Towards a Sensible Second

[This is my response to the recent gun violence.]

As we celebrate another Independence Day and the anniversary of the Declaration, I’m thinking about Mr. Jefferson’s Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness. It seems to me that everyone’s inalienable rights must have some limits when it threatens life and liberty, not to mention my pursuit of happiness.

When some wacko can use a legally attained weapon to take the lives of dozens of people pursuing happiness dancing in a night club, watching a movie premiere or even children going to school, something is wrong. That guy’s unalienable rights are infringing on others’ lives and liberties.

When the founding fathers put the right to bear arms in the Bill of Rights, I can’t help thinking that they didn’t think an individual citizen should have that kind of firepower.

It’s important to remember the revolution started when the British decided to seize the weapons from a makeshift armory in that hotbed of revolution, Concord, Massachusetts. Paul Revere and some other guy (thanks Mr. Longfellow) rode out to warn the citizens who grabbed their arms to defend their rights and themselves. A shot was fired, heard round the world and a revolution began.

When the Founding Fathers wrote the Second Amendment, this had to be on their minds. This was the freedom they were trying to protect. If the government got out of line and the rule of law collapsed, then the citizens could ban together in militias and fight off the government.

Remember, the Declaration of Independence and the Revolution were the response to a break down in the rule of law, a lack of representation many attempts at redress.

The language they agreed on for the 2^nd Amendment is:

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.

Some folks read this as the right for every citizen to keep and bear arms. It doesn’t actually say that. People keeping and bearing arms is in support of a well regulated Militia. The murders in Orlando, Aurora, Newtown, et al. were not in support of a well regulated Militia. What I’d like to offer is a more sensible solution following what the Amendment actually says and offering a significant clarifying definition. (I’m not the first person to have these thoughts.)

A well regulated militia suggests an organized, trained and armed unit of citizen soldiers. Its purpose is to maintain and secure a free state. While this might mean the National Guard, I think that it suggests an organization that is not controlled by any government agency in case the government threatens the security of a free state. The militia is to be filled and run by the people.

The word I want to clarify is ‘Arms’. In this case, Arms is a shortened form of the word ‘Armaments’. While Arms and Armaments can mean many things, the principle meaning is offensive weapons intended to cause harm to humans. So for the purpose of the Amendment, I propose a definition of Arms to be limited to offensive weapons whose sole purpose is to harm humans. This would not include most handguns which have an intended defensive use or reasonable hunting rifles. (It seems to me sporting rifles should be sporting, something that will obliterate the animal or shoot it dozens of time in a second is hardly sporting.) It seems that the Founding Fathers weren’t talking about hunting rifles so much as weapons of war.

Therefore, here’s my solution:

Everyone should join a militia. I will happily join and pay dues to the Culver City Progressive Militia. I will train with them in preparation of a time our services are needed to secure the free state. Arms/Armaments should be held by the Militias. People can keep and bear their handguns and hunting rifles, but automatic rifles and other weapons whose sole purpose is to kill humans should only be kept and held by the well regulated militias. This could include rocket launchers, cannons and an F-16. I’ll put in my share for my militia to be well armed.

Armaments in this sense could only be sold to well regulated Militias. People would at first be asked to give their weapons to the well regulated militia of their choice. In time, it would become illegal for armaments to be kept and held by private citizens. The arms will be held by the militia and taken out for well regulated training.

As part of the well regulated part, there would be specific by laws as to when the militia would act in defense of the free state. While I can foresee some militias going rogue and fighting against our properly elected government following the rule of law, it would be a different experience than any wacko being allowed to have the fire power to kill and maim a hundred people at a time.

I think that the NRA, the anti-gun lobby and the courts should read the 2^nd Amendment and follow it. Or, they should change the amendment and let it adapt as the Founding Fathers intended.

[Please also read my series of essays on Violence in Entertainment and why I think we have an increase in the violent shooting. It begins with http://creatingthe21stcentury.blogspot.com/2013/02/violence-in-entertainment.html]

Is your Gun a Tool, a Weapon or a Stand-In for something else?

Is your Gun a Tool, a Weapon or a Stand-In for Something Else?

