A History of Violence

“I am in a world of shit, yes, but I am alive and I am not afraid.”

There is something frightening I fear in myself. A force equally as potent as the capacity for love: the capacity for hate. A dark face that lurks unnervingly below the surface: powerful, exciting, and alluring in its shroud. I’m thinking of all violence happening this very moment and that has happen in every moment before it, stretching back to the very beginning.

I remember growing up on violent video games, despite the stern protest of my parents. As a child, and more so as a young man, I craved and was addicted to the feeling of power, even false power: to have God-like control over the fate of animated armies or selecting the most pleasurable weapon with which to bludgeon an alien foe (a brut hammer).

I vividly recall the first time I played video games. It was in Perth, at a friend’s house. He was blasting through monsters in Duke Nukem’s pixilated palace of pain, scoffing at squares of blood that would spray everywhere. “The best is the rocket launcher,” he said eagerly as he keyed a weapon swap. He burst into a boisterous fit of laughter when the missile round expelled the monster into a fountain of red. Fortunately, he was too preoccupied with his own victory, and perhaps too young and insecure himself, to notice the horrified expression on my face.

We are trained for violence from a young age and it appears in a multitude of forms. As boys we battle aliens, protecting our planet, our families. As young men, we’re educated in the history of war and of the valiant soldiers. As men we are expected to fight for our country or cause as the highest order of honor. Men are to be quiet fortresses: strong, brave, and inclined to violence in the fight for good.

But what war is good? Give me a cause worth its weight in blood and I will gladly, and fearfully, march into battle. Since the existence of mankind we have stabbed, shot, chopped, raped, pillaged each other to what end? It is the same violence repeated in the name of religion, land, culture, vengeance or whatever reason in vogue during the century. We are wired with such potential for both good and evil: our minds powerful enough to skew reality, to forget and rewrite the same history.

It’s disconcerting because I have genetically inherited that ability. Here, frustrated by politics, corruption, and a tightening police force, thoughts are finding solace in the euphoria of violence. Violent revenge in the name of citizens that needlessly suffer under the rule of a growingly stubborn tyrant. The need to revolt, to spark a revolution is strong, but what will it achieve? More violence, killing and the fate of every other unstable African state.

Why do I feel strongly for innocent villagers? Are they so innocent? Aren’t they just like the Germans, the Croats, the Serbs, the Muslim Americans: innocent citizens? The people that simply let violence and corruption happen, buying into the national rhetoric? Why don’t they say stop? Why do the masses allow themselves to be fooled by higher powers and then brood vengeance against an enemy they manifested?

Perhaps people are no more than children witnessing a violent game: instinctively want to turn away and say this is wrong, yet cannot form the words. They fear being ridiculed, abandoned, and ultimately alone. Either you are with us or against us. You aren’t a real man if you oppose violence. I’ve seen enough commercials for the Marines. Enough movies like Rambo glorifying war. Enough talk of the allure of uniform. These are forces that ultimately form boys into the men that shape this planet.