[quote=Gundark;2335767]It was suggested that violent media influenced people to be more violent, if not directly causing violence. I don’t agree with that. If you start going into that direction it leads to a slippery slope of censorship, book burnings and government control of media. All of which is bad.
It’s not that I don’t think that our media is often too over-the-top violent, it is. It’s that the level of paranoia has reached such a level that we are banning people from flying for wearing a t-shirt with a picture of a robot on it.[/quote]
I had suggested that the two were likely linked, but I didn’t state what the link was.
For example, violent media could just be a symptom of a violent society, it could be the cause, I’m not one to say. I also stated that there could be other variables at work, though Its probably best we don’t go into things like gun laws, religion etc given that those will likely spawn thread-closing debates.
I remeber hearing about a study done stating that violent video games hadn’t increased the amount of school shootings but had improved the skill of the shooters. Again, just something to think about.
As for censorship, I’m against it for the most part. I think we agree on that point.
Juggler is right…history is well-documented with examples of bloodthirsty barbarity. Quite why this has been narrowed down to just the US is beyond me but 1856 was also the time of the Crimean War (death toll 834,000), the Second Opium War (unknown but at least 10,000 Chinese killed in one battle alone), the Anglo-Persian War (c. 2000 killed), and the Taipeng Rebellion (death toll estimated between 20 and 30 million).
Don’t forget that 1856 was also towards the end of the slave trade when approximately 2.5 million died on the Atlantic crossings and 3 million died as a result of the Persian slave trade. These figures are on top of the 8 million and 2 million who died in the previous century. And 1856 followed hard on the heels of the Napoleonic Wars in which 3 million troops were killed along with 1 million civilians. And that’s only official war-related violence.
In India, the Thuggee “religion” was rampant with estimates of between 9-24 million people strangled. Meanwhile, at least 60,000 Indian widows would’ve suffered the fate of Suttee, or ritual burning alive. You want more religious violence from history? Then how about the following figures:
1214 - Genghis Khan massacres 6 million Christians
1358 - Tamerlane kills 4 million Nestorians
1560 - Conquistadors kill an estimated 15 million Amerindians
Crime too was also more barbaric and violent with plentiful examples. In one small English town during 1856, a dozen people received death sentences for offences ranging from stealing a waistcoat, to “maliciously cutting and maiming”, and highway robbery. Countless others in the same year received penal sentences of hard labour or transportation (including just 14 days imprisonment for “feloniously killing and slaying”) - multiply those figures across the country and you’re probably talking of millions of violent offences committed in a single year.
Until I’m turned into a blathering psychopathic killer by the latest Walt Disney DVD release, I still maintain that violence is inherent within **** sapiens, just as it is with many other species including some of our closest relatives.
@Counterproductive - We probably agree on several points, and yeah I definitely don’t want to get the thread closed or anybody banned or anything.
It wasn’t really anything you said anyway.
For anybody who didn’t read the register article here is their take on what happened:
Yes, those are terrorists disguised as pirates sneaking a WMD onto the airplane.
@ glosrfc - Sorry for the US only history, but unfortunately my knowledge is far more limited than that of your super-computer brain. :lol:
Most disney releases these days turn me into a blathering psychopathic killer, simply because they are not a scratch on the ones of years gone by.
Aside from that, I do think this is a fascinating discussion and it’s one i have fairly heated and LONG debates about, with anyone who claims that today is an unusually violent period of history. If the media is to blame for anything, it is the fact that that opinion is so widespread. Not just in the US, where the media fearmongering is at it’s highest, but also in more moderate places like my beloved england.
My opinion is that if one were to blame the violence of our day, and our past, on any one facet of our culture, media, religion, money, power, the list goes on, one would be a fool. It’s animalistic nature that is to blame. As human’s we should be able to rise above this, and usually as an individual we do. However when grouped together in “mobs” it just seeps out. As Glos-thebrains-rfc said, animals share the same natural urges for destruction and violence. It’s just that we tend to perform these acts with much more aplomb.
