Violence

“A world of Violence! Who’s to blame?”

     Many people would agree that there is too much violence in this world. There is war, gangs and many criminals in our society. Most people would blame the society itself.  Our civilization promotes so much violence. It is promoted in the cartoon children watch, in the books, we read everyday, and in the games, we play. It is in the advertisements you see as you pass by the billboards and bus benches you see as you drive or walk down the street. Since society makes it look cool, people do what they see on the TV or in the book, they just read. Oh, and don’t forget the billboard!  

     In 2005, there was a protest by parents against the billboards for the movie “Get Rich or Die Trying” it was one of the leading stories on the news, the web, and news papers\magazines.  On one web article on http://banbillboardblight.org it read “protests by parents and community leaders in a gang-ridden area of  L.A. resulted in the removal of billboard ads depicting the rapper 50 Cent brandishing a gun in an ad for the movie, “Get Rich or Die Trying’”.  Five years later, billboards and super graphic signs around the city continue to display outsize ads with such depictions, sometimes right next-door to schools and in neighborhoods suffering from gun violence.”

 The young people in the world read stories and watch movies all the time. It is so easy to do it, you don’t even need the book to read because you can read it on there new “Kindle Wireless Reading Device” or they can watch a movie on the Ipad. Therefore, it’s a lot easier to look at the violent things our civilization offers. In most movies and books, there is an antagonist in the story, and violence is used by the “hero” to get ride of them. For example, the movie “Spider Man.” No one complained about the violence in that move, yet there was plenty of violence in it. As always, in the end, the super hero fights the “bad guy”, and wins in some “remarkably” violent way that fans love. You can’t forget about the most popular entertainment happening right now, Vampires. There’s millions of vampire books, not only that, we have vampire movies and TV shows, such as “Twilight” and “Vampire Diaries.”  These types of entertainment alone promotes, sex and violence thorough out the whole show, or book.

     Another source of violence is video games. Parent can agree on this one thing. On April 24, 2008, Dave Munger Posted, “Violent video games and Desensitization” which said, “Although not all games are equal, there's plenty of evidence that playing some violent video games can cause aggressive real-world behavior. Sites like addictinggames.com offer popular games whose sole point is to play the role of a hit man or even to torture animals. Over 85 percent of video games include violence.” In Elizabeth Armstrong Moore studies “Meta study: Violent video games raise aggression” she showed that “a study aggregating results from 130 research reports on more than 130,000 subjects worldwide has more breadth than most of its predecessors regarding the effects of violent video games on youths.”

     To stop the violence in the world, we first need to get rid of the violence that are read, watched and played in ever day life. It surrounds us all and calls people in with a mask or in a disguise, it’s usually not seen as violence, it’s seen as “natural entertainment.”  It’s hard for any one to stay away from the violence in this kind of world in which violence in promoted everywhere. It is sometimes promoted as comedy or as in something that’s ok/ normal. How can we stay away form violence if it’s everywhere we look; TV, books and more?