Violence essays

DQ3.2 Answer SOC110 – Sociology in a Global Perspective
S. E. “Karma” Owen Prof. Matthew Irvin
March 18, 2009 Argosy University

The word “media” is the plural form of the word “medium,” which means “a means of communication.” When pluralized, it generally refers to the various communication mediums “that reach or influence people widely” (Media, n.d.). However, when commonly used with the article “the” in front of the word “media,” the term takes on a new meaning. “The Media” in our culture consists mostly of mainstream news and entertainment mediums, such as television and radio programs, newspapers, magazines, the internet, books, and even things like video games. “The Media” doesn't generally refer to all media, just what is popular. Although textbooks, dictionaries, books and articles that are not as popular, and even conversations are technically “media,” they are not The Media. The Media is what people are talking about when the question its influence on things such as violent behavior in adolescents. They are not charging National Geographic Magazine with causing high school shooting; they are charging television, video games, pop music, and things like this. Therefore, I will capitalize the word “media” to refer to The Media that is being accused, to distinguish it from media in general and media itself.

Personally, I don't really agree with the critics that The Media's influence on people through its “portrayal of violence” plays a role in people's violent actions. I agree that it does play a role, as all influences in our lives play roles in our actions, but I do not agree with them, because I believe that they overestimate The Media's role. It seems like people are confused as to why something like high school shootings could ever possibly occur, and they are just grasping for answers, and The Media is a convenient scapegoat. If The Media can be blamed for adolescent violence, then society only needs to consider changing The Media and/or how much influence they allow it to have on them. However, many more factors come into play here. I'm sure that “critics” have some valid points about how The Media desensitizes us to violence and even glorifies violence, and maybe that it teaches people ways to act violently that they would not have thought of without its influence. But, I don't believe that even if these Media influences were eradicated that the violence would end.

There are many other agents of socialization that contribute to inappropriate acts of violence in our society. First and foremost, I would like to mention our biological nature. There is a genetic, instinctual component to our propensity toward violent behavior, including murder. Intraspecies competition is as natural to the human species as it is to any other. Animals have always competed for resources, and without the capacity to do so or to win, an animal dies. Therefore, an appropriate level of violence is an advantageous biological adaption. A lacking in capacity for violence will lead to certain death of the animal. Too much violence, however, can also be a problem. Culture is what keeps this in check. As social animals, humans have always lived together in groups, and the groups always have their own rules for how its members are to live. Those whose rules on violence were maladaptive died out (Evolution, inheritance, and personality, 2006).

It does seem that our current group or culture's violent behaviors are maladaptive, though. I attribute both this and the fact that we have not yet died off to the fact that our culture is breaking all the rules of nature itself. The need for some violence always has and always will exist. However, it would not be a problem at the frequency and intensity that it is today if people weren’t so dissatisfied with their surrounding world. I think that violence, like many other problems plaguing society, cannot be solved on their own, but would cease to exist if other problems were solved. Things like violence are inevitable results of a dissatisfactory society. It cannot be solved on its own. If we want things like this to not be a problem anymore, we must confront the problems that lead to them.

The core problem to which I refer, the “rules of nature” that our culture is breaking is that of imperialism. Before humans became civilized (domesticated, hierarchal, dependent on agriculture,) competition did not exist in the form of war as we know it today. Today, war is about hegemony. It is based on nationalism, ethnocentrism, culturally-based biases, and religion. Its goals are annihilation and conquest. Of course, competition for resources is still the crux of why wars start, but we, unlike our pre-civilized ancestors, don't just compete, we wipe out everyone that threatens our hegemonic ideals unless we can convince them that ours is the one and only right way for humans to live and that they should join us in our global conquest.

Yet we are taught in our culture that the blame for atrocities such as modern warfare lies in violence itself, not the way that we express violent instincts. We are taught that violence, in and of itself, is inherently evil. Religions especially perpetuate this notion, even though it's not very scientifically accurate. Not only do humans have an inherent capacity for violent behavior, but we live in a society that accidentally encourages it. Children are all taught that hitting and biting other children is wrong. All people are reminded daily that violence is wrong, but society usually fails to condition them out of it completely. The majority of people spend most of their lives suppressing and channeling their violent urges, but the general consensus remains that violence is a big problem in today’s society. In the civilized world, pretty much all forms of violence except those which benefit the government are outlawed, as if the law-makers are ignorant of the nature of violence, or they think they can forcefully change human nature. If that worked, it would work for everything that people want to decide is wrong, and there would be no such things as jails or police.

