Monti, L. “Toward a NonViolent Society” 
The New Federation 3.3 (1993): 8-12.

Toward a NonViolent Society
by Lorne Monti

The movie marquee reads:
Destroyer III, starring Arnold Schwarzenegger and the rapid fire, large calibre Beretta Terminator. And introducing the Uzi Apocalypse assault rifle. With General Norman Schwartzkoff as the Kid. Directed by Oliver North.

Sound far fetched? Well, perhaps.
This image resonates with the continuing fetish for guns and violent entertainment obsessing our southern neighbours. Studies indicate that by age eighteen the average American will have viewed 250,000 acts of violence and 40,000 attempted murders on TV. With things cultural there seems to be cross-border shopping between Canada and the United States: we send them our comedians and in return we receive unlimited access to violent programming. Certainly this couldn’t have been the goal of the Free Trade Agreement, for the media’s role in the complex recipe of societal violence may be nothing to laugh at.
Although the economy is in recession, violence is a growth industry. During the past ten years the rate of violent crime in Canada has mushroomed by over fifty percent. This makes it by far the fastest growing segment of criminal enterprise. When the greatest threat to a woman’s life and safety originates from her spouse we all recognize something is desperately out of order.
Compounding this problem is the unsettling surge of youth violence. Social phenomena like single-parent and dual income families, and daycare have eroded the role parents play in their children’s upbringing. This, in turn, has increased the potential impact of TV on childhood socialization. Consequently, the relationship between TV and youth violence becomes increasingly portentous.
Common sense tells us children deciphering television’s violent imagery without the benefit of parental interpretation is dangerous. But the influence of the media is only one ingredient in the alchemy of societal violence. The interaction of hormones, guns, gender, genes and socioeconomic factors plays an equally important, if unpredictable, part in this lethal formula.
The dream of ridding society of violence has inflamed the imagination of thinkers for millennia. Plato’s prescription was to have every child removed from his/her parents at birth and raised communally. His belief was that, not knowing who their parents were, adolescents would be reluctant to strike any adult for fear of injuring their own kin. This indicates Plato may have known a lot about philosophy, but he sure didn’t know anything about kids. Unfortunately, he also advocated banishing all playwrights from his Utopian “Republic.” Although this may be welcome news to critics of soap operas and Arnold Schwarzenegger movies, it doesn’t bode well for the fate of free speech.
But, like Plato, is it possible for us to examine some of these factors in search of a simple recommendation which might moderate the role of violence in a modern society? Or are we doomed to the fate of countless previous civilizations? It is this second question which corrodes our collective self-confidence for the future has no guideposts. Consequently, divining the future by observing the past is like looking backward from a speeding train to see where we’re going by where we’ve just been. Perhaps seeing where we’ve just been is the best we can do, and it may reveal where we’re destined as a culture.
No one can deny television has an effect on fashion, politics, language, recreational activities or purchasing habits. Advertisers have used it successfully to manipulate our buying decisions since its inception. TV can induce copycat violence as exemplified by the Los Angeles riots, or elicit sympathy for a worthy cause. Nevertheless, the argument ragging over the effects of TV violence on behaviour is reminiscent of the smoking debate of the sixties. Everyone suspected smoking was unhealthy, but the conclusive evidence remained elusive. Fortunately, common sense has since been vindicated.
Similarly, the problem exists in the current discourse regarding the media. Many of the research conclusions concerning the contribution of TV to violent behaviour continue to be controversial. Invariably, these experiments consist of assemblages of college students, who after being aroused by watching violent TV programs in a controlled setting, administer shocks to nonexistent subjects in an adjacent room. Often the results bear little application to reality. The differences between male and female eagerness to administer shocks is slight. Yet, in real life, even though violent crime committed by women has grown by over five hundred and fifty percent in the past thirty years – over double the rate for men – men still commit ninety percent of violent crime. So these kinds of findings may tell us more about the aggressiveness of university students, then they do about the repercussions of media violence.
