Table of Essays

Table of Essays

Below is a list of the essays I’ve written for this blog. Having found yourself on this blog, there might be other topics that I’ve written that would interest you.

I appreciate your attention and responses. Some people have had trouble subscribing and leaving comments. Please, please contact me at cupton8@gmail.com if you have any challenges or you want to continue the conversation offline.

Thank you, Carey Upton

Creating the 21st Century: an Overview 09/13/12

Voyager 1 & 2: a diversion 09/13/12

The Making of the Modern

Employing the “to be or not to be” speech from Hamlet, I make a case for how Shakespeare created the Modern and how it points toward the Next

To be OR Not to be: How Shakespeare Charted the Path to the Modern 09/14/12

Ay, there's the point: The Bad Quarto of Hamlet 09/15/12

Richard III, the last great Medieval Man 09/15/12, repost 2/6/13

The Readiness is All 09/15/12

Left and Right Brain

A series about how the two sides of our forebrain causing our way of thinking and has created human culture and is leading us to the Next

The Teeter Totter of our Brains, an Introduction 10/04/12

How Left v. Right Brain Dominance has Created our World

The Teeter Totter of our Brains, part 2 10/06/12

Brain Architecture/Function Simplified and Caveats

The Teeter Totter of our Brains, part 3 10/07/12

0: The Primitive Era

The Teeter Totter of our Brains, part 4 10/08/12

1: The End of the Classical Era and 2: The Dark and Medieval Ages

The Teeter Totter of our Brains, part 5 10/09/12

3: The Renaissance and the coming Modern

The Teeter Totter of our Brains, part 6 10/21/12

3: The Modern and 3 to 4: The Modern Era and the coming Next

The Teeter Totter of our Brains, part 7 11/08/12

3 to 4: Transitioning from the Modern to the Next and 4: The Next

Consilience 11/14/12

Theatre Then and Now

A series on how theatre changed through the Modern era and how we need to reclaim what has been lost to create a 21^st Century theatre

Starting with a Lie 09/22/12

   Modern Theatre begins with a series of Lies that the audience must embrace to be entertained

Theater has Changed 09/23/12

   How theatre was in the Elizabethan era as opposed to now

Realism in the Theatre: an outtake 10/02/12

   Why we got Realism and how it killed the theatre

The Actor – Audience Relationship 10/03/12

   The most important element to reclaim

Why this Play? 01/12/13

   When doing Shakespeare you need something more than a great concept

The Macbeth Riots 12/01/12

   The forgotten moment in our past the split entertainment and art

Entertainment Violence

A series of how portrayed violence affects actual violence

Violence in Entertainment 02/23/13

Introduces the topic and discusses how previous cultures have included violence in their entertainment

When Entertainment Violence Works 03/10/13

Surveys when portrayed violence is beneficial

Fight, Flight, Freeze (or Flirt) 03/18/13

A consideration on our innate ability to respond to danger

Your Brain on Violence: the Movementtoward Connection and Isolation 03/23/13

Profiles the people who can’t manage entertainment violence and how our brains are causing this disjunction

Do we live in a Violent Society? 03/29/13

   Wraps up the conversation with a looking at the degree of violence in our society and the role of the media

Political Writing

Bathsheba Syndrome 11/18/12

   An essay about David Petraeus and the tendency for good leaders to abuse their positions as told through the King David and Bathsheba Bible story

Voting with your Left or Right Brain 10/28/12

   Prior to the 2012 election, this is about how the dominant half of our brain leads us to vote

It Must be a Parallel Universe 09/13/12

   How Democrats and Republicans had had contrasting world views as they approached the 2012    election

Shakespeare and his Plays

A collection of essays about Shakespeare’s Plays

Richard III, the last great Medieval Man 09/15/12, repost 2/6/13

A Thought about the Scottish Play 02/02/13

Shakespeare’s Mentor: the Earl of Oxford 01/13/13

   My speculation on the Authorship debate

The Tempest: Anticipating the Next, Part1 12/09/12

As You Like It: What if Orlando Knew 11/12/12

Assorted Essays

Jump the Gun 2/10/13

   An essay about knowing the future told through the Abraham & Sarah story from the Bible.

Lost Introductions to Christmas Songs 12/24/12

Random Thoughts 12/04/12

   A quote from Homeland, the devil on your shoulder and religion

Lost Sight 11/12/12

   Losing my glasses and second sight

Do we live in a Violent Society?

