On Killing: The Psychological Cost of Learning to Kill in War and Society Read Free

Europe, assault rates are skyrocketing. In countries like India,

    I N T R O D U C T I O N TO THE PAPERBACK E D I T I O N xvii XViii
    I N T R O D U C T I O N T O THE PAPERBACK E D I T I O N
    where there is no significant infrastructure of medical technology to hold it down, the escalating murder rate best reflects the problem.
    Around the world the result is the same: an epidemic of violence.
    How It Works: Acquired Violence Immune Deficiency When people become angry, or frightened, they stop thinking with their forebrain (the mind of a human being) and start thinking with their midbrain (which is indistinguishable from the mind of an animal). They are literally "scared out of their wits." The only thing that has any hope of influencing the midbrain is also the only thing that influences a dog: classical and operant conditioning.
    That is what is used when training firemen and airline pilots to react to emergency situations: precise replication of the stimulus that they will face (in a flame house or a flight simulator) and then extensive shaping of the desired response to that stimulus. Stimulus-response, stimulus-response, stimulus-response. In the crisis, when these individuals are scared out of their wits, they react properly and they save lives.
    This is done with anyone who will face an emergency situation, from children doing a fire drill in school to pilots in a simulator.
    We do it because, when people are frightened, it works. We do not tell schoolchildren what they should do in case of a fire, we condition them; and when they are frightened, they do the right thing. Through the media we are also conditioning children to kill; and when they are frightened or angry, the conditioning kicks in.
    It is as though there were two filters that we have to go through to kill. The first filter is the forebrain. A hundred things can convince your forebrain to put a gun in your hand and go to a certain point: poverty, drugs, gangs, leaders, politics, and the social learning of violence in the media — which is magnified when you are from a broken home and are searching for a role model. But traditionally all these things have slammed into the resistance that a frightened, angry human being confronts in the midbrain. And except with sociopaths (who, by definition, do not have this resistance), the vast, vast majority of circumstances are not sufficient to overcome this midbrain safety net. But if you are conditioned I N T R O D U C T I O N TO THE PAPERBACK E D I T I O N xix to overcome these midbrain inhibitions, then you are a walking time bomb, a pseudosociopath, just waiting for the random factors of social interaction and forebrain rationalization to put you at the wrong place at the wrong time.
    Another way to look at this is to make an analogy with AIDS.
    AIDS does not kill people; it simply destroys the immune system and makes the victim vulnerable to death by other factors. The
    "violence immune system" exists in the midbrain, and conditioning in the media creates an "acquired deficiency" in this immune system. With this weakened immune system, the victim becomes more vulnerable to violence-enabling factors, such as poverty, discrimination, drug addiction (which can provide powerful motives for crime in order to fulfill real or perceived needs), or guns and gangs (which can provide the means and "support structure"
    to commit violent acts).
    Canada is an example of a nation that we have always considered to be relatively crime-free and stable. Stringent gun laws, comparatively intact family structure, beloved and paternalistic government.
    But (surprise!) Canada has the exact same problem that we do.
    According to the Canadian Center for Justice, since 1964 the number of murders has doubled per capita, and "attempted murders" increased from 6 per million in 1964 to 40 per million in 1992. And assaults went up from 209 per 100,000 in 1964 to 940
    per 100,000 in 1992. This is almost exactly the same ratio as the increase in