Interpreting the data in many cases can be as difficult as developing a credible test. Many of us are familiar with the story of the four scientists conducting an experiment on a frog. After cutting the leg off the unfortunate amphibian they tell it to jump. The frog complies the best it can given the disadvantage of having only three legs. As the story goes, the scientists continue to remove the frog’s limbs one by one, and command it to jump. Finally, after the frog has lost all its appendages the scientists order it to jump one last time. When the frog fails to react, the scientists look about at each other knowingly, and conclude that when all of a frog’s legs are amputated, it goes deaf!
As questionable as these examples are, they illustrate the controversy over the influence of media violence is as much about methodology and interpretation as it is about findings. Yet, despite some contradictory results, as indicated in the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC) report entitled Scientific Knowledge About Television Violence, there is a profusion of testimony confirming the dangerous consequences of violent programming.
The report summarizes much of the existing literature on violence and the media. According to the weight of the evidence there are grounds to believe, “the more children are exposed to television violence, the more likely they are to perceive violence as an effective way of resolving conflict.” Similarly, the behaviour of children who are already predisposed to aggressive tendencies, is reinforced by exposure to television violence.
In one of the studies reviewed by the commission, researchers tracked a group of third grade students for twenty-two years. Shockingly, one of the conclusions was, “early childhood TV habits are correlated with adult criminality independently of other likely causal factors.” Although it is ambiguous whether violent programming created violent children, or violent children were attracted to violent programming. Nonetheless, the recommendation was to intervene as early as a child’s preadolescence in order to counteract the consequences of media violence. This confirms the results of another study which found that the critical age at which television strongly influences behaviour coincides with the third grade.
The consistencies were numerous among the findings of several laboratory studies, as well. It was determined that aggressiveness could be stimulated by television portrayals in which a violent perpetrator was rewarded for his actions, or eluded punishment; the violence was perceived as justified or gratuitous; the viewer identified with the violent protagonist; the portrayal of violence was realistic; or was similar to the kind of situation likely to be encountered by the viewer, to name a few examples.
Essentially what this means is the portrayals of violence we have grown accustomed to seeing on TV are the most pernicious. A dispassionate hero dispatching villains with the detachment of a tax auditor is a terrible role model.
In fact, it is paramount that television portrays the painful consequences of brutal conduct. A shooting victim writhing in pain personifies the terrible aftermath of violence and may evoke sympathy in a viewer. There is some evidence that aggressive tendencies are inhibited by this type of depiction. Conversely, a victim being blasted through a door immediately before a commercial break has no such didactic value.
A poignant example of just how tragic the misinterpretation of TV violence can be is the notorious murder case of a Burlington, Ontario business man. The unfortunate victim had been killed for his credit cards at a gas station and then stuffed into the trunk of his car. He had been bludgeoned thirty times in the head with a fire extinguisher. At the trial of the two young offenders charged and subsequently convicted of the crime, one of the defendants described how he was only trying to knock out the victim. He had seen it on television countless times, and he couldn’t understand why the man just didn’t go down after the first blow.
In the end, however, it remains unclear whether there are any long term results from watching violent programming on stable adults. What is more clear, though, as quoted by the CRTC report, “Children’s aggressive behaviour is not influenced by media when the values and the norms about aggression are clear. Family attitudes and social class are stronger determinants of attitudes toward aggression than is the amount of exposure to TV, which is nevertheless a significant but weaker predictor.”
Yet, as suggested by their submission to the spring issue of the Journal of Social Issues, University of California professors Linz, Wilson and Donnerstein contend the role of parents and peer groups is being diminished by the media, particularly as a source of sexual information for teenagers. Approximately one in eight Hollywood films depicts a rape, which may explain why when surveyed, seventy-nine of American teenagers believed it was, “O.K. for a guy to hold a girl down and force her to have sexual intercourse under certain circumstances...”
