We are a nation that loves magic pills. We love easy answers to complex problems. Wouldn’t it be great if you really could fix the leaking roof with that spray-on rubber in a can? Wouldn’t you love if that five dollar bottle of magic elixir really could fix your car? What if there really was some sort of fairy dust you could sprinkle on your food, and the pounds would just harmlessly drop off? People are making fortunes in the business of wishful thinking.
In his books, Mad In America and Anatomy of an Epidemic, former Times Union medical writer Robert Whitiker writes about the misguided predisposition of modern Psychiatry to treat the symptom while neglecting the disease. Psychiatry has taken the idea of the magic pill to an entirely new level, “solving” almost every psychiatric issue with some mysterious psychotropic drug, the full consequences of which are seldom understood. Historically, there have been far more successful approaches to mental illness, but not as simple, not as profitable.
Investigating the life histories of mass-murderers, it is not unusual to find the presence of psychotropic drugs. One ought not jump to the unwarranted conclusion that the drugs cause the violence; after all, it should not come as a shock that someone crazy enough to kill a bunch of people is being medicated; but it is evidence that, at least in these cases, we did not do enough. We also find that at an unusually high rate, these individuals come from broken homes or abusive backgrounds which probably contributed more to their disease than the “gun culture” of America, or violent video games.
It’s not surprising that we would look for a simpler cure for violence than solving the monumental problems of mental illness, child abuse, and the disintegration of the family. Sometimes treating the symptom is preferable to not addressing the issue at all. Unfortunately though, most of the “solutions” being discussed are magic pills to make the public feel better, and not potentially effective avenues for at least preventing the violence.
Observation of the most ill among us can sometimes instruct us on the less extreme version of the plague that affects the nation as a whole. Whether violent video games exacerbate these madmen’s illness is one question, but why do so many of us “normal” people so enjoy these games? What is to be said about a nation that flocks to the theater in droves to see young people dismembered with chainsaws in 3-D, making Texas Chainsaw Massacre 3-D obliterate it’s competition of more socially redeeming films? When did the party of peace change to the point that it’s now considered cool to kill by remote control, and whose most successful campaign slogan reflected exuberance over the revenge killing of Osama Bin Laden? Don’t get me wrong, violence in response to violence may be a necessary fact of life, but like public hangings, deriving pleasure from killing is not humanity at it’s highest level. What’s next, a coliseum? Are we becoming Rome?
Pain, humiliation, and violence are facts of life, and showing these things in films, books, music, games, or TV shows can be reflective of reality and important parts of the story the creator is trying to tell. But when these things become the selling point, what does this say about the audience? We have become a nation that takes pleasure in viewing and creating suffering, pain, humiliation and violence… sadism in America.
Though more subtle, nowhere is this sadism more prevalent than on the internet. It is no longer enough to argue an issue on its merits, or to extoll the superiority of your political position. Now our arguments are laced with verbal invective and four letter words. We don’t have discussions on the issues, we have battles… bloody battles. We don’t advocate for our position, we seek to annihilate all others. Civility has become quaint; our aim has become to utterly destroy, humiliate, and vanquish our foes, to treat them as sub-human, thus justifying the pleasure we have in hurting them.
IMHO: All this is part of the coarsening of America. If life is not seen as sacred, death can become entertaining. Human dignity and respect are relegated to the trash heap of history as the state of our existence becomes one of conflict and war, rather than peace, cooperation, and a regard for our shared humanity.
I’ve been through a divorce, and observed many others. What always has appalled me is the willingness for two people who were in love enough to marry each other, to then go beyond the necessary pain caused in breaking that bond, and intentionally cause humiliation, suffering, and sometimes even violence in a thirst for vengeance, and to find pleasure in that vengeance. Our nation has come to the place where on so many issues we seem unable to preserve the bond of our union. It is up to the adults to maintain at least the civility of what once was, to leave aside the politics of personal destruction, and to elevate the conversation beyond base ridicule and crude insults. No union can possibly be preserved when the parties involved are bent on humiliating and destroying each other. It is the responsibility of our leaders first to demonstrate civility and evidence of humanity. Our President and politicians, our academics and journalists, our writers and teachers, they are supposed to be the adults in the room. If we insist on taking pleasure in a violent national divorce, we will also surely bear the burden of the tragic consequences… children of a broken homeland.