Violence is a very prevalent issue in America today. Acts of violence and hatred have become all too common in our daily lives. We hear about it on the radio, we see it on the television, the nightly news, the movie advertisements for gruesome movies, such as, The Texas Chainsaw Murders, we read about it the newspaper and witness it in our schools. In the play "Flaming Guns of the Purple Sage", written by Jane Martin, the characters kill a man, chop him up, hide the evidence and go on with their lives as if nothing had happened.
Flaming Guns of the Purple Sage may be a fictitious story, but it gives an excellent example of the complacency we have when it comes to hearing about a violent act, we hear it, and we say oh what a tragedy and then we go on with our lives. It is as if we have become immune to violence.
American Psychological Association
Journal of Personality and Social Psychology
Portrait of Granville Stanley Hall (1844—1924).It is like the gynecologist who sees twenty vaginas in one day, or the ER doctor who sees blood and guts everyday, they become immune to the shock factor. Because we see, hear, read and sometimes experience violence on a daily basis, we have become immune to one of our most important human traits, the act or feeling of compassion.
Can this tolerance of violence be blamed on the media? Some would say so. An article by Rob Hendin and Beverley Lumpkin of CBS News, reports that "some of the police chiefs blame the exacerbation of crime on a "thug mentality" that has been glamorized in music and movies. The sheriff of Las Vegas blames gangsta rap music and its effects on young people. An Arizona chief said some of our youth have become a 'throw-away generation; nobody cares for them.'...