Do we live in a Violent Society?

[This is the fifth essay on violence in entertainment. This is probably the last for a while. They are not sequential, so you can read them in any order. For those left brain linear types, the first essay is Violence in Entertainment.]

Is our society violent? Many people would scream a loud “Yes!” Most perceive our society as being more violent than it was before and getting worse. We are convinced society had to be less violent than now, like some folk's nostalgic memory of the 1950s.

I would argue that there is a big difference between the actual danger and risk factors of living in our time and our perception of violence. Based on crime statistics, our society is less violent than any time or culture in the history of humanity. The problem is that we are sold violence and fear to keep us excited, afraid and frozen.

A violent society must be measured on actual violence rather than perceived risk. What is the true potential that you or your family will be directly impacted by a physically violent act this year? For most people reading this blog, the odds are very low; extremely low. As in, what percentage of people that you personally know have been injured or killed by a violent act?

I appreciate and do not negate that there are actually violent communities, areas of cities and countries; places where the risk of being personally affected by violence is high. Most of us are able to choose to not live in those places.

Our challenge seems to be the perception of violence. I look to the news media. They more than report the violence in our society. They exalt in it, sell it, market it and addict us to it. They play on our need to know while engaging our fear. In the past thirty years, the rise of cable news and the 24 hour news cycle have increased the coverage of violent act; Breaking News! The salacious obsession with violence is driven by the commercial benefits. While I wish that our society prized reports of positive change or even deep investigative reporting of the negative practices of government and corporations, all media outlets know that violence and often petty violence sales.

Unlike entertainment violence which helps to temper our own violent impulses. I don’t see the benefit of the expanded and heightened coverage of violent acts. I believe the coverage of violent acts does far more to encourage others to act violently than all of the entertainment violence combined. What’s funny is that when someone shoots up a school or a movie theatre, the news media begins seventy-two hour hyped-up coverage trying to seek out the cause. They indict the usual suspects of movies, television, video games, music, guns, schools and parents as the source of violence in our society. However, they never admit that their coverage of violence is an accomplice in the violence.

Conclusion

Given a choice we would prefer to live in a society that was free from actual and entertainment violence. It’s a hard ask because we humans still have a deep impulse for being violent. For the most part, our entertainment violence has helped to pacify these impulses. However, the amount of time we spend engaged in entertainment and the amount of portrayed violence we experience has risen exponentially in the past couple of decades. At the same time, the media coverage of actual violence raised our fear levels and the perception of daily risk. The availability of weapons that can damage and kill more quickly and effectively than knives, clubs and spears has made the violence done more lethal. Lastly and more importantly, our brains and world views are in conflict undermining our ability to manage our impulse for violence.

At this turning point, I suspect things will get worse (i.e., more acts of violence, more hyped coverage, an increased arms race and body count in our entertainment) prior to getting better. Until we can live in the opposites created by the two worldviews of our brain, the conflict will act out in real life and internally. Until we find the peace of balance, we will continue to experience the violence in our world.

Sidenote

OK, the Second Amendment to the Constitution states:

A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.[i]

What I don’t get is that the Second Amendment doesn’t actually allow individuals to freely own and possess Arms. What it allows for are well regulated Militias to keep and bear Arms. The words I cling to are: regulated, Militia and Arms. The Constitution doesn’t give me the right to have an arsenal of guns that are not regulated. However, I do have the right to participate in a community Militia with the sole purpose of maintaining a free state. This gives the militia the responsibility and authority to own and store arms, which would include guns, rocket launchers, tanks, F-16 fighter planes, and possibly nukes. These are to be used against enemies foreign and domestic, including a tyrannical government if necessary. (The bar for a Tyrannical Government would have to include defying the rule of law. Which no matter how much I hate the outcome of Bush v. Gore in 2000 or the Tea Partiers want to accuse Obama to taking away their government, we aren’t seeing the overrule of the rule of law.) To protect our freedoms, our militias should be as well armed as our army. You might remember that the Revolutionary War began when the British sought to capture the armories at Concord and Lexington. The Civil War was fought by armies made up state militias. I don’t want to have a gun in my house, but I would support and pay monthly dues to arm the well regulated Culver City Progressive militia as a deterrent to an overreaching government that would take away our freedoms.

