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