Have we, as people, become so accustomed to violence and death that we now are desensitized to it?

As events like the Las Vegas ambush and the Parkland High School shooting occur, I’m perplexed and dismayed at how many of us have become desensitized to this violence. 

In short, we live in a society in which people going on killing sprees now means little or nothing to us.

At best, we might make a few shallow changes due to an event, but we continue to fail to take a closer look at how the society has hardened itself to such slaughter and refused to even ponder how deeper changes are necessary.

I believe much of our desensitization has transpired due to us being surrounded by the brutal images pushed on us. 

How many times have we seen and heard automatic weaponry going off on our TV? How many kids are taking pleasure murdering others in video games? 

How many times have we been provided with news on things other than tragedies? We may see this all as normal, but this blood-soaked imagery has seeped deeply into our culture.

Because many of us have been forced on this “media diet,” in which brutal and gratuitous violence is the norm, naturally we will tolerate high levels of it in our society. Although most of us will not insist on any sort of real change in how violence is distributed and received. 

Most will accept a few small changes as enough.

A little more money spent on mental illness, a little tweak in laws revolving around background checks for buying guns, adding a few more automatic locking doors in schools. 

Once we’ve set our minds on what’s ‘helpful’, we can just change the channel and go on with our lives.

Our response when violence strikes has eroded over time. Our emotions have numbed towards violent occurrences. We might say “it’s horrible,” but within time we once again forget about the event. 

We’ve become less affected by senseless violence, less shocked.  Unless directly hurt, most people aren’t affected. Because we choose to believe it’s not our reality.

We always recognize that lives are lost. We empathize with the families affected. We then move on.

So what do we do to make sure we still feel something? 

 We choose to  stop accepting the violence that plagues our country, our state, our homes… and we understand that it’s our personal responsibility to see that our society once again becomes humane.