Why do we condone violence?

[MADem]

31. Or maybe it's all down to "There's money to be made?"

Maybe it's a corporate imperative?

Think about it! Where is the violence cheerleaded and celebrated? At places where you have to PAY to watch! Hockey and Are You Ready For Some Football! Big Time Wrestling! Mixed Martial Arts! Heck, even when a player charges the mound in baseball and tries to rip off the pitcher's head, the fans are hooting and hollering! When Tiger Woods pouts and tries to wrap his five iron around a tree, we chortle and rub our hands together. When a soccer player heads butts another for talking trash about his mama, we're on our feet! And of course...VIDEO GAMES! Yes, sixty bucks a pop, and you can kill all the (fill in name of enemy, cartoon or highly realistic) you can with your little keypad!

People can enjoy their fantasy violence from afar by observing, even participating, in these adventures--and they don't have to deal with the horrible, now-and-forever guilt of actually taking a life. At some level, though, they have to pay--if they aren't paying for the seat their ass is warming, they're watching a long string of varied car and beer commercials valued into the millions from the comfort of their own home between occasions of fisticuffs!

Maybe it's not the violence that bothers us, but the murder? If your adversary walks or crawls away, his ass broken and bruised, but he lives to tell the tale, then it's OK? And in video games, we can freely kill those 'bad guys' because, well, they aren't REAL?

There's got to be something "fun" in it (at least once people are afforded the opportunity to develop a taste for it)--otherwise I don't think it would be so common. It only stops being "fun" when the consequences are final--then, it's "tragic."