Toying with Death—Learning to Love Evil and Crave Violence

LTRP Note: The following article was written by veteran discernment researcher and author, Berit Kjos, several years ago. The children she speaks of in this article who were growing up in environments that exalted violence and evil . . . are grown!

Vile “entertaining” images mold the minds of children and youth around the world! Do you wonder what will happen to our nation and culture when these conditioned youth reach adulthood? Might the civilized world be following a path to corruption and chaos that makes the decadence in ancient Rome seem mild by comparison?—Kjos

Toying with Death—Learning to Love Evil and Crave Violence

By Berit Kjos

Police investigating the Virginia Tech killings are looking at whether Cho Seung-Hui was copying parts of a violent film when he murdered 32 people. Officers believe he repeatedly watched Oldboy as part of his preparation for the killing spree…. It contains stylized scenes of killings and an attempted suicide, and is filled with what one critic called ‘punishing emotional violence’…. The video, which Cho posted to an American TV network while carrying out his murderous rampage, appears to include photographs of Cho re-enacting scenes from the film.”[1]

After the Jonesboro shootings, one of the high-school teachers told me how her students reacted when she told them about the shootings at the middle school. ‘They laughed,’ she told me with dismay. A similar reaction happens all the time in movie theaters when there is bloody violence. The young people laugh and cheer and keep right on eating popcorn and drinking pop. We have raised a generation of barbarians who have learned to associate violence with pleasure, like the Romans cheering and snacking as the Christians were slaughtered in the Coliseum.[2]

“Are we training our children to kill?” asked Lieutenant Colonel David Grossman, an expert in the field of killology. For many years, he has “traveled the world training medical, law enforcement, and U.S. military personnel about the realities of warfare.” He contends that point-and-shoot video games actually train young players to accurately shoot and kill human targets in spite of their natural, God-given resistance. His statistics validate his frightening conclusions:

“The per capita murder rate doubled in this country between 1957… and 1992. A fuller picture of the problem, however, is indicated by the rate people are attempting to kill one another—the aggravated assault rate. That rate in America has gone from around 60 per 100,000 in 1957 to over 440 per 100,000 by the middle of this decade.

“Violence is rising in many nations with draconian gun laws. … There is only one new variable present in each of these countries, bearing the exact same fruit: media violence presented as entertainment for children.

“Children don’t naturally kill. It is a learned skill. And they learn it… most pervasively, from violence as entertainment in television, the movies, and interactive video games.

“Killing requires training because there is a built-in aversion to killing one’s own kind… Within the midbrain there is a powerful, God-given resistance to killing your own kind…. When we human beings are overwhelmed with anger and fear, we slam head-on into that midbrain resistance that generally prevents us from killing. Only sociopaths—who by definition don’t have that resistance—lack this innate violence immune system…. Click here to continue reading this article.

Related Information:

Resources from Lighthouse Trails to help protect and raise children in today’s world.

(photo from bigstockphoto.com; used with permission)