Looking at the actions of all the evil people in the world is possibly the most discouraging experience to us all, with respect to our faith in humanity. The mass murders and genocides of history almost seem to pale in comparison to the gruesome murders carried out by today's most inhuman killers. Predators and cannibals, murderers and rapists seem to roam the streets. The sixties gave rise to a surge of new serial killers being born. The sociopath personality seemed to have found circumstances during this time period in which to fester and grow within society unlike it ever had in history. At this point sociopaths are almost considered an uncorrectable evil, and mainstream media delights in fascination with how sick the human mind can become (SAW [all of them], Hostel, The Human Centipede) But, what are the conditions that allow this type of individual to spawn? What is different in this time period that has never been seen before in history?
I would point most significantly to the rise in population. Nothing so cheesy as ‘more people means more crazies’- no, I’m afraid it’s more complicated than that. Looking back in history, before WWI life was still decently hard. People died from disease, industrial accidents, and any number of common hazards. I think we can all agree that WWI was dangerous and killed large sections of the population. After WWI there was a boom, which was immediately followed by another ‘hard time’ depression. America came out of this into WWII- won WWII, and immediately rolled into the Eisenhower years and the baby boom. Medicine had conquered many major illnesses. The evils of the world had been vanquished and greatness had been restored to the people. The struggle just to say alive had ended for the most part- (discounting building up to be ready for the commies). Not only this, but also television became essentially a standard in the household, pumping images from across the world. These factors combined to produce an effect whereby the average person was exposed to more and more new people than had ever occurred in history. Before, villages and towns would keep the number of new people low just by geographic restriction. Even those that lived in a city had small groups that they saw regularly and everyone else was just coming through in some fashion or another. Now was the first time in history where a human could be exposed to a seemingly never ending line of strangers. One could be exposed to thousands of new faces every single day. I would imagine the shock is not unlike putting an angry gorilla in front of a mirror for the first time.
People are assaulted with strange new faces that we don’t know or understand on a daily basis. The effect is compounded when one can turn on the evening news and expose themselves to images of the events across the world (covering mostly negative events). We paint quite a grim picture of these strangers. The news recycles over the stories of fresh murderers and violent criminals that plague the world. Individuals recoil from their neighbors in defense from the horrors that they are sure exist among those that surround them. Men have begun to become islands- the frightening strangers of the world have caused people to recoil into their internal worlds of turmoil. All their interactions become false walk throughs of what they believe real people do. Their mind retreats to its internal fortress, where his psyche will surely wither over time. In extreme cases of internal mental isolation (being exposed to people, although not connecting with them) we see disturbed individuals form consistently.
The effects of these conditions can be seen on the more common person in our most mundane thoughts about others as well as our fascination with the extremes of evil. We recognise that this is a new and terrifying effect of our world on men's minds. Commonly this takes its place in modern story and art: you know it as the horror film. In such stories the evil takes the form of any number of characters: Silence of the Lambs, Hannibal, Zodiac, Psycho, Se7en, Clockwork Orange. Even more interesting is the rise of the zombie movie. Old world zombies rose from the dead to KILL you and eat your brains. New world zombies were alive, got infected (bites normally), and now you have to chop your neighbors to bits to stay ‘alive’ in the conventional-non-brain-eating sense of the word. What more direct analogy is there than framing all strangers as ‘zombies’ that are out to eat you! If strangers are scary zombies, then what does it mean when the group of survivors die one at a time until only you remain, alone, and scared on your island… It’s a story that reflects our view of the world as being frightening and generally out to get us. Unfortunately the more we think about the world this way then the more these things feed themselves like a negative spiral with no end except maybe the end of all, right?
Essentially what I’ve been writing about is starting the same cycle in the positive direction. If the common person began spontaneously being kind and caring towards the few people they encounter in the course of living, there would be no need for retreating of the mind. Once enough of this behavior had persisted, even the media would begin being affected- painting a more positive image of those around us. Not a world without threats, but a world that shouldn't be shied away from. Images of neighbors worth befriending, and most likely not being forced to decapitate (no I’m not saying the slasher should end- I love zombie movies!). All I am saying is that trusting and caring for ALL those that surround you in your life could save someone from becoming the monster we all fear.
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