WE ARE WHAT WE SEE: VIOLENCE, ADDICTION AND MAINSTREAM MEDIA

The effects of violence in media on the American public is a loaded topic I have not been alone in considering for some time. My perspective is that of an avid consumer of literature and film, a poet and writer who is not mainstream, and someone who is a practitioner of Tibetan Buddhism, which promotes mindfulness and peacefulness. These are the vantage points from which I come while examining my visceral, emotional and intellectual responses to violence via various media. 

Monday through Sunday, any viewer can get their fill of blood and gore watching FBI, CSI, Law & Order, Dateline, and many other TV shows that feature true and imagined stories of killings and other atrocities. This is what we go to bed with folks. Bloody murder on our minds, filtering into our nervous system and dreams.

In 2007, years before the Las Vegas or Orlando or Virginia Tech or Sandy Hook shootings, New Scientist reported that "by the time the U.S. child starts elementary school he or she will have seen 8,000 acts of murder and 100,000 acts of violence on TV." This doesn't even begin to consider how many times more those numbers adults have taken in such scenes. What we see, we digest. It enters our system and becomes part of us. But who thinks of this when switching on TV or seeing a flick. 

What are some of the effects of constantly ingesting violence? Increased anxiety, depression and drug use and abuse, to name some. According to Singlecare.com, a website devoted to health education and statistics, 66 percent of Americans are on one or more prescription drugs. The U.S. consumes more prescription drugs than any other country in the world. The National Institute on Drug Abuse reported in 2020 that drug abuse incurs more than $740 billion in costs related to crime, lost work and health care. 

So many people are medicated and over-medicated. I personally don't know a single person who is not medicated due to anxiety or depression. Anxiety, depression and drug abuse prevail and our fixation on violence and guns exacerbates it. More people are ending their lives and more people are going on shooting sprees. Every week we hear of some celebrity committing suicide. Most of us know at least one person who has lost their life this way. The annual suicide rate has increased by 30 percent in the last decade and a firearm is used in half the suicides that occur in this country. In 2021, according to Wikipedia, there were 693 mass shootings and a total of 3545 victims. The World Population Review states there have already been 2175 mass shootings in this country in 2022.

The equation that pharma, TV and film directors and producers, no less than the NRA, don't want the American public to make is that watching unabated violence in the media increases anxiety, depression and mental illness, contributes to drug and alcohol use and abuse and to gun violence. You see killings often enough, you hear about them often enough, you become inured to them, perhaps you begin to lose your sense of care and respect for life, begin to consider violent death as an option. This isn't exaggeration, just common sense and rational thinking applied to a problem that has created a domino effect.

Before considering the number of prescription drugs we take for our mental health, even as we--those of us that still care about sentient life in this country--continue to fight for gun control and safety in our communities, perhaps we can begin to look at how what we read, see and hear affects us and what we are doing to hurt and help our minds. A revolution of good would happen if more Americans took back the power they've given to pharma, TV, media, drugs and guns and started reclaiming control over their own minds and lives.