Dave Grossman: On Killing

One common response to any concern about media violence is, “We have adequate controls. They are called the ‘off switch’. If you don’t like it, just turn it off.”

Unfortunately, this is a tragically inadequate response to the problem. In today’s society the family structure is breaking down and even in intact families there is enormous economic and social pressure for mothers to work. Single mothers, broken homes, latchkey kids, and parental neglect are increasingly the norm. Through herculean effort, parents might be able to protect their own kids in today’s world, but that doesn’t do much good if the kid next door is a killer.

The worst thing about the “off switch” solution is that it is so blatantly, profoundly racist in its effect, if not its intent, because the black community in America is the “culture” or “nation” that has borne the brunt of the electronic media’s violence-enabling. In this case, poverty, drugs, gangs, discrimination, and the availability of firearms all predispose more blacks than whites toward violence. These factors defeat the first filter; then the absence of the second, midbrain filter becomes noticeable.

Bronson James, a black Texas-based radio commentator whose show I was on, observed that this is identical to the genocidal process in which for centuries the white man used alcohol in a systematic policy to destroy the culture of the American Indian. For a variety of cultural and genetic reasons, the Indians were predisposed toward alcoholism, and we dumped it into them as a crucial part of the process that ultimately destroyed their civilization.

The pumping of media violence into the ghettos today is equally genocidal. Media violence-enabling in the ghetto is the moral equivalent of shouting, “FIRE!” in a crowded theater. As a result, murder is the number-one cause of death among black male teens, and 25 percent of all black males in their twenties are in jail, on probation, or on parole.

If this isn’t genocide, then it is close.

What makes the “off switch” solution so racist is that, if these murders and incarceration rates were happening to the sons of white upper- and middle-class America, you can bet that we would have seen some drastic action by now. Viewed in this light, I think that most individuals would agree that the “just turn it off” solution probably rates right up there with “let them eat cake” and “I was just following orders” as all-time offensive statements.

In developmental psychology there is a general understanding that an individual must master the twin areas of sexuality and aggression (Freud’s Eros and Thanatos) in order to have truly achieved adulthood. In the same way, the maturation of the human race necessitates our collective mastery of these two areas. In recent years we have made significant progress in the field of sexology, and this book is dedicated to the creation and exploration of the equivalent field of “killology.”

After nuclear holocaust, the next major threat to our existence is the violent decay of our civilization due to violence-enabling in the electronic media. This book appears to be well on its way to making a difference in the desperate worldwide battle against the virus of violence.

May it be so, and may you, the reader, find what you seek in these pages.

Why should we study killing? One might just as readily ask, Why study sex? The two questions have much in common. Richard Heckler points out that “it is in the mythological marriage of Ares and Aphrodite that Harmonia is born.” Peace will not come until we have mastered both sex and war, and to master war we must study it with at least the diligence of Kinsey or Masters and Johnson. Every society has a blind spot, an area into which it has great difficulty looking. Today that blind spot is killing. A century ago it was sex.

For millennia man sheltered himself and his family in caves, or huts, or one-room hovels. The whole extended family — grandparents, parents, and children — all huddled together around the warmth of a single fire, within the protection of a single wall. And for thousands of years sex between a husband and wife could generally only take place at night, in the darkness, in this crowded central room.

I once interviewed a woman who grew up in an American Gypsy family, sleeping in a big communal tent with aunts, uncles, grandparents, parents, cousins, brothers, and sisters all around her. As a young child, sex was to her something funny, noisy, and slightly bothersome that grown-ups did in the night.

In this environment there were no private bedrooms. Until very recently in human history, for the average human being, there was no such luxury as a bedroom, or even a bed. Although by today’s sexual standards this situation may seem awkward, it was not without its advantages. One advantage was that sexual abuse of children could not happen without at least the knowledge and tacit consent of the entire family. Another, less obvious benefit of this age-old living arrangement was that throughout the life cycle, from birth to death, sex was always before you, and no one could deny that it was a vital, essential, and a not-too-mysterious aspect of daily human existence.