Desensitized

When I was in 8th grade, a kid in my class was killed. His name was Butch Harris, and he died when he was hit by an out of control car while he was riding his bike along the road. I didn't really know Butch. We didn't really run in the same circles, and I can't even remember if I ever talked to him. His death didn't have much of an emotional impact on me at the time. I don't know if it was too much for my 14 year old mind to register, or if I just didn't care that much. But I remember my mom talking to me about it, and expressing concern at my lack of concern. She said that she was worried that I'd been "desensitized" too much by TV, video games, and such.

And I remember being really offended by that comment. I mean, here she is, attacking the TV I choose to watch and the games I choose to play, claiming that they are somehow poisoning my mind. All because I didn't have an emotional reaction to the death of a kid I barely knew? I was really annoyed with her for that. I mean, they talked about the kids that shot up Columbine as being influenced by their violent video games and music, but everyone knew that that was just crap. We can't be controlled by the media we consume.  We are individuals with free will to choose how we behave. We are our own creatures to control.

Now that I'm older and slightly smarter, I see things a bit differently. As I've grown, I've found myself less and less entertained by violence in movies and video games. Instead of cheering when the bad guy gets killed, I often find myself wondering if he had a family that loved him and how he got on the wrong track. That's stupid, some might think. It's a fictional character--no one really died here. It was an actor who was paid to look like he died. But, on the other hand, if our movies are supposed to be a reflection of life and reality, I have to ask myself--am I really cheering for a human life that just ended? A human, made-in-the-image-of-God life?

The main reason that I became a pacifist is that I value the sacredness of life. I believe that each and every person has incomparable value simply because they are human, and they have worth and feelings and thoughts and hopes and dreams and people that love them for the complexities of their personalities and yes, even their flaws. And every time a person is killed, whether in real life or on TV, it represents the cheapening of that sacred life, in that situation and in our society.

I'm currently finishing up a book called On Killing: The Psychological Cost of Learning to Kill in War and Society, by military psychologist Dave Grossman. It's a fascinating book, but toward the end, he discusses how the conditioning of America and her children through media is eerily similar to the conditioning of soldiers in preparation for war. Using classical and operant conditioning methods, the military has to break down the soldier's resistance to killing the enemy. Through our media, we are conditioned to be entertained by violence instead of disturbed by it, making it easy to emotionally distance ourselves from the enemy, and from other people. One fact that Grossman cites is that, at the time of his writing (1995), there had already been over 200 studies demonstrating the correlation between television and violence. And, even though correlation does not equal causation, there has to come a point, maybe after 200 studies, where you know causation is present.

So my question is this: does there come a point when we realize how much the media influences our behavior, and if so, do we do anything about it? Is it possible for us to become re-sensitized to the horrors of violence and death? Can we as people learn to value people again?

I would love to hear others' thoughts on this issue, since it can be a sensitive (no pun intended) issue. What do you think? Does violent media cause us to be more violent? Have we been desensitized to violence and war and death? Have you noticed this in your own life at all?