Even if you want to read that the Second Amendment gives individuals the right arm themselves and have these weapons at home, then there is nothing well regulated about a system that lets anyone buy an assault weapon with a fifty round clip. We have to get a license for practically everything we do that could cause harm to others, why not firearms? A safety class, test, insurance and penalties for misuse would be in order. Those Congressmen and the NRA who ignore the term “well regulated” are the ones denying the Constitution.

One last question:

Is the lack of a vibrant dramatic form of entertainment in the Islamic countries causing a greater impetus for violence?

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[i]               Let’s try to paraphrase this convoluted sentence. When I teach Shakespeare I teach that a convoluted sentence demonstrates confusion in the thoughts of the speaker. I believe this is what was happening when this amendment was being written. The new country’s existence was due to the armed militias and their having arms. However, the Founding Fathers must have been somewhat wary of everyone having guns. I think this created the confusion and cognitive disconnect. The sentence could read: (Congress and the government) shall not infringe on the right of the people to keep and bear arms (for the purpose of) maintaining a well regulated militia. This is necessary to secure a free state.

Your Brain on Violence: The Movement toward Connection or Isolation

Your Brain on Violence: The Movement toward Connection or Isolation

[This has become the fourth essay on violence in our culture and entertainment. I wrote a tanget Fight, Flight, Freeze (or Flirt)) last week. This essay follows: Violence in Entertainment and When Entertainment Violence Works. The next essay should be: Do we live in a Violent Society? Unless I change my mind or go off on another tangent.]

Not everyone can handle violence in entertainment. I use the word “handle” broadly to mean: deal with, be immune to, ignore, enjoy, viscerally respond to, or mentally differentiate between real and simulated violence. For some people entertainment violence overwhelms them or disengages them. There seems to be an increase in those who can’t handle portrayed violence. That’s creating a problem.

Response to violence seems to sit on a spectrum passing from those who feel too much to those who have become numb to the violence. This spectrum is shaped like a classic bell curve with the majority of people in the middle having what might be called a healthy relationship to entertainment violence. (I’ll circle back to that phrase.) The challenge is that our bell curve is beginning to peal with the people on the edges who cannot manage the violence in entertainment.

On one side the curve declines to a very small number of people whose response to violence inspires them to be violent. On the other side, the curve declines to a small number of people who are traumatized (or re-traumatized) by viewing violence. While this seems most obvious on the side of the curve where young men commit unspeakably violent acts, there is also significant damage on the side of the curve where people are hyper-sensitive to portrayed violence. It seems that these two groups are growing in new recruits.

I contend that the conflict between the two hemispheres of our brains is causing this rise. Our forebrain is divided into two hemispheres which are physically similar but operate in a vastly different manner from each other. The right hemisphere thinks all-at-one-time, it specializes in visio-spatial processing, external stimuli and emotions. The left hemisphere thinks in a one-at-a-time manner and specializes in the symbols, abstraction and internal stimuli. [For more information on two sides of our brains, please see my series on the The Teeter Totter of our Brains] The two hemispheres of our brain are in conflict in our culture as we transition to what is coming next. This cognitive dissonance is causing some people to choose sides. They depend more fully on one side of their brain over the other, losing the intended relative balance between the two. They unconsciously buy into the world view of one side of their brain over the other.

A feature of right brain thinking is to see ourselves as interconnected and part of the whole of all existence. The right brain does not see itself as an individual, it emphases its place in the community. It manages most of the emotions, other than anger. Hyper-sensitive individuals over empathize with others and perceive the violence is happening to them directly. This might be natural preference or caused by some kind of trauma.[i] Entertainment violence feels real and the people or animals who are being harmed feel real and in some unexplainable way a part of them. They have a hard time differentiating between what is real and what is fiction. Awareness of this proclivity causes many to avoid these activities. In the extreme, even a glimpse of portrayed violence overloads the emotional and empathetic response causing the person to become numb or shut down. In some cases, the person harms themselves and others feeling like an animal trapped desperate for their lives.