Ultimately, our best defense against the potentially harmful effects of violent TV imagery is education. Society may be incapable of expunging the myriad factors which contribute to the chain of violent behaviour like childhood neglect or poverty. But, as suggested by Linz, Wilson and Donnerstein there is evidence that education provides an inoculation against the potentially harmful effects of violent depictions in the media. After all, education has successfully reversed the trend toward cigarette smoking.
Certainly censorship is not a practical alternative ; particularly for a country like Canada in an age of international satellite broadcasts, there always exists the means of circumventing our regulators. And what of all the great works of art? Somehow, War and Peace, for example, just doesn’t cut it without the war part! Moreover, censors tend to make assessments based on traditional moral values. From this perspective, often what is deemed offensive in fact may not be harmful. Linz, Wilson and Donnerstein offer the example of Rain Man receiving – for its minor sexual content – the same film rating as a typical slasher film which includes the harmful juxtaposing of sex with violence.
CRTC chairman, Keith Spicer, has been quoted as advocating voluntary self-regulation on the part of public broadcasters. But this appears a leaky solution at best.
Which brings us back to education. Considering that television is one of our most powerful influences on socialization, it’s reasonable to recommend that a child’s instruction in the ethics of media violence begins at the earliest stages of primary education. Naturally, this would be at the most rudimentary level, and would simply deal with the real consequences of fictional violence. Additionally, it would compensate for any inadequate training the child may have received at home, and would provide for a common base of knowledge. 
Although this may appear cold and institutional, consider that a young child can spend as much of its waking time in a daycare environment as it does with its own parents. Therefore, as in Plato’s Republic, we are, in practice, raising our children communally. And the consequences of failing to immunize them against the harmful repercussions of violent television imagery are too ominous to ignore.
An armour-plated Neanderthal brandishing a huge stick and capable of speeds exceeding forty-five kilometres an hour during an attack – sound like The Terminator? Worse. It’s a hockey goon!
Long the scourge of civilized sport, the hockey goon may finally be on the same course to extinction as its anthropological progenitor. And the goon will have been vanquished by the force of education.
Violence in sport has long been a complex issue. As excessive love can mutate to obsession, excessive aggression can lead to violence. Yet, aggression is not all bad. Often aggression can be the impetus for competitive pursuits of excellence. This has positive applications in research and business, for example. Paradoxically, implied or actual violence on the part of the state as punishment for malefactors can actually inhibit societal violence by inducing peace by regulation.
Hockey is a game in which society suspends these normal regulations and permits mutually consenting adults to subject each other to controlled violence in the name of sport. But the hockey goon presents a different problem. As noted by professor and author Michael D. Smith of York University in his book Violence and Sport, “when body contact assumes an importance out of proportion to that required to play the game – when inflicting pain and punishing opponents are systematized as strategy, and viciousness and ferocity are publicly glorified – a stage of brutality can be said to have been reached.” Surely, for our purposes, this definition describes the typical hockey brawl. And, as with the media, it is the glorification of brutality which a civilized society seeking to be nonviolent must strive to eradicate.
Brent Ladds, President of the Ontario Hockey Association, recounts how during his eighteen-year involvement in junior hockey he has watched the incidents of fighting plummet dramatically. “It’s a whole change in values within society that’s finding its way into the arenas,” Ladds explains. He attributes the decline to the association’s effort at educating administrators and coaches to their accountability for their players conduct. This is stressed in the association’s coaching certification programs. “Administratively, there’s been enough pressure put on the hockey establishment from 1974 to clean up its act,” stresses Ladds. In order to ensure this philosophy for the future, all junior league coaches will require certification from the Ontario Hockey Association by the 1993-94 season.
Ladds identifies another problem when he paraphrases sport psychologist, Gilles Niron, “if violence is a sickness, then the virus began in the stands.’’ Similarly, Professor Smith observes that as far as violence in sport is concerned, “if you have slap on the wrist penalties, but in the meantime you get standing applause from the audience and the coach thinks you’re a pretty solid guy, then you’re going to keep doing it.”
