Effects of Mass Media Violence on Violent Behavior - Research Paper Example

Therefore, a foundation must be established on which the arguments of both sides can be viewed impartially, and through which we can reach a valid understanding of the issue of mass-media violence. What makes this difficult is that the criteria of judgment for the question is political, based on the vision or ideal of society that one wants to see manifest. To illustrate this, it is important to start with the opposite, teachers of non-violence such as the Dalai Lama, Mahatma Gandhi, Nelson Mandela, Dr.

Martin Luther King Jr., etc. and consider what their ideals of a non-violent society are, as well as why they consider violence so fundamental to be opposed. For example, if we judge the question of mass-media violence against the goals of Satyagraha as taught by Mahatma Gandhi, and the vision of society he sought to develop, we might have a very different conclusion than if we judge the question by the values of Bush, Cheney, and the administration that led the United States to war & torture in Iraq and Afghanistan.

To reduce this division further, a society that commands the world’s largest military, has over 800 foreign military bases, and is conducting wars on multiple battlefronts might not only have a different goal as a society than a country like Tibet, once a Buddhist kingdom with thousands of monasteries ruled by a reincarnate monk, but the societies might also have very different actual perceptions of what violence is, and tolerance to it. Jains in the ancient world were renowned for sweeping the road in front of themselves when walking and wearing masks to insure that they did not injure any insect while traveling or breathing.

A society based on this level of sensitivity to violence may view mass-media imagery of violent behavior in a very different way to our society that has been desensitized to it for years. Thus, we must approach this as