[I thought I was done with my Violence Series, but this topic question came up.[i] For more in the series go to Violence in Entertainment]

Listening to those defending their supposed right to keep guns without any hint of regulation, I begin to wonder what purpose that gun is intended to serve. Is their gun a tool, a weapon or a stand-in for something else?[ii]

A tool is an implement, usually held in the hand, used as a means of accomplishing a task. It is an extension of the arm of the user. It expands the ability of the user. You can dig without a shovel, but it is more efficient with a shovel. A gun can also be a tool. It expands the user’s ability to hunt or defend oneself.[iii]

A weapon exists to inflict damage or harm on living beings, structures or systems. A stick, hammer or fork can become a weapon, though the word weapon is really reserved for those devices designed and constructed with the sole intent of inflicting damage. A difference between a tool and a weapon is the potentiality to do harm. It is a potential that not only expands the user’s ability but also lives outside the user.[iv] A favorite phrase is: “guns don’t kill people, people kill people.” Yes, in all but the rarest cases the gun will not fire itself. Yet, this statement minimizes the inherent power and potentiality of a weapon. And, the more lethal, the more firepower the more inherent power the weapon has. [v]

A weapon contains the potential to inflict harm beyond its parts. Pistols, Rifles and Assault Weapons become a stand in or a symbol for much more. This symbolism is what is at stake in the gun control debate.[vi] The right to bear arms, own a personal arsenal of guns, or National Rifle Association’s insistence on absolutely no gun control has more to do with symbolism than real threat. The other sides’ assumptions about guns and gun owners are also mired in thick symbolism.

Guns make you feel powerful. There’s no way to get around it.[vii] When you hold a gun, the power transfers to you, changes you. It goes beyond the boost a tool gives to a user. The potential power of a gun is perceptively transferred to the gun user. This tool power and potential weapon power conjoin with a symbolic power amplifying the user’s psyche. You feel more powerful, invincible and dominant. You feel in control. You feel an increased sense of individuality, independence and sovereignty. You are master of your world.

This country was taken by force from those who lived here before. The possession of firearms was important to the Europeans ability to conquer the Native Americans. The United States were born when citizens used their fire arms to overthrow a repressive government. We were brought up on the Patriot myth along with the myth of the lone gunman. He had his horse, his pistol and rifle. This gave him independence and power. Guns become an emblem or token of being in power and independent. Having powerful guns and an arsenal of weapons inflates the individuals sense of his own self worth and power.

While we might not have an immediate need for a well regulated militia, the Twenty-first century has hazards that demand the hoarding of weapons. Leaving the Modern era and venturing into what is coming Next, structures and norms that developed from the advent of humans through the last four centuries are breaking down. Power structures that have been firmly in the hands of the European male are shifting. The transition from the agrarian to the industrial has lead to the new knowledge age and is transitioning again. Women and minorities are finding equality with the white patriarchy. This is particularly frightening to previously dominant white, Anglo-Saxon, rural males. Dramatic change encourages the challenged to hunker down and defend their rights. The feeling is that their group is being marginalized in this society. The hoarding of guns compensates for a perceived loss of power and autonomy. The fear is that the change will cause their very death. It is working on a mythic level that is unconscious to those who are experiencing it.

Rising minorities and women are also arming themselves. The guns become their tools to force the change more quickly.

The lack of a clear Rite of Passage for our youth is also adding to the obsession with guns and violence. Our youth, both male and female, no longer have a trial to transition from children to adults. While it is hard to advocate for universal military draft or another war that conscripts the majority of youth, in the past the military aided in this transition in the same way primitive societies set Rites of Passage for their adolescents.

Change is coming. The Destroyer archetype is active. In our mythic journey, we must all take a turn as the Destroyer. The Destroyer ultimately brings about change, growth, metamorphosis. And yet, change is initially met with fear and fighting. When confronted by the need to change there are a couple of ways to dance with Destroyer. One way is through personnel destruction leading to addiction to food, sex, alcohol or drugs. Another way is through subjugation to a higher being, belief or religion larger than you. Another way is to identify with the Destroyer by embracing weapons. While the call is to embrace the change with acceptance and humility, the journey through the Destroyer Archetype contains levels of personal and societal destruction. An association with weapons feeds the journey through the Destroyer. The hope is that the individual journeying through the Destroyer Archetype accepts mortality and change before being destroyed.