It was incidents like these which inspired hockey coach and administrator Don Shepardson to find an alternative to the conventional game structure and which placed more emphasis on good sportsmanship. 
During the early eighties, games in the Tri-Tem Juvenile Hockey League in Northern Ontario were getting “a little ugly.” Brawls were breaking out routinely, particularly in the third period. As a result, Tri-Tem introduced a program in which, in addition to the winning team receiving two points toward the standings, the winner of each individual period was assessed a point. This meant a winning team couldn’t afford to squander a period as a result of needless penalties, because each period eventually counted in the standings. Similarly, even a losing team could achieve a point if it won a period. The result was a forty percent drop in penalty minutes and an absolute end to goonery, according to Don Shepardson. Unfortunately, after three years the program was discontinued, a victim of its own success. Apparently there’s nothing sporting about sportsmanship.
What happens when you remove the sticks and pucks from hockey? You end up with a boxing match, and one more dilemma for a society striving toward a non-violent culture. As professor Smith points out both the Canadian and American Medical Associations consider boxing to be, “intrinsically a brutal sport whose main purpose at the professional level, in particular, is to hurt the other guy – knock him out really – which by definition means brain damage!” Ironically, this may be a more apt description of the election process then boxing, but it poses the question whether it is tolerable for a society to sanction a sport which routinely results in brain damage?
The simplest solution may be to ban boxing outright. Or in a symbolic gesture, Canada could lead the world by withdrawing its participation in boxing at the Olympics. Unfortunately, societies which readily invoke bans and censorship risk becoming totalitarian. Moreover, it seems a drastic measure for a sport which has a relatively low participation rate in Canada. A better remedy might merely be to change the rules of the game.
Emulating the martial arts may be a preferred option. Although full contact karate exists, a vast body of competition is non-contact. In fact, points are deducted from competitors who strike blows with enough force to leave redness or bruising on their opponents. An additional benefit is the teaching of a philosophy of non-violence, attendant to most reputable martial arts programs. As unlikely as it appears, the boxing establishment will embrace the philosophy of non-contact pugilism, keep in mind as late as the beginning the century, boxers didn’t even wear protective gloves. It must be remembered that debate determines which of a democratic society’s values are transposed into the realm of sport.
Any consideration of rule changes must extend to gun control. Should any citizens, other than the police or the army, have the right to own a firearm in a civilized, democratic society? The rational response is no, except under the rarest of circumstances.
The arguments of gun control opponents have grown wearisome to the approximately seventy-nine percent of Canadians who are in favour of more stringent restrictions against firearm ownership.
The familiar refrain, “guns don’t kill people, people kill people” is transparent sophistry. In fact, people with guns kill people, and in 1991 they murdered more Canadians than anyone else.
The argument that gun control legislation penalizes the law abiding citizen is patently false. Paradoxically, the law abiding citizen is one of the major problems. Approximately 3500 guns a year are stolen from law-abiding citizens, which means these citizens provide a reliable source of illegal firearms to criminals. In addition, it is 44 times more likely that these firearms will be involved in an accidental death, suicide or murder than they ever will be in the shooting of an intruder.
The proposition that if law-abiding citizens don’t have guns, then only criminals will, is misleading. Ironically, it may be the safest alternative, for criminals only managed to murder 271 people with guns last year while, each year, firearms are involved in the accidental death and suicide of approximately 1,200 people. Furthermore, between 1974 and 1987 shooting was the most common means of family related homicide.
False, too, is the contention that reducing the number of guns in a society will simply change the weaponry employed, rather than reduce the homicide rate. An examination of sixteen European countries by David Lester, published in the British Journal of Criminology confirmed previous studies that, “firearm availability was associated with firearm homicide rates ... This suggests that increased firearm availability creates additional homicides, rather than merely changing the murder weapon of choice.” It’s a simple equation, the more snakes, the more likely it is you’re going to get bitten by a snake, and there’s no room for snakes in Eden.
