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"At a psychological level, the drama and titillation of these violent scenarios and our identification with their heroes and heroines serve to create a sense of excitement, potency and significance that is missing from most people's daily lives."
Other effects are more neurological in nature. "Here, it is less violence per se - behavior driven by anger or aggression - that hooks us to violent programming than the generalized rush of adrenalin we feel in response to violent situations presented to us."
Media violence is powerfully addictive beyond equivalent substance abuse. It also involves "social circumstances that support the addictive response." For example, anger and frustration initially drive riots or street violence. But as it becomes "more chaotic and random," it's driven less by doubts of achieving the American dream "than by knowing at some level that even winning would mean little, that the dream itself had become empty. This ultimate despair (becomes) a force for destruction."
Further, violence's addicting power, both real and media driven, "increases exponentially during times of transition" when something familiar no longer inspires and nothing new emerges. "At these times, people are particularly" prone to violence to gain "excitement, engagement, and influence, feelings lacking in their own lives. And random violence....becomes particularly addictive in a new way" by giving "voice to the feelings of fear and chaos so central to these times...."
His two-part cure involves basic media literacy to separate facts from fantasy to counter "people's susceptibility to (be harmfully) manipulat(ed) by violence's hypnotic effects."
Secondly, it requires working together to write a new narrative - a "much-needed next chapter in our cultural history," including new policies and defining metaphors, as well as "new ways of talking about what (most) matters" at all levels - at home, in schools, in community meetings, at all government levels, in business, between family and friends, and through the media.
Ultimately, the ability to reject pseudo-excitement, pseudo-meaning, and pseudo-fulfillment depends on the extent of positive real life experiences. They're absent for millions in a society experiencing growing poverty and despair, exacerbated by its longstanding addiction to violence, proliferated by America's infatuation with imperial wars, conquest, and repression. Kicking that habit may be key to rehabilitating domestically.
Stephen Lendman lives in Chicago and can be reached at Email address removed. Also visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com and listen to cutting-edge discussions with distinguished guests on the Progressive Radio News Hour on the Progressive Radio Network Thursdays at 10AM US Central time and Saturdays and Sundays at noon. All programs are archived for easy listening.
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