On the left side of the brain, abstract thinking creates an idea that the self is the only entity in the universe. More than the self, the brain itself is the only reality. The external world, the other people, and the very chair you are sitting on are projections of the brains reality. The non-reality of media entertainment suggests this experience of the world and video games confirm it. Individuals who have deeply gone over to the left side negate the right brain’s experience of the world and that there is an external world. This disassociation tells this person that those injured by violence are not real. Empathy is shut down, because others are merely abstractions. This response joins with the emotions primarily managed by the left brain, anger and fear. I think this is what is occurring in those individuals who have taken guns and killed so many people.

I can’t confirm that the escalation in entertainment violence is directly causing the rise of people on hemispheric extremes. The ongoing conflict between and polarization of the two sides of our brain is a product of our transition from the Modern era to what is coming Next. However, I know that the increase in portrayed violence is a contributing impact on the few. The “cure” for individuals and our culture is to continue to find the balance between the two hemispheres. We need to be able to live in the middle of the two vital world views the sides of our brains, live between the opposites.

Violence in Entertainment is helpful to our society. It helps us experience, learn from and participate in our impulse for violence without being violent. Without it, we couldn’t live in cities and we wouldn’t be civilized. But, how much and what kind of portrayed violence is healthy for individuals and our society? I feel as if we have lost the balance in portrayed violence in the same way we have lost the balanced relationship between the two sides of our brain. If we can’t right the system, we will have more people who can’t handle violence and we will all experience more actual violence.

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[i]               I believe that post-traumatic stress disorder involves a skewed relationship of the two hemispheres of the brain, though I don’t have the science or research to make any substantial claims. My intuition tells me it is related and possible therapies could be honed by paying attention to the two hemispheres.

Fight, Flight, Freeze (or Flirt)

Fight, Flight, Freeze (or Flirt)

[This is one of those tangents I spoke about. It relates to the question of violence in our society. It is an impression, rather than a completed solution or suggestion. For the beginning of the series go to Violence in Entertainment][i]

In the wake of the Sandy Hook Elementary School shootings, there is increased discussion on what to do when there is an “active shooter” on campus. The accepted procedure is to Lock Down: everyone goes in a classroom, locks the door, covers the windows, hides and remains quiet until the police tell you all is clear.[ii] They followed this procedure at Sandy Hook and it has been followed at many other school shootings with disastrous results for rooms the shooter entered.

Experts in preparedness are now considering other strategies when a shooter is on campus. One strategy is to flee, just run. Studies show an untrained shooter with a hand gun will miss a still target four out ten times. The same shooter will miss a moving target, especially one running away, nine out of ten times. So it seems it is better to run, climb out the window and flee.[iii]

Another strategy that is being touted is to fight. If a shooter enters a room, all of the occupants should throw what they can at the shooter and charge him en masse. The idea is that some will still be shot and die, but less than if you just hide. Also, you will neutralize the shooter. We respect the heroic actions of those on United Airlines Flight 93 who took out the hijackers rather than have their plane crash into the White House or Capital. This strategy is also behind the incredible idea to arm teachers with guns.[iv]

Experts are now touting the new phrase “run, hide or fight”. I say touting, because none of these experts will go so far as recommending or advocating for any other procedure than the lock down. The variables are too many, the liability too great to be the one that says to run, then be the cause of students being killed while running away.

This suggestion might be right for adults who have the right and responsibility to make their own decisions. However in a school setting where the teacher has responsibility for a class on minors, it is different. If the teacher tells the class to run, she/he has lost the control or ability to lead the class. The police tactical units will be hindered from stopping a shooter when the campus is filled with running students. And, how would anyone know that there is not a second or third shooter. It is also difficult to imagine telling a classroom of second graders to attack or storm a shooter as he comes through the classroom door. An even worse scenario is the parents who are telling their children to ignore the teachers.

The biggest challenge with these alternative strategies is that it requires a momentary decision. Which do you do? How do you guide your students to safety? Do you run, hide or fight? Do you tell your class to run, hide or fight? How does the teacher decide? How can you train the teachers what to do? There are too many variables. It is impossible develop a workable decision tree as a person in this situation lacks sufficient knowledge to make decisions.

Knowing what to do in a situation such as this would require us to connect to our most primal instincts. Teachers and students would be required to acknowledge, respect and include their deepest physical and emotional impulses in the decision process. This is not what is taught in our educational system.

We, along with all organisms on this planet, have a highly developed response to danger: Fight, Flight or Freeze. It is instinctual and learned behavior, or I would say honed behavior since we can develop the ability to adhere to instinct or to purposefully ignore it. Our Sympathetic Nervous System kicks in increasing our ability to act and limiting the use of systems not required to save and protect us.

