THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Saturday, February 3, 1996 TAG: 9602030013
SECTION: FRONT PAGE: A10 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: Another View
SOURCE: By HERBERT HIRSCH
LENGTH: Medium: 84 lines
Few people aren't alarmed by the bloody, deadly record of violence that plagues our communities. The daily headlines mean that young people read about violence in the newspaper and watch as the local television stations report the latest violent rampage.
As a culture becomes accustomed to violence, people lose their awareness of the sadness and tragedy of death. The commonness of violence erodes our understanding of the pricelessness of life, along with our capacity for outrage at injustice and cruelty which appear to be the ``normal'' state of human existence. People are desensitized or numbed and no longer react with horror and disgust at the destruction of life. If this is indeed a growing tendency in modern American society, why do we continue to celebrate violence and elevate those who commit violence to the level of modern heroes?
Growing up my heroes were baseball stars like Phil Rizzuto. I wanted to play for the New York Yankees and be like I thought they were - all-American, Boy Scouts and honorable, like George Washington and Abe Lincoln. One of my heroes, Mickey Mantle, admitted his flaws with alcohol abuse last year, and another American sports hero, football great O.J. Simpson, remains in the national headlines as his acquittal for murder continues to stir controversy.
Like many American children in the 1950s, my friends and I also celebrated violent destroyers. We romanticized the Western cowboys who murdered Native Americans, and we idolized notorious robbers such as Jesse James, Billy the Kid and Bonnie and Clyde. Surely these are not models of how we all should live, but we were mesmerized by the excitement conveyed in their stories.
Must we make heroes out of sports figures and individuals who have gained notoriety through the use of violence? Perhaps the tendency to turn notoriety into mythic heroism destroys the very essence of the purpose for heroes in the first place.
Perhaps we need to change our heroes. We need to look for ordinary people who have performed extraordinary deeds of human caring; people whose daily actions personify what we want to become.
If we look hard enough, we may find more people than we think working for our community. We need daily stories, for example, of young people volunteering from local schools to go into the community and help in retirement homes, or to act as peer counselors. Some of these stories make it to the spotlight, but mostly their successes are shrouded by the layer of violence that blankets our community.
Another example may be found in the events of the Holocaust, where the entire nation of Denmark mobilized to save the lives of many Jews, who were being exterminated by the Nazis. These people of Denmark were not mythic figures; they simply cared enough to stand up to violence and act to save - instead of destroy - lives. They recognized their responsibility and decided to act.
I often ask my classes to think about the Holocaust and to recall the names that trip our tongues. How many of us know the names of the Danish rescuers who smuggled 7,000 Jews to Sweden? How many of us were even aware of their actions? Of course, Steven Spielberg's famous film about Oscar Schindler has made the public more aware of one person who saved thousands of lives.
How we remember past events might be one key to unlocking the enigma of violent death and restoring the shock and dismay each of us should feel when we hear of another tragedy. Finding and following new heroes will help us create a vision that may one day turn these unsung heroes into celebrated heroes for the next generation. In learning from those heroes, young people, when confronted by a crisis or pressured to commit a morally questionable act, may choose differently.
This isn't a job for one individual or interest group to take on without cooperation. We need schools, parents, community groups, the media and everyone to identify, highlight and encourage these heroes of the 21st century. We can't expect change without taking responsibility.
Yet it is important to remember that this is but a beginning, for without the conditions to foster hope it is naive to believe that people will act positively. People create the conditions for great good or great evil. People make choices about their behavior. One does not have to pull the trigger. Perhaps if we encourage and reinforce the knowledge of those who did not, those who made a moral choice, this will be one small element helping to break the seemingly interminable cycle of violence. MEMO: Mr. Hirsch is a professor of political science at Virginia Commonwealth
University, where he teaches courses on the politics of violence, war
and genocide.
by CNB