If these very real fears were not active, we have compounded the fear and the supposed solution by becoming expert at selling the power and titillation of guns. It is easy to indict the entertainment industry for ramping up the symbolism of firearms. However, I think the greatest culprit might be capitalism and its favorite squeeze, advertising. We sell guns as freedom, manhood and individual strength with the idea of guns. We have become expert at selling the symbolism of firearms to ourselves.[viii]

Years ago, I picked up a .357 Magnum Revolver. I remember thinking, it’s so heavy. It was. It was so much more than tool or a weapon. It had power and holding it, I had power. It was a symbol and stand in for something else.

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[i]               This post has a lot of endnotes. I tried to keep the argument barreling forward without running off on tangents, but this issue is so complex I kept veering off. Below are whole sections that I removed from the main:

[ii]               I wrote this next bit for a previous post, I re-post it as an endnote since it is fundamental to my stance on this topic: 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.

What I don’t get is that the Second Amendment doesn’t actually allow individuals to freely own and possess Arms. It allows for well regulated Militias to keep and bear Arms. The Bill of Rights 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 be one that defies the rule of law. Which no matter how much I hated the outcome of Bush v. Gore or the Tea Partiers want to accuse Obama to taking away their government, we haven’t seen the breakdown 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 of state militias. I don’t want or see a need 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.

In 2008, the Supreme Court made a decision in the District of Columbia v. Heller. It reinterpreted the Second Amendment to allow the individual’s right to keep and bear arms outside of participation in a militia. In my opinion this decision was one of the most egregious examples of the Court revisionism. It was a five four decision written by Scalia. While he accuses liberal justices of activism, he rewrites the Bill of Rights claiming he knows the mind of the authors.

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 misreading their beloved 2^nd Amendment.

[iii]              For a hunter, the gun is a tool to hunt. If the task is to kill the deer for food, a rifle is an efficient tool. While some folks want to ban hunting (and I feel that hunting with a long bow evens the playing field and makes it more sporting), few people argue with the utilitarian use of firearms. Of course the weapon should have a reasonable utilitarian function. We don’t allow fishing with explosives. An assault weapon with a hundred round clip seems to be unreasonable when hunting deer. If you need that kind of firepower to kill a deer, you might work on our skills before hunting.

[iv]              As a director of plays for the theatre, I was taught and quickly learned that a weapon, a gun or a knife, became another actor in the play. Once introduced to the stage, it either had to be used or had to be removed. A person couldn’t carry it or it couldn’t just sit on a table without drawing constant attention. A weapon holds presence. The saying goes: Don’t bring a weapon onstage unless you plan to use it.

[v]               A weapon is in some sense neutral in that it can be used for good or bad, and yet in either case its purpose is to harm and destroy. Exponentially, more gun deaths occur in the home from accidents, self-inflicted wounds and shootings by family members than intruders being shot in self defense. When you invite a weapon into your home you embrace the power of that weapon and accept the risk it will be used against you and your family.

[vi]              This is an idea that I care about, but it worked its way out of the main narrative: I think guns should be more well regulated. The right to own a gun should be considered a privilege, a right that can and should be revoked if the citizen does not use it responsibly. We already have many laws that support this idea. We do this in most states with criminals and the mentally unstable. Those who reject any gun control like to say it is a “right to bear arms, not a privilege.” They try to differentiate owning a gun from driving license or a getting a license to hunt or fish.

I believe our rights are privileges with responsibilities. Freedom is taken from those who cannot obey the laws in the form of being sent to prison. This expands past the 2^nd Amendment. The rights of Free Speech and Religion should be afforded to all who respect the rights of others to have free speech and freedom of religion. This is my problem with some recent Supreme Court rulings, especially the one that upheld the Westboro Baptist Church’s right to protest at the funerals of American servicemen. They are the radical group that believes that America’s support of Gay rights is damning our country. At the foundation of their religious belief is there very insistence that others cannot hold their own opposing beliefs. I appreciate that barring speech is a proverbial slippery slope, but in America I believe you should be afforded free speech only when you respect the free speech of others. Similarly, my decision to not have a gun in my home should not impinge on your right to responsibly bear arms, however your right to own guns shouldn’t impinge on my right to life and liberty.

