A Look at Violence
Violence is something that has become a part of our everyday lives. It’s hard to avoid the constant mention or portrayal of violence in the news, and entertainment media, or the sports where violence is a part of regular play, or occasions in day to day life of violence. It is something that has become a normal in our society. We generally see violence as something that is bad, however violence is not limited to being bad, or being used in the wrong way. There are many different kinds of violence, and there are many different reasons people are violent, and I hope to address some of those kinds and reasons in this reflection.
Take for example football, which is the most popular sport in America, where the use of physical force is a regular part of the game, but is not usually thought of as violent, but is thought of as part of the game. If that same behavior happened outside of playing the sport it would be seen as violence, and illegal. We have become normalized to this behavior as part of an organized event and see it in a positive light (for the most part) but when it happens outside of the event it is seen in a negative light. Another example of sports that are seen in a positive light when in the setting of it being a sport is mixed martial arts, more widely known as the Ultimate Fighting Championship. It is widely considered acceptable to watch and cheer on, or even bet on, these fighting matches that are, in my opinion, a way to make these violent acts acceptable by labeling them as a sport. These types of sports can inspire generations of people to want to participate in the same acts, and I believe can make people more aggressive.
Violence is also something we are used to seeing in the media. It’s impossible to avoid the news, where violent events are talked about extensively when they happen around the world. And even if you don’t watch the news, many television programs and movies are based around violence.
Why are people violent? I’ve always wondered. There are many different factors that people talk about when asking why people are violent. Some of those factors include economic, race, religion, environment, how people were raised, etc. I think that the media focuses on the wrong factors when covering the topic of why people are violence. I believe that as a society we blame violence between two groups on them being part of two groups, and we don’t see further than that. For example, in late 2014, a white police officer shot and killed Michael Brown, a black teenager, in Ferguson, Missouri. Much of the media coverage of the situation and investigation that followed claimed that the shooting was because of race, not because of self-defense. There was no proof that the officer acted not in self-defense but because of the victim’s race, however much of the media coverage and general opinion was that, because there was a race difference between the two, that was the reason for the shooting. This eventually caused civil unrest, and widespread violence in the city of Ferguson. I think that the media and people in general can jump to conclusions on why violence happens because what is seen on the surface, not what the actual reason was.
Violence is also widespread outside of western culture, but for different reasons. For example, violence is very common in places like parts of Africa, where control is unstable and resources are scarce. Some of this violence stems from greed, or need of resources. I believe in places like these, violence is completely normalized as people grow up around it, which causes a vicious cycle of people constantly being violent because they grow up seeing it as a way of life rather than as something that just happens.
I think that we have become increasingly violent in general because of the widespread normalization of violence, and how we consider violence in certain circumstances to be acceptable. In my opinion, media and entertainment are the biggest factors that influence the generations that grew up around it, and I believe that normalizing violence for those people can contribute to people thinking that some forms of violence are okay, leading to a more violent generation of people.
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