I hear conservatives lamenting our “coarsening” culture all the time. What do we expect to get out of society, they ask, when kids are constantly inundated with violence from the internet, video games, and music? The more reasonable ones aren’t silly enough to say that Marilyn Manson and shoot-em-up games produce violent kids, but they do say that all this violence becomes so commonplace to kids that they view it as the norm. I’ve even heard Bill O’Reilly say that kids are “living in video games nowadays,” as if young people are so inured against violence that they can’t tell fantasy from reality.
I hardly think the youth of America is that stupid. In fact, I’m quite sure most of them would laugh at how stupid such a statement like that is. I think that there is an argument to be made against the glorification of violence, instant gratification, and image in modern culture, but I think we’re going way overboard in some instances.
But how coarse is our culture nowadays? Sure, kids see violent video games and violent TV, as well as all sorts of butchery and human monsters on the news. But I also see a culture in which you can get charged with assault for smacking some idiot who’s in your face. A culture that infantilizes young people by instructing them that running to a parent or teacher is the best way to solve your problems. A culture in which the government decides what’s good and bad for us by banning trans-fats and putting taxes on junk food.
A couple hundred years ago, you had pistol duels in the streets and horse-thieves hanged by ad hoc militias. You had the expectation of getting shot (or at least beat up) if you got out of line with someone. A nineteenth century kid didn’t have video games; he got to watch people hang in the streets and get (lawfully) shot over an argument. Think of all those kids on the frontier, where law enforcement wasn’t always present to handle thieves and thugs. These kids grew up with real-live, actual violence, not fantasy images, actors, and pixels on a screen. They weren’t being raised to sit in front of monitors, gorge themselves on sugar, attend self-esteem seminars, and play schoolyard games where you don’t keep score so as not to hurt anyone’s feelings. And they probably didn’t have parents telling them that “violence never solves anything” and “come tell me and we’ll sue those bastards.”
I’m not saying that the Wild West and vigilante justice is the best social environment. I’m saying that it seems to me, compared to the culture of a few generations ago, the kids today are growing up in pansy-land.
