if they were independent of each other; like sports and weather. The synchronicity of incidents provides insight into this correlation and raises questions about the origins and foundation of continuing universal hostility.
Although only a small percentage of the population actually serves, all young men are primed for the military. Our culture glorifies fighting its enemies in many ways. Boys have toy guns at an early age and are not discouraged from playing war as a fun activity. Video games and much of film and television present violence as the unavoidable consequence of rivalry.
There have been a number of perpetrators of mass shootings who were frustrated young men obsessed with guns, some who were turned away by the U.S. Army after basic training. The profiles of shooters contain other factors indicating instability, hostility, and loneliness, but almost all have some direct relationship with a militaristic mindset; they decided that violence was an acceptable solution to their conflicts.
There are mass murderers who were declared unfit for military service, and other mass killers who never attempted to serve, but imagined themselves as scorned or powerful and heroic. And there are those who served honorably and then vented frustration when their reality had been crushed in some way. All of their violence was bred within a military culture that begins with corrupting youthful innocence.
With a range of weapons available, and having practiced since childhood, frustrated outcasts kill their victims as if they were on a video screen.
The men who perpetrate mass shootings are undoubtedly unbalanced, but the cause of their loss of equilibrium is traceable to the values they were inoculated with as children. The killers of innocent people in schools, hospitals, and the workplace self-justify their actions based on what they’ve inherited; like most men and women who accept the dictates of our society, they are primed to accept or inflict violence. They were overtly taught that attacking or fighting is a viable way of resolving conflict.
We are a nation where military service includes the strong possibility of killing others or sacrificing one’s life, and it is deemed a noble cause. We are asked not only to support our troops, but implicitly we must support war and violence.
It is no leap to see that international hostilities and conflicted individuals mirror each other. We are not just numb to reports about mass shootings, we have been numbed by news in every arena where the U.S. intervenes with its military.
The United States, the most powerful combative force on Earth, expends the greatest part of its wealth on preparing for or participating in violent activities. When examined carefully, these are rarely for altruistic causes, but rather aimed at enforcing a worldview driven by economics. There are inevitable consequences, obscured by rhetoric, including events covered by the military’s most duplicitous term, collateral damage.
Because everyone is encouraged to view military action as inevitable, we are primed to accept collateral damage as a tragic necessity. We are supposed to welcome without protest the inevitable outcome; whether in the name of democracy, defense, or nationalism, bloodshed is the cost of freedom, even for non-combatants.
The self-inflicted wounds within the U.S. continue because of this ethical depravity. Domestically, it is harder for pundits and politicians to explain the assaults because it cuts closer to the truth.
A Governor not long ago commented on a mass shooting in his state with, “stuff happens.” He didn’t comprehend the revelation of his response; stuff happens was his domestic translation for collateral damage.
Both terms embrace violence — and the begetting of more violence — as an absolute norm and necessity. And because we are blindly loyal to a culture of aggression, we are supposed to process and accept the inevitability of tragedy, destruction — and even the harm or death of innocents.
As our supposedly civilized society continues to embrace and justify brutality, we have become callous to the suffering of others; allowing the ensuing damage in all realms of life.
Which leads to a simply made observation and conclusion. Those in our culture who promote reason and compassion over anger and violence are marginalized. Only when these voices for peace and sanity, pervade and dominate, will mass shootings and senseless wars come to an end.