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Ginger and Richard Rhodes

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from: Richard Rhodes

Is America More Violent Than Medieval Europe?

Posted Wednesday, May 16, 2001, at 12:34 PM ET

Ginger,

I debated the media violence theory on a panel at the Freedom Forum in New York a couple of weeks ago, as you know, pointing out the abysmal quality of the studies that supposedly show a correlation between viewing so-called violent media and "aggressive" behavior, whatever that is. One of the most often cited studies (it was cited in the legislation that led to the V-chip, for example) supposedly found a correlation between "violent" TV viewing at age 8 and criminal violence at age 30; but the correlation turned out to be based on a sample size of exactly three boys, a number that the researchers had carefully not published across 20 years of papers (but made the mistake of telling me in response to a direct question).

That's another whole subject by itself; the reason I mention it here is that I was surprised by the general conviction, in the New York audience for the panel, that violence is increasing in America and that violence levels are higher today than they were in the past. To the contrary, looking at homicide rates, the rates in medieval and early modern Europe were five to 10 times as high as they are in modern America. We're significantly higher than contemporary Europe and Japan (who watch American "violent" television shows, by the way)--a little above five per 100,000 in the United States today, compared to about one per 100,000 in Europe and Japan--but we still live in the most peaceful era in the history of the West, at least where private violence is concerned. Indeed, there's so little criminal violence in America compared to the historic past that people, looking around for some explanation for school shootings, etc., see the Three Stooges bopping each other on TV and think that must be the explanation.

But I've looked carefully at what is known about the backgrounds of every one of the white schoolboy killers of the past five years, and in every case where there is information available, they were brutalized at home or by their peers or both, with the rest of violent socialization following. I thought Harris and Klebold, the Columbine killers, might have been an exception because everyone said their parents weren't abusive. (But people often say that about parents whose use of violent domination meets cultural norms and therefore isn't defined as abuse.) Then Harris and Klebold themselves cleared up the mystery from beyond the grave: In their last videotape, which was reported in Time magazine a year or so after the massacre, Harris spoke of being kicked around on the military bases where he grew up (his father was an Air Force officer), and Klebold spoke of being kicked around by his jock older brother and his brother's jock friends. All three later stages of the violent socialization process are readily apparent in their known behavior: being bullied at school and responding by withdrawing into a goth group (belligerency); beginning to fight back, taking up weapons, brandishing those weapons in disputes, picking fights, pushing people around (violent performances); with the Columbine massacre itself corresponding to virulency, i.e., as you say, "expanding the violence to include offensive domination."

Yesterday I mentioned a prevention program embodied in a Vermont system of community parent-child centers. These derive from a pilot project organized in one county, Addison, which began voluntarily two decades ago and proved itself and gained private and state support. It offers area families services such as educational classes, support groups, child care, playgroups, and recreation, as well as home visiting (proven to reduce child abuse in a study done by Henry Kempe's colleagues, he being the physician who identified and named the "battered child syndrome") and school outreach. It served as a focal point for coordinating the activities of state and local agencies concerned with children and family services. Teen-age pregnancy rates in Addison County fell from 70 per 1,000 to 45 per 1,000 in the first seven years of the center's operation. Infant mortality was reduced across the same period by 50 percent. Incidents of child abuse declined from 21 percent to 2 percent. That's why Vermont decided to fund similar centers in every county in the state.

I see the Fraymers have already begun debating violent socialization. I think I'll stop here and lob this into the compound.

Love,
Rhodeman

the breakfast table
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from: Richard Rhodes

Is America More Violent Than Medieval Europe?

Posted Wednesday, May 16, 2001, at 12:34 PM ET
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Ginger Rhodes is a doctoral candidate in clinical psychology who studies violence. Richard Rhodes is the author of 19 books, including The Making of the Atomic Bomb and Why They Kill.
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Reader Comments From The Fray:


[Notes from the Fray Editor: This week's "Breakfast Table"-ers did a terrific job of summarizing the Fray entries, taking up their points and answering them in the column--Fray industry workers could have taken the week off. As new star Mangar put it: "Richard Rhodes was very gracious in his willingness to directly address comments from the Fray. It's a brave thing to do, and I wish more authors had the guts. Thanks to Richard, and I'll try to reply with that respect in mind." Though Mr Rhodes' claim that Fraymanians "blow off while hiding behind the anonymity of your nicknames" did not go down well. Several posters gently and politely defended their right to Fraynames, for example here.

An interesting discussion on Mr Rhodes theories, and of his comments on The Fray (Fraymers didn't like the bit about "can't read very well" either), started here, with the splendid title "An attempted ex post facto clarity?"--if there's one thing Fraysters are going to catch you out on, it is that. Some of the Fray's finest pitched in. A brave and honest (and not anonymous) post about brutalization in schools came from Roy Jaruk, here.

Violence was the overwhelming topic of choice, but there are a few posts on verity, fawns ("fauns are those things that have afternoons, unless your woods are much more interesting than mine"), lekking, and other matters. Use the Fray Editor's Picks button, or just look for the checkmarks and stars. And Claude Scales took up the question of what we should call Fraypersons here.]


What sociologists and psychologists try to do is find a reason for a behavior or pattern of behavior. They don't use these reasons as "excuses" to pardon criminals, just as a way to understand the root of criminal action. These reasons have been badly skewed in courts as they have become excuses for heinous crimes--true to history, people have used science irresponsibly for ridiculous and damaging profit. (By the way I am a biologist and no, this has nothing to do with cloning). So take it to heart and realize behavioral scientists are simply trying to find explanation for such actions to end this pattern in the future.

--Mel

(To reply, click here.)


 You don't have to delve very deeply into the human psyche to find out why some people are violent. It's not some strange perversion or disease that needs an explanation from genetics or childhood trauma or sociological circumstance. Put quite simply, it works. It's an efficient and effective way of acquiring immediate power over people, and of gaining their enduring fear, if not their respect. Someone who stands to gain more than he loses from using violence is going to be quite tempted to use it. So in order to combat violence, we need have an ongoing legal, social, and moral campaign against it, to make sure most people who commit violent acts lose more (in terms of money, respect, and social approval) than they gain.

--Jane Grey

(To reply, click here.)


My personal belief (and so it is only opinion based on observation) is that we are not teaching children (males in particular) how to channel aggressiveness positively or when certain levels of violence are a reasonable response (and which are not). We are simply condemning aggressiveness and violence but the children in learning that things are not that simple are making up their own rules.

--Michael Murray

(To reply, click here.)


 [People] talk about "violence" as if it were a simple and agreed upon quality, like the flavor vanilla, and could be discussed as a single unified thing. In point of fact, though, soldiers jumping out of trenches into machine-gun fire, cold-blooded poisoners, domestic batterers, schoolyard bullies, and generals who order airstrikes, although they are all engaging in "violence" of one sort or another, have nothing else in common, and it's disingenuous (at best) to discuss them as if their actions were interchangeable.

The "problem of violence" is an illusion. It is not tuberculosis. It is not vanilla. And it does not have a "cure".

--Thrasymachus

(To reply, click here.)

 (5/17)


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