Is violence the new sexual repression?

Just this week it was reported that a U.S Soldier killed five of his fellow comrades while stationed in Baghdad. While one out of six soldiers suffer from PTSD, you have to wonder, is this the psychological cost of programming our soldiers to kill?

On Killing examines the psychological cost of learning to kill in war and society. Lt Col. Dave Grossman asserts that prior to the Vietnam war, a majority of World War II combat veterans did not possess the ability to kill. "In World War II, only 15-20 percent of combat infantry were willing to fire their rifles. In Korea, about 50 percent. In Vietnam, the figure rose to over 90 percent." Grossman also notes that those who actually did fire their rifles during WWII often fired over the enemies head. If it is not in man's nature to kill another man (enemy or foe), then how did we get to where we are today?

Through the years, Grossman's research shows how the military significantly altered their conditioning methods to breed killers and dehumanize the act of killing. "When people become angry, or frightened they stop thinking with their forebrain (the mind of a human being) and start thinking with their midbrain (Which is indistinguishable from the mind of an animal)..The only thing that has any hope of influencing the midbrain is also the only thing that influences a dog: classical and operant conditioning.)

These desensitizing techniques that are used to train our soldiers can also be found in American mainstream culture (tv, film, video games.) While I never really bought into the argument that the media is the cause of violence, I now understand that it greatly contributes to the problem. How so? As Grossman stated, violent media chips away at our fore brain to the point where we are more prone to act with our mid brains. It's as if we are ticking time bombs waiting to go off.

Grossman also draws an interesting link between sexual repression of the 70's and violence in today's society. Grossman argues that the natural process of sex, death and killing has been interrupted. Through technological advancements we have become isolated and disconnected from essential parts of life. Before modern society, communal living allowed children to understand that sex, death and killing were normal, vital aspects of human existence. By the Victorian era, houses had private rooms and suddenly, sex became private and taboo; something done behind closed doors. This ultimately paved the way for years of sexual repression within our society. And now, killing is the new sexual repression. As it's best said, to neglect it is to indulge it.

"Slaughterhouses and refrigeration insulated us from the necessity of killing our own food animals....nursing homes, hospitals and mortuaries insulated us from the death of the elderly. Children began to grow up having never truly understood where their food came from, and suddenly Western civilization seemed to have decided that killing, killing anything at all, was increasingly hidden, private, mysterious, frightening and dirty."