New Normal How We are Becoming Desensitized to Violence
[Applause]
imagine
that you a high school student are
sitting
in english class you are chatting with
your friends
when suddenly you hear gunshots
outside of your classroom everything
stands still for a moment
and then people are running and
screaming and you are being led to hide
in a cupboard
you are now in the dark breathing
heavily and
trying not to make any sound because you
know
that your life is in danger
you then hear the shooter’s footsteps
approach the cupboard
and the click of their finger on the
trigger
ready to shoot anyone that they see
a flash of light as they open the
cupboard door and bang
your friend next to you falls down on
the ground you cry out
grabbing at your dead friend’s cold
lifeless flesh in desperation
before the police comes to take you away
does this situation sound like something
you’ve seen in the media or the news
now imagine turning on the news with
your dead friend
and the gunshots fresh in your mind and
realizing that your
tragedy only to deserve to be on the
news
for three days before the media moved on
realizing that people paid attention to
your innocent friend’s death
for a fleeting amount of time before
they forgot about them realizing that
there is no societal
empathy to fill the empty void that is
left in your community
this scenario is a case for many mass
shooting victims in today’s society
after a few days they go unnoticed
unappreciated
ignored as human beings
we consider ourselves as compassionate
creatures
but what happens when we become
desensitized violence
and reach our empathy limit hi
my name is emmy tamakaisan and i am here
to talk to you today about the
detrimental effects
of desensitization to violent crime and
our resulting compassion
fatigue first
what is desensitization well to be
desensitized
is to not experience an emotional
response to something
after repeated exposure to it sometimes
this can be useful for instance without
desensitization
medical students would be able to study
cadavers and firemen would be enabled to
save people with charred body parts and
melting faces
however there is a dark side to this
process
as there are two sides to every coin
societal desensitization can result in
the normalization
of crises and issues
for instance gun violence along with
baseball
and apple pie is all but a staple in the
american society
when the columbine high school shooting
occurred in 1999
the statistic of the 13 murder children
sent
waves of shock and sadness throughout
the united states
now nearly 21 years later this shooting
is no longer a unique evil as gun
violence and school shootings
now gets reported on a regular basis
in 2019 alone there have been over 34
000 mass shooting casualties and 366
mass shootings in the united states
that’s more mass shootings than there
are days in the year
with this colossal amount of tragedies
each incident receives a negligent
amount of news coverage
we reach out and then the news drags our
attention to something else
we move on and this goes on and on
and leads to normalization according to
a study done by the university of
wisconsin
repeated exposure to gun violence in the
media results
in the u.s public’s emotional
desensitization
to this crisis using computerized
linguistic analysis
the researchers reported a notable
decrease
in the amount of disgust anger and
sadness
that the public felt towards similar
consecutive school shootings
this shows how the repetition of gun
violence along with
negligent media coverage results in the
normalization
of the murder of school children
and it’s not only gun violence according
to cnn
there has been a rise in desensitization
to all
violent crime in our modern society and
this is partly due
to the technological advancement that we
have experienced over the past few
decades
now we have 24-hour news that exposes us
to assault
upon assault murder upon murder mass
shooting
upon mass shooting
it’s like the card game uno as the
player stacks the cards onto the pile
we can’t linger too long on one card
before turning our attention to another
similarly with the small amount of media
coverage for each incident
we can’t fully empathize with one
incident before turning our attention
to another and so
what your brain does to prevent you from
stretching your emotional attention
too thin is to desensitize yourself
you will start to experience compassion
fatigue and grow
indifferent to the suffering of others
according to professor bruce harry of
the university of missouri school of
medicine
we become psychologically numb when
exposed to a plethora
of trauma and violence it’s a defense
mechanism
that all of us have our brains will try
to create
cognitive and emotional distance in
order to keep us mentally healthy
because as one may say ignorance
is bliss however
a resulting lack of concern has
detrimental
effects towards the bigger picture
desensitization
does not help alleviate the crimes
around us nor
does it make us truly more safe rather
our lack of interest stands as an
obstacle
that hinders resolution
there is a lack of response that results
in
unsolved crises a vicious cycle
of death and despair and pain
is being perpetuated by our apathy as
crime and more
crime is happening every day and nobody
is emotionally invested enough
to care about it because we’ve all seen
it before
and this has to stop
we have to stop
it’s time that we recalibrate as a
society and
push past her instincts to ignore
traumatic
events but
how can we practice emotional endurance
in the face of countless
of headlines and crimes
well you can first acknowledge the
humanity involving these events
the critical estate victims and the
hospitals those who suffer from ptsd
the mothers who are weeping over their
dead children
when we see these incidents in the media
we must see them
as more than headlines and rather human
stories that are filled with human
emotion
and human suffering we must
personalize these tragedies and realize
that we
could have been in their shoes
but why is this important well according
to professor daniel batson of the
university of kansas
empathy results in altruistic motivation
and a desire to end the suffering of
others which is a
catalyst for change and this leads us on
to our next point
that we must act upon this empathy and
help these victims in every way that we
can
you can vote you can sign petition you
can talk about it on social media
but whatever you do please
do your part in supporting these victims
and making sure that history does not
repeat itself again
if enough people come together to
promote a change
i assure you that we can make a
difference
take the march for our lives movement
for example in that movement
over 1 million young protesters came
together
to rally for stricter gun laws this
resulted in
26 states enacting 67 new gun laws
which is almost triple the amount of gun
laws enacted
in 2017. i want to make this clear
your voice matters
as we see more and more violence in the
media every day
i want you all to come back to the
school shooting scenario
in which your tragedies go unnoticed
unappreciated simply because they were
unoriginal
we cannot live in a world where the
repetition of crises
results in boredom and apathy so let’s
stop
accepting crime and violence as a cost
of living in this world
and start practicing our compassion
towards one another
thank you