Kill TV

We’ve all heard about how violent video games and violence on TV encourage violent behavior in the viewer. Recent studies including one by researchers at the University of Missouri, Columbia indicate that brain waves are actually altered by observing violent video games. Not only does playing these games result in real-life aggression, researchers found, but it also results in desensitization to violence.

If you have any doubt of this truth, let me tell you something about “canned hunts.” For those of you who (like me, until today) don’t know what this is, I’ll explain.

There are websites out there, right now, being run from within the United States, that allow you to, for a fee, press a button to release a rifle shot directed at a caged animal. This cruel, sick and barbaric practice brings the idea of video violence to unfathomable new levels.

Even various hunting associations have condemned this practice, indicating that is not a “fair” competition between man and beast.

The American Human Society is currently desperately trying to enact Federal Legislation to make this practice illegal. Although some states have outlawed it, others have not. Further, only Federal Legislation will also make it illegal to participate in this type of video commerce even if it is run offshore.

If you want to learn more, or help please go to the Human Society’s website at http://hsus.org/wildlife/stop_canned_hunts

Let me warn you that the video and images there can be quite disturbing.

Let me also say this: Past writing this message as a way of hoping to help end this practice, I had to pen this today to express my shock, dismay, and fury at the human condition.

How have we sunk so low as this? It’s bad enough that we already (like the Romans in their crumbling empire) garner the most entertainment value from programs that degrade other people under the guise of “reality” or those that promote violence toward one another, the Earth, and its creatures.

Beyond the fact that it’s reprehensible that many of us we have to fantasize and act out violence through video games in order to engage our brains, it’s just pathetic. How feeble minded have we become that cruelty is no longer recognized for what it is, and the bar of compassionate behavior is lowered and lowered and lowered? How arrogant are we that the life of another creature who feels, carries its young, gives birth and nurtures its family can be reduce to nothing but an vehicle for our momentary enjoyment?

Again, I ask you to visit the Human Society’s website at http://hsus.org/wildlife/stop_canned_hunts and help stop this practice if not for the sake of the animal victims then for the sake of our own humanity. As Albert Einstein once said:

“Our task must be to free ourselves…by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature and its beauty.”