06 July 2012

The Other Two Percent




On Killing by LtCol Dave Grossman, 2009, Excerpts

There is 2 percent of the male population that, if pushed or if given a legitimate reason, will kill without regret or remorse. It is this levelheaded participation in combat that we as a society glorify and that Hollywood would have us believe that all soldiers possess. Their common denominator was that they had been involved in a lot of fights as children. Not bullies, but fighters. If you can recapture or imagine that into a way of life, then you can begin to understand these individuals and their capacity for violence.

Boys who grow up without a stable male figure in their lives are desperately seeking a role model. Strong, powerful, high-status role models such as those offered in movies and on television fill the vacuum in their lives. Modern society has taken away their fathers and replaced them with new role models whose successful response to every situation is violence. The media in our modern information society have done much to perpetuate the myth of easy killing and have thereby become part of society’s unspoken conspiracy of deception that glorifies killing and war. And then we wonder why our children have become ever more violent.


No comments: