Tuesday, December 31, 2024

Mass Shootings

 

Whenever there are multiple deaths caused by a psycho with a gun there are speculations as to why this would have occurred. What was the motive?

The reality is that US culture, past and present, is permeated with violence. The most popular team sport in the country is supposedly NFL football, whose schedule on Sunday afternoons changed that of church services to Sunday mornings exclusively. Now the NFL practices its trade on at least 3 different days each week. One of the foremost attractions of the professional model and lesser examples is the physical violence involved. This begins in high school and earlier where a significant percentage of growing boys suffer injuries that will plague them for the rest of their lives. As has been pointed out by others, if high school football was a disease, billions would be spent in search of a cure. The same is true of other team sports. 

Many American motion pictures and television productions contain strong elements of violence, particularly gun fire. Cinematic soft-core sex is considered pornography. Murder is entertainment.

Video games allow the player to fire at and kill computer creations, satisfying an urge forbidden in reality.

If this is a sad state of affairs that leads weaker souls to mayhem, does it have a solution? Probably not. Maybe we’ll have to accept that humans are somewhat more intelligent than monkeys, even more violent, and actually enjoy it as long as it doesn’t affect them and those that they love.

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