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Factors in Moral Decay By Richard Kieninger The increasing incidence of
overt violence in the United States is a very real and deep-seated problem.
Our rising crime rate among juveniles and the recent assassinations of prominent
political personages are evidence of the prevalent contempt for the rights
and opinions of others. The trend toward individual
dissociation from social responsibility can be traced to a breakdown in the
family unit. The pursuit of material accumulation does not allow the mother
and father of most families to have much time for their children. Although
the youngsters are well fed and clothed and have many material advantages,
they are almost bereft of the all-important loving involvement with their
parents which would have set the stage for a healthy, interpersonal regard
for others. We have been conditioned
from childhood to dissociate ourselves from concern over the results of mass
slaughter of enemy civilians and soldiers in war by regarding them as
subhuman in some vague way. A whole generation was fed movies which glorified
the killing of Indians on the ground that they were savage redskins, and
television still knocks them off like clay pigeons. That such things occurred
is a matter of history, but these horrendous losses of life are watched by
youngsters without a ripple of feeling while they munch on popcorn to the
tune of wholesale death. I too was brought up to regard Indians as the
malefactors, but they were the victims of treaties broken by whites and a
merciless gentleman’s agreement to exterminate the whole race. I would have
no great objection to “entertainment” which shows an Indian being killed,
provided it portrays in detail his pain and despair in dying and the
disastrous effect on his widow and the cost to his orphaned children.
Instead, we continue to preach to our children dissociation from human
sensitivity. Our modern morality plays teach loudly and clearly: do not
consider the other man’s rights; do not try to seek a just agreement through
compromise if you have an advantage which lets you squeeze the other man out;
kill your irritating rival and you will be right by virtue of survival and
the silencing of your accuser. That was how the West was won, and we are
apparently still trying to rationalize it. Producers of television
shows realize that there is no shock value any longer in shedding the blood
of hoards of Indians because we have been taught to regard them as some sort
of talking animals who would have killed us first if we weren’t so superior.
To make violence more personal, more meaningful, more fascinating, television
brought into our living rooms the sadist, the pervert and the psychopathic
criminal who enjoys murder and the torture of pretty young women. These
bizarre characters somehow become heroes in comparison to the solid but dull
citizens. The role of the government secret agent who can murder with
impunity whether by mistake or personal malice and the role of the private
eye who has plenty of money, a nice car and beautiful girl friends in
exchange for murdering his clients’ enemies have become heroic roles which
youngsters emulate in their imaginations. But this engenders attitudes which
color the child’s whole concept of life and social responsibility. Being a tough guy who is
squeamish about nothing regardless of its moral ramifications is the model
for the majority of young men today. A boy must defend his honor by doing
anything that will keep the appellation “chicken” from being applied to him.
He is expected to be quick at taking offense and maintaining a belligerently
surly posture lest he be challenged. Living in an environment where one must
always expect to be challenged to defend the “honor” of his manhood is
frightening and exhausting. Violence is the natural outcome of the
confrontations which continually arise. The same kind of insanity
was bred into the feudal lords and aspirants to knighthood. Upholding
personal pride and honor in combat kept men dying young thus precluding their
attainment of wise maturity. The history of the Dark Ages was made by
hot-headed adolescents proving their manhood in war and in romantic
tournaments. The same kind of “manly” pride and adulation of glory in battle
is still being praised by jingoistic nationalists in most countries of the
world. Our own tradition encourages us not to question the romantic madness
of the “Charge of the Light Brigade” and the disciplined bravery of tens of
thousands of French infantrymen who early in World War I were marched in wave
upon wave against German machine guns and died to a man in great mounds of
bleeding flesh and shattered bones. To what end? Pride? Glory? Honor? Can
such “honor” be an honorable virtue? The same rules apply to national karma
as to individual karma. A nation which kills for national pride and national
glory (of which the British Empire and The Third Reich are good examples) is
just as wrong as the young man who kills because of a slur against his
“manly” pride. The acceptability of
killing has been bred into us by traditions of the glories of battle and by
our lack of empathy with the other man’s love of life. To play games of pride
and glory with human life as the stakes is truly madness whether on the
national or personal level. We are bred to accept
international violence but are appalled when the same violence manifests
itself domestically. Pride, callousness and fear are at the root of all
killing. Their antitheses are humility, empathy and love; and these are the
true marks of an honorable man who is courageous enough to live-and-let-live
and to forgive those who would be his enemies. It seems to me that
entertainment which shows a man smashing another’s face or blowing a hole
through him is an obscenity far more degrading to the observer than any
portrayal of the gentle acts of making love, which Americans find so dirty.
What perversity has so twisted our values that love is made base and war is
exalted? In the future, our closed
television circuits will not parade the antisocial acts of sick minds under
the guise of entertainment so as to dignify them in the minds of children as
the way adults behave. Displays of depravity may be titillating to sniggering
adolescents, but we hope to encourage in our youngsters a wholesome
engagement with life rather than a sophisticated acquaintance with the evils
of the world. The performing arts have a responsibility to mold public tastes
to the highest possible standards of appreciation. Cheap panderings to murder
and crime are not art even though they may tell it as it really is. The
underworld is too depressing for me to view, let alone subjecting children to
it. |
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