My next point is that, after a biological instinct that compels violent behavior, a major “agent of socialization” that contributes to maladaptive acts of violence is the nature of our culture itself. People don’t have adequate outlets for their violent urges. When they spend their whole lives suppressing them, frustration is increased, which obviously leads to more and stronger violent urges. People are, however, offered benefits for not expressing their violent tendencies. The main benefit that comes to mind is avoidance of persecution by the law. There is also an increased acceptance by mainstream society. Certain people care more about whether or not their behavior is considered acceptable by the public. This is why violence is more common among people who benefit less from this acceptance, such as people who aren’t planning on participating much in society anyway.

People are less likely to care about persecution for their violent acts if they are mentally ill, if they have not been taught what the social norms are, or if they have just given up altogether on society and its rules, laws, and norms. These people are definitely exemplified by people who shoot people at their high schools. These students had many reasons to disregard social regulations when the made the decisions to kill people at school. Most of them weren't planning on living after they were done killing anyway, so all consequences of their behavior, in their minds, were null and void. I believe that a lot of these people were probably mentally ill. Their mental illnesses probably came from social agents more than biological predisposition for sociopathy, depression, or whatever other conditions may cause such behavior.

The agents of socialization that may have lead to these mental conditions would be things like how they were treated by their peers. I remember the Media stories about the Columbine shootings in Colorado in 1999. When that happened, lots of people wanted to blame The Media for influencing these students, as if playing video games is what made them decide it would be cool to buy some semi-automatic weapons and kill a bunch of people and themselves. Don't millions of other people that are the same age play those same video games and watch the same movies and not kill anyone? The Media emphasized that the killers were very disturbed individuals, and that they were outcasts among their classmates and were seeking vengeance or something. “What motivated Harris and Klebold will never be fully known. A self-made videotape made public eight months after the shooting reveals the boys’ level of self-loathing and their hate for popular, athletic or minority classmates” (Shepard, n.d.).

There is another type of school shooting incidents that don't seem to make nearly as many headlines as ones like what occurred in Littleton, Colorado. I am speaking on high school shootings that occur in inner-city schools. These shootings are usually gang-related, or based on other criminal activities that go on off campus. I don't think that these shooters are mentally ill. Some of them may not have been taught the rules of society in regards to when and where (and if) it's okay to hurt someone. This is probably the case for a select few whose parents were not very active in raising them. However, I think that the majority of these shooters are aware of what society and the law expects of them but don't care. I definitely don't blame them for feeling oppressed and that they will never succeed (according to society's definitions for the word) by more socially acceptable means. It is harder for those born into poverty and in neighborhoods with a lot of crime and with less access to many resources, including educationally-related resources, to pursue The American Dream. Many of them give up at an early age on going to college and becoming a doctor or an astronaut, and instead decide that they will get out of poverty through criminal activities. These activities are highly-related to gangs, and rivalry is usually what causes them to shoot each other, even at school. So for these people, the social agents that influence their violent behavior are the hardship that they endure, their inequitable life circumstances, and the encouragement by most of society of the notion that the criminal route is the only way that they can realistically improve their lives.

In conclusion, school shootings are not so much caused by Media influence in that The Media portrays acts of violence. The Media is just showing what is really happening. Not telling us about it would not make it stop happening. The Media's influence on violent behaviors such as school shootings only goes as far as how it influences people's thought processes about themselves and the world around them. The causes of violent acts on the the part of individuals, acts that seem to serve no purpose for society as a group, are humanity's instinctual violent nature, the fact that people in our society have no acceptable outlet for violent urges and choose instead to use an unacceptable outlet, mental illness, a person's life circumstances, frustration with society, and more personal influences like one's peers and family.