WTF?

**Albert Shagnastier** · 04-07-2013, 08:35 PM

Please, Americans, (sensible ones) how come folk as mad as this can broadcast?

**Fluke** · 04-07-2013, 09:15 PM

Why do you think that hes mad?

**Rural Surin** · 04-07-2013, 09:26 PM

The Art of Murder.

**mao say dung** · 04-07-2013, 10:38 PM

That is a Canadian program. TVO is an "educational" channel, partially (mainly?) funded by the province of Onatario.

For some reason, your cosmopolitan Canuck doesn't feel the need to emote and display moral outrage whenever the topic turns to something that might make some feel uncomfortable.

I've watched a lot of BBC docs in the past year or so... dumbed down doesn't really cover it. So I get your reaction.

**Balance** · 04-07-2013, 11:24 PM

Huh? What's the fuss? Where's the madness. He's just discussing reality.

BTW, I was in one of those 'Kill Kill Kill' training sessions he mentioned when I was infantry. I just couldn't go with the activity at least not mentally. I went through the motions with my m16 but that was it. Everyone else seemed to really go with it from what I saw but who knows what they were really thinking.

**WilliamBlake** · 05-07-2013, 12:53 AM

Strange thread. The guy was obviously an expert in his field.

**robuzo** · 05-07-2013, 11:33 AM

Grossman's work is really interesting and widely-cited by other authorities. His book:
On Killing: The Psychological Cost of Learning to Kill in War and Society: Dave Grossman: 9780316040938: Amazon.com: Books
Drawing on interviews, published personal accounts and academic studies, Grossman investigates the psychology of killing in combat. Stressing that human beings have a powerful, innate resistance to the taking of life, he examines the techniques developed by the military to overcome that aversion. His provocative study focuses in particular on the Vietnam war, revealing how the American soldier was "enabled to kill to a far greater degree than any other soldier in history." Grossman argues that the breakdown of American society, combined with the pervasive violence in the media and interactive video games, is conditioning our children to kill in a manner siimilar to the army's conditioning of soldiers: "We are reaching that stage of desensitization at which the infliction of pain and suffering has become a source of entertainment: vicarious pleasure rather than revulsion. We are learning to kill, and we are learning to like it." Grossman, a professor of military science at Arkansas State University, has written a study of relevance to a society of escalating violence.

**kingwilly** · 05-07-2013, 12:07 PM

Dunno about that, the Europeans in the middle ages, Mongols in China during Ghengis Khan's time and Samurai in the Japanese feudal ages allh managed to kill without revulsion.

**mao say dung** · 05-07-2013, 12:27 PM

Yeah. I question that as well.

I'm reading Pinker's book The Better Angels of Our Nature: Why Violence Has Declined and his reading, and that of the sources he uses, argue very much in favor of the notion that murder rates have come down radically over time and would suggest that the "innate resistance" he works on overcoming is a relatively recent addition to the human condition and pretty much restricted to developed nations.

On the other hand, I haven't yet decided whether I think ol' Pinker is full of shit or not.

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