Robb_K wrote:Rockerduck wrote:However, I don't agree with Rob that the world has become more violent. Just today I tead a story in a free Dutch newspaper, which told about a professor who, after doing research, concluded that the world nowadays is much less violent that hundreds of years ago. I think everybody, no matter their age, wants to believe the world was better and safer when they were younger --despite the facts.
Also, I don't think television or films or computer games are to blame. I believe it's too superficial to put the blame on them. That was also a point made by Moore in 'Bowling for Columbine'. After the Columbine-incident, there was a witchhunt after Marilyn Manson. Instead, one should look at the environment in which kids grow up. I think it's not a question of a violent culture as well as an individualist culture (again, like Moore also pointed out). Without a decent upbringing and education, the risk of kids doing these awful thing increases significantly, I think.
That's not to say that the laws concerning weapons in the US should be much stricter. I've heard opponents says: "then why don't you ban knives? People kill with knives too", but that argument doesn't ring true. Knives are generally not produced to kill, but a gun is. And then there are people who say: "if everybody had a gun, we would be safer" and that's also not true. Baghdad is unsafe, *because* everybody has guns in their house. But if you make it difficult or even almost impossible to get a hold of guns, the risk of tragic incidents will decline.
I agree with you, Rockerduck, on MOST of your points. But, I don't agree with you that the USA was just as violent when I was growing up than it is now. Your professor stated that The World was more violent "hundreds of years ago". Despite the fact that I am significantly older than you are, I wasn't alive hundreds of years ago. I grew up in the late 1940s and 1950s. I say that the societies in Canada, USA and The Netherlands (places I observed in those days), were significantly less violent than they are now. I'm not talking about the period just before, including World War II (when there was much more violence than now).
Fifty years and hundred years ago there were less people on earth than there are now. Could that also have a reason in having less violence? Less people. Less weapons? Less killings?
Robb_K wrote:I agree that the environment in which children are raised has more to do with the way they behave than watching violent films or playing violent video games, or listening to violence-themed "Gangsta Rap". But I believe that all those things foster a growing desensitivity to violence in youth, and a growing feeling that such violence is "normal" and to be expected. I think it DOES help make the situation worse.
Wasn't the guy in Virginia inspired by some violent movie? Egg saw a photo in a Dutch newspaper ('Algemeen Dagblad') that was compared with a photo of an an actor having a similar expression in a movie that the guy was inspired with. (Egg would need to dig up exact information, but this is what Egg remembers.)
Violent movies, or nay movies, do give people ideas. People are much influenced by the media, and - more important - what they choose to be their media.