The other day I saw a photo of Cho Seung-Hiu, the young man who caused such carnage at Virginia Tech, on the front page of a newspaper. In his hands he held aloft two pistols; on his face he wore a menacing expression. There was something very familiar about the photo. After a moment’s thought I realized that I had seen similar photos many times before. They are quite common in many places—for instance, on advertisements for movies and videogames and on book covers. Their purpose is to attract people to the violent contents of those items. And attract us they do, with the result that sales of such items constitute billion dollar industries. And yet we exhibit genuine shock and horror when instances of such violence make themselves known in real life. But why is that so? Common traits of our society are confrontation, aggression and antagonism. They are exhibited regularly in all segments of life—business, sports, finance, politics, entertainment, international relations and even religion. These traits are considered normal in our society but they foster an atmosphere of division and separation. In such an atmosphere it is easy for emotions of resentment and bitterness to flourish and such feelings can easily turn to hatred. We need not be surprised when that hatred is expressed by an individual by means of the violence that he has so often seen represented as being laudable by our society. When it does occur in an unwanted form, our first reaction is to meet it with more violence. We may look upon unfortunate individuals such as Cho as deranged, which he seems to have been, but at the same time we applaud individuals, real or fictional, who use violence (at times excessive violence) in causes that we consider “right.” We give little thought to the fact that violence is violence, no matter where or in what cause it is practiced. There is, in theory at least, a principle known as the Law of Attraction. According to that “law”, that which a person concentrates on and values in his life and acts upon, he or she will attract to his or her life. Concentrate on beauty and harmony and live it, and you will tend to attract beauty and harmony to your life. Concentrate on trouble and you will attract trouble. The same goes for love, fear or other emotions and states of existence. If such a law of attraction applies to societies as well as individuals, then our society may well be attracting to it some very undesirable consequences. We may advocate peace and harmony but if we do not actively live those qualities then our lip service to them will do us no good. No one welcomes violence when it appears on their doorstep. But we somehow have the feeling that it is acceptable, desirable and even entertaining when it can be confined to a movie, book or video game. In that form it is harmless, or so we believe. Even our wars, no matter how destructive they may be to others, seem more like fantasies to us. Only when more than a few of us suffer loss because of a war do we begin to protest. We have become captives of our tendencies toward undesirable emotions and deeds: one might even term it an addiction. We think we are somehow immune to these emotions being made manifest in unwanted forms. When we discover that this is not the case, we protest loudly and seek to protect ourselves. But we continue in our addiction. It may take incidents much more serious than Cho Seung-Hui’s deed of carnage at Virginia Tech to show us the folly of our course of action. ---written by Joe F. Stierheim | 