Redressing these problems was the impetus for Canada’s new gun control legislation, which comes into effect in January of 1993. Wendy Cukier, President of the Coalition for Gun Control, thinks the legislation is a step in the right direction, but regrets it doesn’t go far enough.
The coalition represents groups as diverse as the Canadian Associations of Chiefs of Police, to the Ontario Federation of Women Teachers Association. As a result, Cukier believes the coalition represents the moderate, mainstream voice of gun control in Canada. Yet, she is disappointed that under the terms of the new Firearms Acquisition Certificate, a mandatory background check of an applicant will not be required. As well, she is concerned that a complete ban on military assault rifles was not implemented.
Her position on assault rifles is utilitarian, “you weigh the benefits against the costs, and my argument with assault weapons is they’re not used for hunting, they’re not particularly good for target shooting and, therefore, I would say the threat outweighs the benefit.” She also feels that the safe storage provisions of the bill were gutted in committee, in order to satisfy the gun lobby.
Facts like these have motivated Toronto lawyer and gun control advocate, Clayton Ruby, to demand even more restrictive gun control legislation. Mr. Ruby concedes there may be differences between the needs of country and city dwellers, but firearms have virtually no place in an urban environment. Writing for the Globe and Mail he proposed, “city-dwellers who want to hunt should be required to store all weapons, at their own expense, in locked depositories in public vaults, licensed by the government ... The drunken husband in the midst of an angry quarrel will not be able to reach for a nearby rifle. And when the angry drunk shows up at a gun depository and demands his shotgun, it will be refused to him.”
Unfortunately, firearms may be our most threatening and insoluble conundrum. The disturbing new trend of gun smuggling into Canada from the United States means that Canadian legislators can only rectify a portion of the problem. The lax legislation of many American states – where a state driver’s license is the simple requirement necessary to buy a hand gun – makes it easy and profitable to purchase firearms for smuggling. Such guns have been appearing on Canadian streets with increasing frequency. This, in part, has contributed to the forty percent increase in shootings from 1990 to 1991, and a doubling of the hand gun murder rate. 
When American domestic policy begins to have negative consequences on independent countries, it’s time for the application of international pressure. When it comes to gun control, “we have got to start pushing, as is Japan, the United States very hard, as we do on environmental issues,” stresses Cukier, for gun smuggling is a nefarious form of cultural pollution. After all, applying pressure is what the United States does to foreign countries which smuggle illegal drugs into America. Therefore, the U.S. must abide by the same standard of internationally responsible conduct when it comes to gun control.
But as long as gun manufacturers continue to share the billing with film stars on movie marquees, any attempt to transform American attitudes toward gun control will be futile. “If you think of the image that teenage boys see in the movies, they’re all men with guns,” observes Cukier. Nevertheless, she remains a disciple of education’s remedial power.
Finally, what a superficial examination of the roots of societal violence can’t do is address every issue. The role of gender and nature, both factors which lie beyond the realm of legislation, regrettably, must go unexplored. What is clear, though, if there is a curative panacea for the virus of societal violence, it rests in education – which does lie within the realm of legislation.
Taking this into consideration, the time may be right for a federal-provincial conference examining the role public education can play to offset the threat violent imagery poses to our peaceable dominion. This would be a logical step in the aftermath of the recent petition, signed by nearly 1.3 million Canadians and presented on their behalf to federal officials by fourteen year old Virginie Lariviere, asking the Prime Minister for legislation to limit television violence.
The cold war is over. Canada is universally celebrated as the peace keeper to the world. In the new world order, Canadians must remain committed to being peace keepers at home, as well. In so doing, we can continue to create a diverse and peaceful society in which, possibly, Plato and Schwarzenegger can coexist in harmony.

Lome Monti is a regular contributor to The New Federation.