Like “run, hide or fight”, our fight, flight or freeze response is programmed to protect us. At the very possibility of danger, we become hyper-aware. Our blood and adrenalin go to our senses to hear, see, feel and smell the danger. To freeze or become still is often the first response. We initially freeze or go quiet to heighten our awareness of the exact danger. If the threat passes, we resume our previous way of being. Sometimes to freeze and remain frozen is the best course of action. Freezing is a way of acknowledging ones inability to fight or escape the danger. For many animals, this is their best and preferred action, playing possum or pretending to be dead.[v] For most species, the freeze is only a preamble to take in more information. A lock down is a freeze, you play "dead" or absent to not attract attention of the hunter. It’s interesting that the lock down is the first and last prescribed response to danger in a school setting. It suggests that all other options, i.e. running, fighting or gathering more information, are not viable.

After an initial freeze to identify the threat, most choose their moment and flee. Flight is a good alternative. It takes you out of the danger. I imagine the rabbit hearing my dog in the grass. He initially freezes to determine the direction the danger is coming, then at the best moment sprints out of danger. This is an instinctual response rather than a cognitive analysis. It is something to be known using different ways of knowing than reason.

Most animals and humans will only turn to fight as a last resort. Many will never choose to fight. If the only remaining choice is to fight then we must train for that potential. Being pack animals, we learned many tens of thousands of years ago that the best defense is to fight as a pack rather than as a lone individual. Fighting for the group seems counter-intuitive to our ‘me, myself and I’ culture. It seems easier to sacrifice the young, old or infirmed rather than to risk an attack as a group. However, we know innately that the group can defeat any individual. 

When I talk about the fight, flight or freeze impulse, my wife Adele always adds “or flirt.” I’ve also heard “fawn” and “fool around” as other options. While these tactics might not work on an active shooter, aggression and violence can be subverted by kindness, distraction or absurdity. In our Modern society, these high level tactics are often used with more success than the big three. This has to do with flipping the status. By lowering your status, you reduce yourself as a threat. It also has to do with play. We are playful creatures. If we can engage the other in play, we have the potential to change the dynamic of competition.  

I wonder if by teaching the fight, flight, freeze and flirt tactics of safety preparedness we could better prepare for other challenges in our more day to day life. I don’t know what actions to recommend to someone confronted with real danger, but I suspect that we know innately more than we think and the challenge is to use that knowing.

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[i]               My current day job is with a school district. I manage the facility use, including performances, filming, special events, joint use of athletic facilities, leases, etc. I sit on the District Safety Committee. While I sometimes think my interest in disaster preparedness has more to do with my wish for cataclysmic change than my interest is protecting people, I know I’m passionate about being prepared. As part of the Safety Committee, we spend a lot of time discussing the worst case scenarios and asking how the District can be more prepared.

[ii]               I am a big advocate for distinguishing between a Lockdown and to Shelter in Place. When you lockdown, you lock the door and hide. It is used when there is an imminent and immediate threat. Sheltering in Place is used when the threat is near but not imminent. It means you stay in the building or on campus, but can still go to the bathroom and you don’t need to hide under your desk. I think we overuse the lockdown, when a shelter in place would suffice.

[iii]              This statistic and strategy is diminished when the shooter has a rapid fire assault weapon and a 100 plus ammo clip. This is one reason I support some gun control. Give us a fighting chance. It is also why I respect bow hunters as being more sporting.

[iv]              The idea of arming teachers is stupid. The number of students killed by psychopaths and mass murderers would pale in comparison with the number of accidental shootings if all teachers were armed. As a society we don’t pay properly to educate our children, do you really think we will properly fund, train and support teachers being armed? Not to mention how this would change the entire nature and dynamic of the educational relationship.

[v]               Having been threatened by an opossum while driving down a street one night, I know they employ other strategies than just playing dead.

When Entertainment Violence Works

When Entertainment Violence Works

[Sorry for the break in the conversation, work and taxes took me away from writing. This became my second essay on violence in our culture and entertainment. To read the first essay go to: Violence in Entertainment. I was headed in a different direction with the second essay, then I felt I needed to define the what/how/when of entertainment violence before I wrote about the growing number of people on the fringes who can’t handle the violence we are displaying.]

