Violence begets violence begets sports drinks?

Commentary by Patrick Keller

Last week’s homicide in the southwest of Slave Lake is cause for concern. It is the third gun-related death on the lake in less than a year. But in the nearby community of Hobbema, the number of gun-related incidents has even major urban centres counting their blessings. In August alone, the Samson Cree nation witnessed 13 different firearms incidents over a three-week period. The idea of ending a fight with a gun is not new, but it is on the rise in Canada. Despite a drop in overall homicide rates across the country, extreme violent crime, such as assaults with weapons, is on the rise. And even one homicide, if you ask the family of those involved, is too many. Attempting to understand these incidents by dissecting their singular components often leaves only more questions. It may be more useful to approach the problem from a cultural viewpoint. We live in a culture of violence and instant gratification. Violence comes in the form of lyrics in popular music, and comes to us on TV in scores of reality cop shows and it comes to us through the Internet, where youth post cell-phone videos of school yard beatings, to huge response. Updates on several different wars appear on the nightly news. A glaring example of cultural violence marketed as hip recreation can be seen in the meteoric rise of mixed martial arts. Mixed Martial Arts has few detractors, and it is the fastest growing sport in the world. It seems nearly everyone likes watching someone get beaten to a pulp. MMA’s proponents, and the networks that showcase the fighters, claim that the ‘sport’ is a centuries old discipline, modernized only by huge endorsement contracts, pay-per-view TV and sport drink chemistry. But theirs is a false start to a flawed argument. They use words like ‘warrior’ and ‘throwing down’ and ‘ground and pound’ to describe the efforts of their peers, while playing back the end result in slow motion: the crushing of their opponent by violence and brute force. It may be true MMA requires astute athleticism, discipline and training, but the end goal is to beat someone into submission. It’s an odd pursuit, evidently loved by millions of people. So complete is the conversion of the public to the sport, even Christians have hopped on board the MMA movement. There is now a faction of MMA fighters claiming a link to their figure head Jesus Christ through a clothing line called “Jesus didn’t tap” (to tap out is to surrender or give up during a fight.) And while the story of Jesus tells of a man of great integrity who refused to give up his beliefs, my research turned up no evidence of Jesus putting his enemies into a reverse guillotine choke, or grounding and pounding his enemies into submission. In Matthew 5:39, Jesus says “whosoever shall smite thee on thy right cheek, turn to him the other also.” Applied today, this quote would render Jesus a wimp on the school yard, where “Tap-Out” T-shirts outnumber Bible camp T-shirts by a wide margin. Violence, whether on TV or on your block, is the new play. I am not suggesting those who watch MMA bouts or listen to rap music are prone to gun violence, but I am suggesting the sport’s rise to fame parallels a culture that has become desensitized to violence, or glorifies it. And so it is with guns. They are the ultimate in violent, instant gratification; the final word of any dispute. It’s a sobering thought that more people would use guns if only they could find them. To understand why increasingly more lives are ended with guns, we may need to widen our aperture for a bigger picture.

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