You and I live in the belly of many beasts. Those all-consuming social force-fields in which we find ourselves. Morning to night, day to day, life to life. They come in all different shapes, sizes, and names.
Each has one that seems to most fiercely consume us: evil! sin! fear! nature! Mine is violence.
Violence -- an impending state of threat and destruction -- is something with which my ancestors and yours lived from the moment the gates of Eden shut behind them. For eons our frail species was daily buffeted by both willful and incidental violence. The physical threats of our sudden destruction were everywhere.
Today -- given our knowledge and technology -- we live in the relative protection of shelter and clothing, police and fire, electronic sensors and safeties. And yet with one mistaken side street at night in a strange part of town, you will know the clammy fear of unseen violence.
But wait...
My beast is not only unseen. It is seen and shared every unsuspecting day of our modern lives. Consider the hundreds of acts of physical, emotional and sexual violence in our nightly news reports...our movies...our television programming...our literature...our rock & rap music...our digital games...our Internet encounters. And the cheered violence of our contact sports...the roar of our high-performance cars...the lusty high-fives in our sports bars...the belly-to-the-bar behemoths in our biker bars...the smash-mouth thugs of organized crime in our headlines...the street punks and drug gangs just a speed-chase away from our front door.
The cliche it's-a-jungle-out-there is no cliche.
The FBI reported in 2010 the violent-crime rate dropped to its lowest level in 40 years. Defying the theory that it rises in times of recession and unemployment. The stats are comforting. So long as we understand violence in terms of the unseen-other. However, there is less comfort when we understand that we ourselves are part of the violence. Our tastes, needs, cheers, and unthinking shrug: "It-is-what-it-is."
It's that very world-weary shrug which gives a pass to those who live by violence. Whether we respect our police and federal agencies or not, thankfully we have their thin blue line to guard the gates. The greater danger is when we welcome in the backdoor the legal purveyors of violence. Studio & network producers, recording moguls, pornography peddlers, fight clubs, and organized sports brutality.
When we feed them, we feed the beast that feeds on us...
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Irritated that the sign in portion of this 'bogspot' has been used correctly by this old Geezer on many an occasion and now it makes me sign in a dozen times and often loses the original post {Today four times so far] ... bad technology or lousy servers and/or application ... in any event a 'put-off' .. I may have to stick to facebook comments .... On the above "When we feed them, we feed the beast that feeds on us..." That is why this Geezer is fed up with reading, listening or viewing almost all media despite having invested a lifetime of effort in the field ... Arrrggghhh!
ReplyDeleteIn younger days we used to refer to unruly people, bad food, etc as "eighth class". I have never welcomed those "legal purveyors of violence" you mentioned since that garbage is all eighth class to me nor have I ever been a "follower". Socially though, this can be a problem at times.
ReplyDeleteThe Geezer from way up north in Canada and Jerry way down south in Florida -- you both make sense to me. But as for the damn technology, I wish I knew how to correct it. However, lets face it, fellas, the computer is in now in charge...!!!!
ReplyDeleteDon't worry, in a few years computers will be history in favor of tablets.
ReplyDelete