Love is All You Need

And God saw that the wickedness of man
was great in the earth, and that every imagination
of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually 
--Genesis (6:5) 

 Masks dropped away and real people began to appear:
cranks, imbeciles, the demented,
the vengeful, sadists, killers.
Modern society had created its own kind
and they feasted on each other.
It was a duel to the death...in a cesspool 
--Women, Charles Bukowski

But no matter what happens to the surviving humans,
there will always be the walking dead 
--The Zombie Survival Guide, Max Brooks 

 --Why would people watch a show about nothing? 
--Because it's on t.v. 
--Seinfeld (Hollywood episode)
___________________

For unknown reasons, Ranger viewed the t.v. series, "The Walking Dead" last week, a program about a politically-correct group of survivalists duking it out against the Undead. Think, being stuck in an endless loop of "Zombieland" with Woody Harrelson as Tallahassee, sans Bill Murray, and you get the idea.

It is a series which abides by one principle: killing is the only means to survival, and the killing is ongoing and never-ending; it is an NRA fantasy. But the one noteworthy part of the ordeal was his observation of the juxtaposition between the "Lawman" character whooping up on some slavering Zombie with a very big rock and the commercial which immediately followed.

The gruesome death scene was followed by an advert for Values.com, a group advocating the inculcation of, well, values into the body politic. A 15-30 second spot advocating for, presumably "good" values, versus and hour of relentless bloody-minded fear and violence. On the basis of time allotted, bad values wins.

Broadcasting on another channel in the same time-slot was "Criminal Minds", a program devoted to violence in the form of sadistic serial killers. What would have rated an "X" in Sam Peckinpah's day is just another day in televisionland, 2014.

Is the viewing public becoming more corrupt as reflected by its taste for horrific, spectacular violence, or does the media simply reflect in the micro the behavior of the nation (the macro)? Or is it that people have become so inured to sensory input, that they need shock treatment to register even the slightest blip of awareness?

What are these hyper-violent programs telling us? Do they serve to propagandize us that this is a very violent and unsafe world in which we live, demanding violent reactions? Is the purpose to keep the viewing public in a state of turmoil, and if so, why?