Let’s define how entertainment uses violence. Sometimes it works and is necessary. We’re talking about the exposure and response to violence in entertainment, including film, television and video games along with sports and even old world forms of entertainment like theatre and books. This is make-believe or simulated violence. I’m not discussing actual violence that happens to a person, her/his family and loved ones or is personally witnessed. (I plan to address that topic in another essay: Do we live in a Violent Society?) I’m also not currently addressing actual violence reported on and exploited by the news media. (I’ll get to that in the next essay. It’s a barrel of monkeys unto itself.)

Violence is used in entertainment to create a visceral and emotional response in the audience. The emotions range through fear, anger, sadness, excitement, desire (in its many forms) and even hope or joy when we wish for it to turn out well or when it does. There might also be some pleasure when the villain gets her/his due. Through the art of storytelling, we usually associate with a character or a collection of characters, our heroes. They are placed in opposition with other characters who either are violent to our “heroes” or are expendable due to the fact that they are on the opposite side of our heroes, the villains. We root for the heroes and revile the villains. Our heroes are the good guys and the villains are the bad guys. Here are a few of the factors usually at play:

1.   The hero is “us”, and the villains are “other”. This plays on a very deep human impulse to fear and hate anyone who is not part of our tribe or is different. There is not a lot of room for seeing the other as the same as us. When it is addressed, we know we’re watching some serious drama. We are for us and against the other because the other wants something we have, disagrees with our world view or way of life, or generally wants to see us off the planet. Playing on this us-other instinct increases racism, sexism, specieism (when dealing with aliens or radioactive spiders[i]), and other –isms that differentiate us from others.

2.   Our heroes are the good guys. Along the way they might have to do bad things, such as kill more people than a mid-sized village, but the means justify the end. Since the Second World War, most of our heroes have been what are classified as anti-heroes. We acknowledge that our heroes might have to do awful things to win. They no longer wear white hats.  Their hats are grey which are lighter than the black hats worn by the villains. We justify their by contrasting them with the villains who behave in worse way than the heroes and by excusing the collateral damage as being the villains fault. Lately, there has been some acknowledgement that our heroes are damaged by the deeds they must do to win and the journey might destroy them or at least leave them with scars that they will carry for the rest of their lives.

3.   The violence is justified as long as the villains get theirs in the end. The bad guys must be punished for their misdeeds. It is the basis of our moral code. If the villain gets off or goes free, it is wrong and the violence and journey were not justified. In recent films, villains have been increasingly going free. This might be causing some of our current problems with violence.

4.   There is an implied argument between right v. wrong and good vs. evil. The entertainment asks us to support one way of life or world view over another, even though we might not actually agree with the world view we are asked to support.

5.   The emotional experience is entertaining in that it amuses us and distracts us from our lives, it often leads us to consider thoughts/feelings/experiences we wouldn’t in our lives and it helps us experience our own large emotional responses, including violent tendencies, in a safe and controlled environment.

The “healthy” response to well told violent entertainment is to recognize that it is a fictitious story with characters who are not real people. We are experiencing a story. We are able to differentiate between the story and real life. We have a cathartic emotional experience that releases our own need to act violently. This normal response shifts when the “rules” are broken, such as: violence is gratuitous or excessive; the hero injures others, especially innocents unnecessarily; or the villain does not pay for his/her violence. The response also shifts if the violence feels real, we begin to empathize with the person injured, or we feel as if there is no justice.

In many ways, the violence we are seeing in entertainment is slowly evolving towards a more actualized relationship to violence. This reminds me of a chart in Carol Pearson’s book, THE HERO WITHIN: Six Archetypes We Live By. She writes about the Warrior Archetype and the phases of the Warrior’s journey.  [I’ll switch up the masculine/feminine pronouns because Warriors aren’t only men.]

First Phase – The Warrior sees the enemy as the other. The enemy is completely different and separate than the Warrior. The Warrior objectifies the other, denies any similarity with himself and barely acknowledges his enemy as human. He negates the enemy’s desires, drives and humanity. He denies the right and the justice of the enemy’s point of view. He objectifies and negates the humanity of the enemy’s family, relations and people. They are all enemy. The Warrior must win at all costs, even at the cost of his loved ones and his own life.

