I think today’s discussion brought up a lot of valid points. I think that as humans, we have not become less violent, we have just found ways to sublimate it and mask it. The best example given was the one about football games. Every time someone gets laid out flat on their ass, the crowd goes insane, it gets played on ESPN Top Ten in slow motion eight hundred billion times, and it eventually becomes that player’s identifier. This may be stretching it too far, but there is even an expression that shows this. “I would kill to do x.” The phrase “I would kill” is usually followed by something like “for those concert tickets”. Now, imagine this actually being carried out. We don’t think about it when we say it, but it has to come from somewhere, doesn’t it? It could easily be something else like “I would pay this ungodly amount of money” or “I would write twenty term papers in order to have ________”.
I also completely agree that civilization has not softened humans. In fact, I think it has given many a justification to do terrible things. This may be an overused example, but take a look at Hitler. His idea of what civilization should be was what drove and justified the atrocities that occured in WWII Europe.
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