State of Mankind

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The Culture of Violence

In America, from 1960 to 2016, the total population increased by 1.8 times, while the total number of crimes grew 2.7 times, and the number of violent crimes grew 4.5 times.

Fifty years before the University of Texas Tower shooting incident took place in 1966, there were only twenty-five public mass shootings in which four or more people were killed. Since then, mass shootings have become more deadly over time. From the Killeen mass shooting in Texas in 1991 that caused twenty-three deaths, to the Las Vegas mass shooting that massacred fifty-eight in 2017, each incident has been more shocking.

Terrorist incidents worldwide increased from 650 per year in 1970 to 13,488 in 2016, a twentyfold increase. Since the 9/11 terrorist attack in 2001, terrorist attacks have increased by 160 percent.

Violence in the real world mirrors what we experience in our daily lives: Our daily lives have been enveloped by a culture of violence. Not only is the intense music of heavy metal full of violence, but the majority of film and television and even video games are centered around violence. Many film and television productions portray the mafia, gangs, and pirates in a positive light, making these negative stereotypes look attractive and respectable, such that people not only no longer feel repulsed by them, but start aspiring to commit crimes and join gangs.

The appearance of video games gave people yet another channel for the glorification of violence, one that is interactive, allowing the players themselves to employ violence within the game world. Instead of the unidirectional indoctrination of violence via film and television, players experience violence for themselves through these games, which contain scenes of decapitated heads and dismembered limbs, with blood spraying everywhere — all in excess of the normal boundaries of film and television.

In a study conducted in 2013, researchers analyzed movies that were produced from 1985 to 2012 and found that between 1985 and 2012, the amount of gun violence in PG-13 movies increased twofold. A follow-up study showed that this trend has continued to this day. In 2008, the Pew Research Center found that 97 percent of youths between 12 and 17 played video games, and that two-thirds of them played games that contained violent content.

Faced with the problem of increasing violence in society, experts, scholars, and the general public continue to propose theories and solutions, from stricter restrictions via laws and stronger law enforcement, to providing the public with psychological counseling. But such solutions are simply akin to cutting off the branches of a poisonous tree without touching its root.

By deliberately encouraging the saturation of popular culture with violence and crime, communist elements are causing more and more people to be desensitized to this kind of content, with some goaded to imitate such content, causing violence to become reality in society. Through corrupting and destroying traditional culture and mutating people’s sense of morality, communism is distancing people from the divine by having them pursue the satisfaction of their unlimited material desires. This is the real underlying cause of society’s problems.



From Chapter Fourteen: Popular Culture–A Decadent Indulgence