Taking a Look at Violence

As Americans, living in a egotistical and self centered society, we often think that we are the best, the top 1 percent in every aspect. However, When compared to other countries of the world, America is ranked 14th in education, 44th in health care efficiency, and 101th in peace. But it ranks first in incarceration, 2nd in ignorance, and 3rd in global competitiveness. One can see how the rankings that America is top in are those that promote violence in one way or another. In the book Violence and Culture: A Cross-Cultural and Interdisciplinary Approach by Jack David Eller, the author discusses violence in American society in one of his chapters. In this chapter, he mentions some social characteristics that represents and plays a role in

Violence is one of the most exaggerated forms of physical aggression and it can exist for a series of reasons. It involves a person or a group of persons acting against another person or groups of persons with the purpose to achieve one or several diverse goals. In many cases violence results from individuals perceiving the acts of other people as hostile and thus wanting to act against these people before it is too late. Depending on the situation, more or less individuals might get involved in an act of violence, especially when they consider that it would be essential for them to do so.

What has America come to? Although the articles, “We’re No.1(1)!” written by Thomas Friedman, and the article “Violence is Who We Are,” by Steven Crichley, have different overall subjects, they have a similar arguments. The world isn’t as great as it used to be, we are lacking good leadership, and we happily invite wrong doings into our lives.

You’re driving with your girlfriend and child, on your way home after a long day. You suddenly get pulled over by a cop. You do as the cop says, in addition, you decide it’s not best to argue back. You speak calmly and do as the cop says, yet they are afraid of you and think you will try something horrific. As soon as you’re about to show them your license, it is suddenly too late. You are shot and are no longer alive. It took 40 seconds for an ordinary traffic stop to turn deadly. This occurred to a man named Philando Castile. He was fatally shot by a cop when he was reaching for his license. Philando Castile informed him beforehand that he legally had a firearm in his car before they decide to shoot or arrest him. However, the cop said that he

amount of the violence. My children at times were abused for defending me. I knew

Fixing America is going to take a lot more than a hammer and nails. To fix America, we will have to get our money/dept and the violence happening in and out of our country under control.

Over the last thirty years, significant scholars of American (particularly southern) lynching such as George C. Wright, W. Fitzhugh Brundage, Stewart E. Tolnay and E. M. Beck, Christopher Waldrep, William D. Carrigan, Amy Louise Wood, and Manfred Berg have written at length about the social structure and cultural context of the collective violence, much of it racially motivated, that plagued the late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century United States. With the exception of Wright's and Waldrep's work, lynching scholarship (including my own) has tended to focus more on the structure and context of lynching violence than on its impact on African American communities. Focusing on the violence itself as well as those who perpetrated it, scholars

The artists and creators of violence in various forms of media have the ability to shape how people perceive violence as an art. While most people that art is used as a form of aestheticism, often the creators attempt to send a message through their work. Maggie Nelson explains in her work, “Great to Watch,” that the art of cruelty aestheticizes violence in order to invoke a feeling of guilt as they watch others suffering. People use violence as an art of expression to create a moral or idea of through their story. Nelson points out that violence is complex and she demonstrates this with her mentioning of Abu Ghraib which she implies that she wishes violence was true and simple. She also mentions that the reason violence is used to send messages is because people often find that being bad and committing malice acts is an easy way of life. She explains that people find that the dark side and dark emotions take over and being good is difficult. She explains that there is a pleasure and desire through violence. Nelson reflects on the idea that people admire the idea of violence and its’ explicitness and its’ ability to show that not everything is as perfect as seems. In her quote, “The moral of this dichotomoy is that distraction by banal obviates a necessary focus on the all-too-real-calamitous”, she explains that the beauty of violence that people create in their stories shows that the duality of people when dealing with moral issues, shows that people have both a dark and

In a world that is continuously changing in every aspect of its existences, there has arrived a controversy involving prehistoric societies and modern societies. Some scholars believe that prehistoric societies were more violent than the present modern societies; whereas other scholars on the opposite side of the argument believe that today human beings are living in a far more violent society than those who preceded. The two sides of the ongoing debate have published several books and articles defending their standpoints. They both present very compelling evidence based on historical and recent data and use interdisciplinary fields in order to support their claims.

20th century is the most educated century but also the most violent over the history of mankind. The lethal violence has been increasing over the course of mammal evolution. The aggression in mammals, that includes humans, also has a genetic component with high heritability. So it is widely admitted that evolution has shaped human violence. And this violence is not among different species, it is among the same species. Of all the world species, humans and chimpanzees are some the only species that engage themselves in coordinated attacks on the other members of the same species. We, humans, are not the only ones that are involved in the homicides, massacres, terrorism, and human violence. Like humans, chimpanzees also engage in rape, murders, and violence. The patterns of violence that is found among the humans are compared and contrasted with the great ape species. Whether it is for food/resource sharing, dominance structure, territory or the male competition for sexual access to females. Both human and chimpanzee want to prove their status what becomes a reason for a great number of wars and aggressiveness (Wrangham and Peterson, 1996).

Based on my readings of Violence: The Enduring Problem, Alvarez says genocide it a word that is difficult to define because it shares many defining characteristics with many other war crimes and human rights violations. In order to have a set in stone definition, our textbook informed us that the United Nations defined this as “the intent to destroy, in whole or part, a national, ethnical, racial, or religious group” (Alvarez 2013, p. 247).

We have all heard everyone talking about violence, but what does violence really mean? Violence is the use of force to kill, injure or abuse others in a harmful way. How much violence is there? It is hard to estimate the amount of violence there is in the United States.

The violence in America is increasing. Violence has always been and continues to be a problem all individuals are facing. This issue has been among the people because there is always something to encourage it. Since the news on television is continuously covering stories about murders and violent acts, it becomes a common thing for society to view. Furthermore, people are still racist till this day. Moreover, a certain individual can influence a person in a negative way. On the other hand, there are significant amount of people who believe the rate of violence has been decreasing throughout the years. Although some argue that violence is in decline, media, racism, and negative influences cause it to increase.

Violence has been an issue for a long time and is all around us, that’s why police or law enforcements are important for our community to keep all individuals safe. People have said for several years that violence is never the answer, but yet we continue to have many issues that surround it. Our own history has shown many acts of violence throughout its time and has proven to people that wars are the only answer, but I strongly disagree.

The books Child of the Dark by Carolina Maria de Jesus and Testimony by Victor Montejo describes the lives of two individuals from different societies. In both of these societies there was much hardship and violence. The two main characters who wrote these books describe life through their point of view and explains the hardship and challenges they had living in a society filled with violence.