On Killing

Yet at the same time that our society represses killing, a new obsession with the depiction of violent and brutal death and dismemberment of humans has flourished. The public appetite for violence in movies, particularly in splatter movies such as Natural Born Killers, Kill Bill, Saw, Friday the 13th, Halloween, and The Texas Chainsaw Massacre; the cult status of “heroes” like Jason and Freddy; the popularity of bands with names like Megadeth and Guns N’ Roses; and skyrocketing murder and violent crime rates—all these are symptoms of a bizarre, pathological dichotomy of simultaneous repression and obsession with violence.

“If the death of one rat cured all diseases it wouldn’t make any difference to me. In the scheme of life we’re equal.”

There can be no doubt that this resistance to killing one’s fellow man is there and that it exists as a result of a powerful combination of instinctive, rational, environmental, hereditary, cultural, and social factors. It is there, it is strong, and it gives us cause to believe that there just may be hope for mankind after all.

“few of us can hold on to our real selves long enough to discover the real truths about ourselves and this whirling earth to which we cling. This is especially true,”

Leo Frankowski tells us that “cultures all develop blind spots, things that they don’t even think about because they know the truth about them.”

“The guy pulling the trigger,” wrote Allen Cole and Chris Bunch, “never suffers as much as the person on the receiving end.” It is the existence of the victim’s pain and loss, echoing forever in the soul of the killer, that is at the heart of his pain.