The Pathological Fixation with Death

Most children seem to have a cruel streak in them. They kick, slap, bite and cheer during fights that usually break out in groups of children. To say it seems to be one the favourite past times is not an overstatement.

Looking back at the times I was a child, action movies or programmes on TV captivated me. Something to do with adrenaline’s thrill, I guess. It’s best to leave the human ego still undergoing development unsuppressed. That much I agree with, for obvious health reasons. In my view though, grownups generally do a bad job at teaching conflict resolution.

What I’ve never been able to understand is how even after passing a certain age, violence still hypnotises people. In stories and entertainment, violence enthralls people. What’s so entertaining about it? Is this weird only to me?

I also can’t reconcile the way we abhor violence when it spills into our world, with the way it holds our attention in the safety of the screens. Is it because it is impersonal? Before you say this way of thinking is simplistic, I want you to consider how powerful the subconscious realm is. And how largely unknown it remains. Equally, it’s quite possible that the violence we devour in consumption of information has desensitised us on some unconscious level.

Whoever decided to make ‘news’ only ‘bad’ news knew they’d plugged into some insatiable well. They’re milking it for almost forever. Are violence and death attractive to humans like moths are to fire? A remnant of the fight or flight stage of evolution we’ve just come out of? Or is it the result of socialisation and the gadgetry era since TV that are silently changing the physiology of our brains?

Last week here, in South Africa, a high school video of a horrific bullying incident went viral on social media. I heard the news on the radio. Eight boys attacked and assaulted one in a chilling account of what sounded so sadistic that I had such a difficult time wrapping my head around the mental images. According to the mother of the beaten up boy, he has just beaten cancer. Where are compassion and empathy hiding these days?

We understand the psychology of groups and mobs in humans but in nature, entire herds have organising principles around protection of the weak in normal times. We’re clearly living in abnormal times and of serious depravity because that was not an isolated occurrence. Bullying in all its pernicious forms seems to form part of the schooling system in most schools of this country. Serious violence and crime are a woven part of the fabric that covers the nation of this South of Africa.

When I particularly think of the people here, I can’t help the way my mind seems to always revert to the violent history of this place. It honestly hasn’t been that long ago but it’s easy for  "Things happen the way they do because they've happened that way before." But what do the boys who exhibited such cruelty know about the hardships of that history? They opened their eyes and grew up in a new world. Was it a purging of pent up emotions and hence, the violence a release? Was it a window period to glimpse at what lies hiding in parts of our societies? What we are careful to polish and wrap up in silent packages? If that’s the case, then schools are the perfect places to learn how to do it in a controlled and constructive way. Clearly though, schools are missing something. What are schools missing?

Being one of the people who speak of healing as often as I blink, how do a people collectively heal though? What needs to happen for that to happen? What recourse do people have when most seem to be looking at a bleak future of lack and poverty? And with the coming A.I. disruption, what is going to make humans develop more empathy and compassion? Can the machines pull it off?

Back to the consumption of violence in the media and entertainment space, how can people be policed for their preferences? Even the good books of many faiths depict violence as one of humanity’s oldest companions.

If the history of this place has little to do with the high levels of violence, then something is fundamentally broken. Other places of the world also grapple with high violent crime incidents. Modern life could be failing us. How could we not grow kinder with so much information at our fingertips? How come we can’t get past archaic forms of entertainment? Just a general look at how most adults connect over the internet comments gives me goose bumps. A look at how some individuals have had cancel culture turn their lives upside down is harrowing.

Our nation is failing to raise up whole, mature and empathic young men and women. If bullies represent only a small number in a pool of people, how do they continue to get away with it? Surely the numbers of those good should overwhelm them? How does a majority become spectators and instead only capture the brutality they witness with electronic devices?

Which leads me to a thought that is never that far beneath the mosaic of thoughts in the mind.

Why do people who show strongly egoistic personalities mesmerise us? To some extent, I understand the love for celebrities and what they inspire. What I never can get is how people didn’t realise that the powerful narratives built around the entertainment industries spilled into most people’s realities. When Reality TV blasted into most homes, it blurred lines between time and space. Fashion, beauty, body shapes, identities and even what people converse about have no clear lines of what remains only on screens and what informs choices in real life.

When screen celebrities make it into politics and leadership positions, we ask for trouble. As do we when we turn some leaders into celebrities too. And when in the top echelons of power, violence plays out right in front of us, we are already in deep trouble. What hope remains for those growing up to learn how to curb feelings of being powerful and untouchable?

” Sometimes, I simply don’t know if things are worse but are not in reality because there are more people in the world now. And if it is only the speed with which events travel that shapes the reactions of the collective psyche that surrounds them.”

My suspicions lean strongly to the way our brains have become used to processing information. There is a level of disconnection when violence is on the screen. Yet, that same disconnection is a kind of hypnosis and the more outrageous it is, the more ratings it gets.

In the school incident mentioned above, the violence escalated to proportions where they used hockey sticks to batter the poor boy. The way mobile phones took first place intervention to document an incident over getting school authorities to nip the entire episode in the bud is quite telling. I’m not insinuating here that it should not have been filmed—I’m pointing out the unconscious way that devices act like extensions of our arms. Pretty much like how scenes of accidents sometimes do viral posts before the loved ones of those involved have even a chance at hearing such news.

These devices are tools that can be used for the betterment of all. That’s only going to happen if parents, ordinary citizens, professionals, civil groups, governments and even business make a concerted effort at getting to the bottom of how devices impact the physiology of our brains, and the implied pitfalls.

I know the artist’s job is to depict the world as the world is and appears to them. Across the artistry spectrum, especially in film and entertainment, I wish they could script their story lines in a new direction. A new crop of entertainers must rise. As a writer, I appreciate the role violence plays in any story. I’m certainly not saying that the world should be depicted in rainbows, rose scents and fields of gold only. I only think of the meanings carried in the folk tales and how powerful and timeless they remain.

The inescapable violence of our lives is shown to be overcome by drawing from other types of strengths. And the subconscious parts of our brains always get that. The stories we consume can chart new ways of teaching and being. They can raise awareness of the many gifts of being human.

The leaders and people we choose to ‘celebrate’ can show empathy and compassion. The jungles of this world will probably keep changing forms in levels of sophistication only. The use of brute force of old is long out of date and quite unnecessary now. Survival now does require other qualities that make up the range of human capabilities to live and thrive together in an increasingly more complex world. In a way… in a sense, we know that all fear stems from that of death.

Since my sister’s death, I have an endless question that floats in my head now and again.

“How come I still don’t know how to live? And how on earth will I ever know how to die? Where is all the knowledge the countless people who came before me learned?”

“But surely, it is time that the wisdom of all humanity since the beginning of their dominance on Earth serves them from a knowledgeable vantage, which is now possible beyond wildest dreams.”

We have been comfortable for too long in this age. If history has taught us anything, now is the time to snap out of hypnosis. We must learn what the new rules on the playing fields are if ‘nice’ is even remotely possible at the rate the future is hurtling towards us.