[vii]             It’s funny, as theater person most of my experience with guns has been with props, often real guns made safe to shoot only blanks. There is even a power when you hold an “impotent” weapon. Doing different plays, I’ve worked with flintlocks, muskets, a blunderbuss, shotguns, rifles, M-16s, MAC 10s, AR-15s, AK47s and all manner of pistols. They each hold a different power, but it always felt as if it transferred to me. Holding real weapons blend a mixture of excitement and apprehension. The idea that you can pull the trigger here and something can explode over there is cool, like the first time I rode a bike down a hill or drove a fast car. Guns give an experience of power. 

[viii]            This is the advertisement for the rifle that was used in the Sandy Hook Massacre:

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.]

Violence in Entertainment

Violence in Entertainment

[In response to the recent slate of gun violence, I offer three essays on violence in our culture and entertainment. This is the first of the series. It is a consideration of the topic.]

Is our entertainment making us more violent? After Sandy Hook, Aurora and so many other massacres, we’re looking for someone/something to blame. The list of usual suspects (movies, music, video games, drugs and guns) are quickly rounded up and put on the trial of public opinion and the 24 hour news cycle.

Violence has always been part of entertainment. Violence and passionate love are the extremes of being human, when we are most alive. Plays and films, the forms of entertainment that are most life-like, are drawn to these heightened experiences. Every dramatic work ends or begins with violence or sex. They make good entertainment.[i]

One of my teachers (someone at Shakespeare & Company, either Tina Packer or Kevin Coleman) taught that it is no surprise that theatre expanded from acting out stories around the fireside to a full blown entertainment at the same time we started to live in cities. To live in close proximity with so many others and strangers, we needed to control our impulses and large emotions. Otherwise, our cities would be torn apart by violence. To enjoy the benefits of City living, we had to trade a part of our humanity.  Every great human innovation requires a loss of some vital part of humanity.[ii]

As a consolation prize for limiting our full range of emotional expression, we got theatre. Watching actors in the throes of simulated life having the full and raw emotional experience of humanity replaced and settled our own need to have these large emotions. We modulated our response to experience. In exchange, we got theatre and entertainment. The actor’s responsibility is to feel all that we do not allow ourselves to feel, to be the extreme and raw experience. Watching/ Hearing/ Experiencing theater allows us to touch this extremity without going through the full experience ourselves.

Theater also helped to socialize the populace and teach them how to live (and how not to live) in society. Entertainment is intended to be instructive.[iii]

In Ancient Greece, theatre grew to be a community experience. It was large and epic. At the start, the violence was kept off stage. It was reported and spoken. The actors expressed the full experience of the violence and its impact on their lives, but the act of violence was not seen. They didn’t see Agamemnon being stabbed in his bath nor do they see Oedipus gouge out his eyes. Slowly, the violence began to creep onto the stage. By the time the theatre of the Greeks transitioned to Rome, the violence had crept onstage. With the excesses of the Roman Empire, came greater violence as part of the Roman tragedies. It is reported that it grew in excess to the point there were “snuff plays” where actors were actually killed onstage. It’s no surprise since theatre was competing with the Gladiator contests at the local Coliseum.[iv]

What happens to a society when the acts of violence are portrayed in the entertainment? What is happening in a society that needs to continually increase the extremity of the violence in their entertainment? There must be a correlation.

When popular theater resurged again in the Renaissance, violence was initially kept off the stage.[v] They had read their Aristotle. Though in time, the violent acts began to creep onto the stage. As Elizabethan theatre gave way to the Jacobean Era the portrayal of violence expanded and became more explicit. As one part of the culture became more liberal and permissive of all extremes, a conservative backlash grew until the King lost his head, the theaters were closed and the country edged toward a theocracy. Was this caused by the explicit violence in the theaters and the adjoining bear baiting arenas where animals were torn apart for sport?

Soon after motion pictures began at the beginning of last century, there was a movement to force restraint and limit explicit violence and sex. (i.e., the Hayes Code). These restraints began to fall off in the sixties and seventies. Filmmakers began to explore and add more vivid portrayals of violence. It was done to express realism, but it devolved in time for titillation and commerce. They knew and exploited the fact that violence sells. It fed something in our culture.

At this point in my argument, I might be expected to advocate for less violence in entertainment, that the showing of violence in entertainment is a degradation of the culture. However, as I thought about this trend from the violence being kept offstage to being brought onto the stage/screen, I noticed a trend in each of the cultures: the elevation in violence often coincided with a lack of wars in the countries and to the populace. This is not to say the Romans, Elizabethans or Americans weren’t engaging in wars or colonization during the Pax Romana, the Elizabethan Golden Age or America in the later twentieth century. The difference is that the stability and strength of the country meant that the wars did not happen in the country nor was the full populace at war.

