I’ve been in the field of violence prevention for 10 years, now, and after a decade, there are a few things I can conclude above all else.  First, our culture is saturated with violence—TV, film, news, video games, music, books—you name it, we’ve got it.  Second, our culture’s history is immersed in violence—the Wild West, World Wars I & II, Columbine, Vietnam, Tucson, Afghanistan.  Third, and perhaps most importantly, what I’ve learned in the last 10 years, is that our culture is GIFTED, utterly gifted at ignoring violence.  When it comes to violence, we’re like that character from the film Memento—you know, the guy who can’t remember anything five minutes after it’s just happened.

In our very recent past, another violent tragedy occurred in Tucson, Arizona.  This violent act was actually just one of thousands that occurred around our country.  From rapes, to assaults, from domestic violence to murder, citizens of our country were subjected to a terrible amount of violence—as they are every week of the year.  What made the tragedy in Tucson special for me, though, was not just that it involved public figures, or that it was a violent mass killing.  Instead, what made it special for me was that with all the violence in our culture, people still responded with pure shock that something like this could actually happen.

In her first show after the tragedy, Rachel Maddow did a brilliant segment about how many different examples there have been of shootings just like the one in Tucson (over the lifetime of the shooter, 1988-today).  Her opening was quite poignant in its demonstration that although we’ve seen this type of violence so many times before, we continue to think of it as unimaginable.  You can watch the clip here: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/26315908/ns/msnbc_tv-rachel_maddow_show/#41011447

Why do we describe something that has happened so many times as unimaginable?  I understand that this type of violence seems more dramatic and thus more difficult to believe, but this is EXACTLY the problem our culture has with ALL forms of violence (with the exception of gang violence in the inner city—which in this totally NON-post-racial world we seem to accept as entirely predictable).  We believe that violence is rare, unpredictable, and thus out of our control to prevent.  We believe this so much that we create a cultural amnesia—an amnesia that allows us to pretend we don’t all have to participate proactively to stop these daily atrocities.

We cannot stop violence, we cannot hope to prevent it, if we allow our culture to deliberately wipe it from our consciousness every moment it’s not thrown in our faces.  The violence continues precisely because we pretend this stuff doesn’t happen and then act surprised when it does.  The friend reacts with shock when her girlfriend is raped by a man they both know (when, in fact, most rapes are committed by someone the person knows); the sister reacts with shock when she hears her sibling was beat to within an inch of her life by her husband; the Governor of Arizona reacts with shock when an armed man (yes…it’s important to note it’s almost always a man) shoots twenty people.

The tragedy in Arizona, like most of the daily tragedies in this country can seem unimaginable because they are horrific and painful.  However, how many more times will we look at acts of violence as unpredictable, unimaginable, isolated events before we take action in response to the ludicrously obvious reality about our culture: that it is saturated with violence and a DELIBERATE denial about the frequency of that violence and the damage it does?

In the end, our culture has to start to recognize that this IS who we are.  In fact, if there’s one way to prevent violence from occurring in the future it’s to take a hard look at ourselves and no longer deny the reality that we are a culture that both promotes and ignores violence.  Despite all of our advances, and there have been many, we are still a culture that regularly silences the voices of survivors; we are still a culture where people abdicate their responsibility to be proactive in preventing violence and then react in shock when it occurs.

After 10 years doing violence prevention work, I can say with confidence that much like the first steps in ending an addiction, reducing violence will require we openly admit our problem by reminding ourselves and everyone around us that violence IS a daily reality in our country.  Only then can we begin to heal and prevent these daily tragedies.  Frankly, in a country filled with so many people who do care and who want to do the right thing, doing any less would be…well, unimaginable.

Tags: Culture, Violence, Violence Prevention

This entry was posted on Friday, February 18th, 2011 at 5:45 pm and is filed under Culture of Violence . You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.