Second Phase – The Warrior begins to recognize the enemy as being similar to her. She respects her opponent and appreciates his abilities. She recognizes the humanity of the enemy and acknowledges that she shares the same drives, needs and feelings as him. She begins to appreciate the point of view of the other side. She still has a duty and responsibility to fight for her side and fights to win, but it is out of duty rather than malice. The Warrior learns to fight for true beliefs and values and the importance of fighting for self and others. Her sacrifice is vital to protect her people and their rights.

Third Phase – The Warrior knows that the enemy is a part of himself. He and his Enemy are in many ways the same. The battle is for the good and right. He knows that he also contains evil (a shadow) and must do bad things for the right to win. For him to win, he must conquer the evil within himself. He accepts the fight will cause him permanent mental and physical damage. If he survives, he will forever wear the scar. The Warrior knows assertion (I’d say aggression) as part of the dance of life. It is a part he must play.

Carol Pearson writes about the Warrior Archetype being one of six (Innocent, Orphan, Wanderer, Warrior, Martyr/Caregiver and Magician)[ii] that all humans must traverse through all phases to be actualized. As much as it is true for the individual, it is also true for the culture.  The United States being younger than the Old World Western and Eastern Cultures is still making its way through the first and second phases.  Our entertainment reflects this. 

There is nothing wrong with telling the first phase Warrior stories to fifteen year old boys.  And since it seems that they are the only audience that the Entertainment Industry is targeting, this might be ok.  However, we as a culture we need to move through the phases of the warrior’s journey.[iii] [iv]

Our lack of true initiation rites for our youth might be the reason we are having difficulty moving through the phases of warrior. Or it might be the Military’s committed use of psychology to craft warriors who objectify their enemies and disassociate from their emotions.

My largest concern is that the creators of entertainment have become disconnected to the potency of portrayed violence and overly driven by commerce.  It’s ok to play with fire if you are properly trained and have a healthy respect for fire. If not, you could end up burning down the barn and the country. 

Next I'll discuss how are brains impacting our response to violence in entertainment.

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[i]            Building on the current trend to retell fairy tales with overly amped up violent films such as JACK, THE GIANT SLAYER, HANSEL AND GRETL, LITTLE RED RIDING HOOD or SNOW WHITE AND THE HUNTSMAN, Jan Strnad and I were joking that it was time for MUFFET, THE SPIDER SQUASHER. It would you be a hyper-tale of a grown up and busty Little Miss Muffet who exterminates a plague of giant radioactive spiders. “Get off my @#%$ tuffet!”

[ii]               Carol Pearson later added an additional six archetypes in AWAKENING THE HEROES WITHIN: Twelve Archetypes to Help to Find Ourselves and Transform the World.  The twelve archetypes she lists are divided into three sections: Preparation for the Journey: Innocent, Orphan, Warrior, Caregiver; The Journey – Becoming Real: Seeker, Destroyer, Lover, Creator; and The Return – Becoming Free: Ruler, Magician, Sage, Fool. Her work deeply draws on Carl Jung, Joseph Campbell and their people.

[iii]           As we plunged into the unnecessary Iraq War, I kept feeling George W. Bush and many in our country were stuck in first phase Warrior. As many faced the complexities of the situation, we became disinterested in the war.  Fighting a clear enemy like Saddam was easy.  Being in the midst of a civil war where the enemy became unclear (was the enemy the Shiites, the Sunnis or the Americans?) we lost our appetite for combat.

[iv]           This is not to say that it is not being done. For every Sylvester Stallone, Chuck Norris, Dolph Lundgren, Vin Diesel and Steven Seagal who all tend to play in 1^st Phase Warrior land, there is a Bruce Willis, Arnold Schwarzenegger or Jason Statham who tend to play on the 2^nd Phase. I especially appreciate the Chris Nolan’s Dark Night Trilogy, the Lord of Rings or the last few James Bond films for wading into 3^rd Phase Warrior muck while still producing popular entertainment. Of course, this might be the problem, we have trained our audiences to watch 1^st phase Warriors and then we give them a Batman who is trying to master the 3^rd phase of being a Warrior.  Was this the cause of the massacre in Aurora? Clint Eastwood’s UNFORGIVEN should be noted as an interesting 3^rd phase Warrior story.  [This list is highly debatable. It is intended as a suggestion not a definitive list.]