Could it be that the expression of violence in entertainment is in direct relationship with the violence in the culture? Some people will argue that the United States in the 2013 is a violence culture, look at the number of gun deaths.  I would argue that most Americans have very little exposure to violence. There are certainly violent sections of every city and a sub-section of the populace is regularly confronted by violence. For most Americans real violence is reported on the television and on our smart phones, it is not something we actually encounter.  Is this why we need the placebo of violent entertainment? Is it making up for something we intrinsically need as humans?

We haven’t been “civilized” for very long in the grand evolutionary scheme.  Primitive life contained a greater daily threat to violence, disease and death than we Moderns experience. The only real daily threat I feel is driving on the freeway in Los Angeles and it is mitigated by my own skill and the “armored” Jeep that protects me.

If we really want to reduce violence in entertainment, perhaps we should have the Civil War that is being threatened by our divisiveness. If we Americans were truly confronted with the risk of violence or death, we might not crave violence in our entertainment.

The biggest problem with this increase in entertainment violence is some in the culture can’t handle it. On one side of the spectrum there are those who are sensitive to violence due to past trauma or their heightened sense of empathy. Experiencing an act of violence for them is like it is happening to them.[vi] On the other side of the spectrum are people, usually young men, who no longer see or feel the violence happening to others.  This disassociation from shared humanity disconnects them from their actions and the impact on others.  In a few sick young men, their inability to differentiate between media and real violence allows them to massacre others.

Is the violence in our entertainment still helping to socialize our culture? Or has it expanded to nullify and numb any and all emotional response? Is it keeping us from experiencing our lives? Are the people who are becoming increasingly hyper-sensitive to violence coupled with those who have become immune and disassociated from the violence a sign that we are putting ourselves in danger? Are these folks on the edges are proverbial canaries in our coal mine?

Follow this link to the next part of the series When Entertainment Violence Works.

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[i]               I’m writing about violence in entertainment.  Sex and Nudity in entertainment will need to wait for another essay. Discussing violence in the States is a walk in the woods compared to slogging through the swamp of our culture’s relationship with sex.

[ii]               While I speak of a living in a city, I’m not just talking about places with a population over a million. For tens of thousands of years humans lived in large tribes where everyone knew each other and was in some way related. When the towns grew to the size where you no longer knew everyone in town, then you had challenges.

[iii]              The two chief definitions of the word entertain is to amuse and to consider.  Our entertainment should embody both aspects at the same time.

[iv]              I wrote this footnote for the Teeter Totter of the Brain Series. I like the idea and wanted to share it again: When the Romans took over a city, they were quick to build three specific buildings: The Amphitheatre (or Hippodrome) for the horse/chariot races and wagering; the Coliseum for the blood sports, and the Theaters for cultural instruction and comedy. These three different venues for entertainment were important because they helped distract and civilize the citizens. The races or athletic competitions fed the desire for competition. There were four teams designated by color throughout the Empire. If you were a Green, you’d root for the Greens wherever you were. Think of this as the sports entertainment that fills our TVs today. The Blood Sports of the Gladiators offered the cathartic experience. This allowed for the release of the basest and most violent instincts. This pacified and distracted the mob. We currently get this from our movies and football. The Theater was built for both tragic and comic plays. This entertainment taught the new populace what it was to be living in their time as members of the Empire. It was also the place that allowed a place to make fun of and ridicule the leaders.

[v]               There was theater between the Romans and the Renaissance. I can discuss the full transition in detail, but most people would quit reading. I’m working with bold strokes. If you want more details, write me. As one colleague once said, “Go ask Carey, he’ll tell you more than you want to know.”

[vi]              There is a lot of writing on this. The simplest introduction is to the research by Elaine Aron, PhD.  Her writing on the Highly Sensitive Person or Sensory Processing Sensitivity is accessible and not to technical.  High Sensitivity Persons. Jung coined the phrase “Innate Sensitiveness” in 1913.

[vii]             The Los Angeles Times did a great series on Violence in Culture this past Sunday. This link will take you to the lead story and links to the rest of the articles: LA Times Series on Violence in Entertainment.