Violence Today

3 Pages 682 Words

Violence Today

by:
Liz Owen

“We’re only gonna die for our arrogance, that’s why we might as well take our time.” ~Bradley Nowell

Every day, I hear people talking about violence in society. They argue over whether violence in television and movies causes people to be more violent in real life. They shake their heads in dispassionate sorrow at news reports of school shootings, gang violence, homicides, rapes, terrorism, wars, and countless other abhorrent occurrences. They frequently discuss and debate possible solutions to the problem of violence.
Violence, in and of itself, will never cease. It exists among all animals. Intraspecies competition is as natural to the human species as it is to any other. Among homo sapiens, things like wars (defined as organized and prolonged conflicts between societies) are a form of population control.
However, one must question nature of human violence in regard to the frequency and intensity of violent acts. What is the necessity of brutal and torturous slaughterings, genocide, or cruelty to animals? Do multiple stabbings of an ex lover increase one’s representation in the gene pool?
So, why do people commit random acts of senseless violence? Is there anything we, as a society can do to fix this problem? If so, should we? If so, would we?
Although the currently predominant world view (yeah, the one whose perpetuation is destroying the ecological system of the planet) states that humans, as the most intelligent (and understood as to mean therefore best) earthly species, are somehow immune to the laws of nature, such things continue to affect us. What person of functional intelligence that knows anything about biology doesn’t also know, at least after it being pointed out to them, that an increased population of any species within a confined area (and the earth itself certainly serves as confinement) results in increased problems for that species. Too many rats in the sa...