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.
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