The Warfare State and the Hardening of Everyday Life: An Overview - Dissertation Example

“The Warfare and the Hardening of Everyday Life An Overview Henry A. Giroux raises her concern over the mounting resentments, battles, and chaos in the US society. She points that US citizens are anxious about their existence, and everywhere one finds only anxious faces as if some awaiting tragedy is looming over their heads. The main arguments of the article could be summarized as follows. In the modern society aggression has become a part of life. Violence is a day to day phenomenon which gathers not much attention from the public these days rather than a curious glance on the daily headlines.

US citizens groom their children in a culture of rage and fury. The prime motive of every man seems to be success, no matter by hook or by crook. We are ready to indulge in any sort of nepotism irrespective of our conscience for achieving the targets scheduled. Existence matters and existence alone matters for us and we do anything brutal in this regard. Exhibition of muscle power is well appreciated and at least a part of our population has a tendency to hero worship the attackers. Even the government promotes violence by waging wars against comparatively weaker countries for reasons only they know.

In a highly competitive hyper speed world people are under mounting pressure of survival, and this is the context when “violence becomes both a legitimate mediating force and one of the few remaining sources of pleasure” (as cited in Giroux). Admittedly, as the writer argues, the nation has become ‘a culture of war’, and the war culture has engulfed every aspect of US society. It is the common man who suffers the most due to wars between countries. Wars result in wastage of enormous amount of money and gallons of blood.

We see the lives of innocent men, women and children snatched away without any benevolence. We see disheartening sights of millions of people becoming homeless, children being orphans, handicapped survivors, outburst of diseases and poverty associated with every war. These sufferings draws wide spread protest among people who are compassionate to their fellow beings. But this forms only a small fraction when there lives an ocean of men who are insensitive, frigid and numb to the woes of his brothers.

We see hatred revenge and retribution sky rocketing in the modern society. We see teenagers and kids carrying guns to school, we see kids and women planning murders and executing it with precision. According to Giroux, it is high time to spot the origin of rot. Selfishness drives people to any extent of animosity. We maintain that the weak is to be crushed and perished at the earliest. It is this neo liberalism that has led to the dampening of culture. Furthermore, every sphere of life including relationships has been commercialized.

Thus the turmoil of mankind has also been commercialized. The most worrying situation is the marketing of the pain and pathos of man. The horror of war and the inhuman acts on prisoners are widely depicted in movies. Pervasive violence desensitizes our minds. People have got acclimatized to violence and they accept it as a normal thing. This happens because people watch a lot of violence in TV and enjoy it. A bullet exploding a person’s skull is watched with great enthusiasm and fun instead of experiencing a shock passing through one’s spine.

Violence has been legitimized with TV shows showing violence having maximum ratings, movies portraying violence filling the theatres. Most of the video games are over dominated with shootings and stabbings. Thus violence has become a tool of entertainment and in turn minting fair share of profit for the lobby behind it. But they forget that they generate a morally empty aesthetically useless mentally sick class of men who epitomizes cruelty as their fingerprint. The aftermath of such a violent culture reverberates as tragic episodes of shootings in schools, kidnapping, burglary etc (Giroux).

The society has become immune to such incidents due to their habitual occurrence. Instead of making people realize the irrevocable damage that war makes on military and civilians, television and movies exaggerates the heroic deeds of that particular country – a make belief that they have achieved something (Giroux). In reality it is the duty of the media to expose the futility and impotence and ordinariness of warmongers. The increasing rates of sexual assaults, rapes and mutilation of bodies are all reflections of sadistic attitude in the present generation.

However, it seems that the author has conveniently left out the responsibility of exploring the underlying causes of the intense ‘war culture’. When we analyze the cause of violent ruptures we often find it to be too silly. It stems from pure lack of chemistry to envy, back biting, selfishness and people spoiling their chances. We should realize the ground reality that anger is simply wasting people’s energy thereby dragging them closer to their own destruction. Violence is always the expression of a disturbed mind.

When a person has nobody to connect with, he becomes unaware of another person’s feelings. Isolated individuals are more prone to violence. They do not care for the welfare of people around them. When we share common beliefs and values the possibility of aggression diminishes. A probable solution for the reduction of violence in young children and adolescents are to avoid watching violence. As a civilized population, it is our duty not to fall in to the traps of the sumptuous violent entertainment business.

Robbie parker, the father of Emilie parker who dies in Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting while paying tribute to her adorable daughter took a moment to pray for the shooters family. Keeping oneself close to good thoughts and good people and remaining free from the causes of negative traits of enmity will not only make the person grow beyond prejudice and narrow mindedness but also the entire community around him. Works Cited Giroux, Henry A. “The Warfare State and the Hardening of Everyday Life”.

Violence USA, (May 2013), 65 (1). Print.