Signs of a Super Dad: A wife coming home to, laughter, a couch that is now a fort, and a warm dinner.
I love the NFL. I specifically love the Pittsburgh Steelers. I listen to sports radio everyday with hourly checks of the internet for Steelers updates. When they are playing, I pace the floor while screaming at the TV. I sometimes find myself huddled on the floor in the fetal position after a loss. Yes, I would consider it a borderline obsession. Why do I love a game where massively-large inhuman people bash into each other at high rates of speed? What is this obsession with such violence? Now that I think of it, why do I love movies with bullets flying and large explosions, or Kung-Fu movies with one man using his feet and fists to beat up an army? I sure am not the only one. So, what is with our societies need to watch and enjoy violence?
You can’t tell me it just a “man thing”. Look at your fiction writing. How almost every single best selling book has some form of violence in it, as well as the popularity of shows such as CSI and Heroes. What about the gladiators in ancient Rome? Take a look at Shakespeare. How so much of our fiction has this need for violence to push the plot along. Why do humans have this need for violence? I don’t know, I just think it’s an extremely interesting dichotomy. How we all agree war is terrible but we love watching it on TV. Let me explain further.
If I walked outside at this moment and started drop kicking random strangers in the face it wouldn’t be considered entertainment for those witnessing it. Survivors of war sure don’t find it entertaining. I would go as far as saying we as a people consider violence uncivilized. That people who murder or assault need to be punished by, interestingly enough, more violence. Violence in our home is frightening, and not tolerated, but violence on our TV’s is entertaining. Of course, you would agree that there is a degree of separation between watching or reading and actually experiencing. It’s like we want to get as close as possible to violence without actually fully experiencing it.
Take a leap with me. I am going to say that violence is just a component of, let us call it, the human dark side. That place where such abstract concepts as evil, the Devil, Abba reside. The things most fear and do not wish to experience first hand. We want tastes of this dark side, but if we ‘lose ourselves’ then we are considered inhuman, we even go as far as labeling them an “animal”. Is this how we distinguish between what is human and animal? Is one not human if they cannot control their dark side? You could say serial killers lose themselves to this dark side. Is he/she just a mindless animal? An animal has no conception of what it means to be violent or evil for that matter. An animal will kill for food, or protection, not for thrill. An animal has no dark side. So, I would argue, on this basis, that a serial killer is not equal to an animal. I would say this dark side is what makes us human, and also, perhaps, a beautiful manifestation of a natural occurring homeostatic system.
Restraints or rules society has constructed are meant to keep order, to keep us civilized. Without rules there is no order, no civilization. If we are free to do as we want when we want with no fear of repercussion from a governing body, then the hypothetical question becomes: if this were to happen would we all lose ourselves to our dark side? Would a gluttonous orgy of slaughter and mayhem leading to an apocalypse occur, or do we naturally side with what is ethical and right? Well if you’re an anarchist then it is the latter. Most feel the former. Can we conclude that the fear of humans giving into their dark side is the basis for government and religious dogma? That most feel without some form of societal control we would give in to the Devil/dark side and destroy ourselves. My point isn’t what would hypothetically happen, or what is even correct, but it is just an interesting quirk of the human condition. Why so many of us are interested in tasting something that could possibly destroy us. Well I will leave this question for another post. It is funny how my love for American Football leads to a discussion of the apocalypse.
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I feel that often war (meaning more specifically sanctioned violence by an entire nation) is a result of a complacent society, particularly one that has forgotten what it means to suffer. Wars are often stimulated by individuals who clearly have very little relationship with suffering. Often after an extended and horrible conflict the soldiers return to us and teach us about that suffering and about the significance and meaning of extreme violence. We learn to relate to it personally and this makes violence something not to celebrate. With the coming of more generations the lesson is lost or becomes fanciful and intriguing and violence then makes its way back into our culture as a plaything until we can learn about the reality of it once again. This is my impression of one angle of that dark side and violence itself you mention.
ReplyDeletei thought this text was brilliant you should try writing more because i really wanted to read on.
ReplyDeleteMaybe it has always been in our nature to be violent and now that violence is not accepted in society we need to let it out in some way ??????