Violence and a Better World
I was thinking about this quote I used in a previous article. “They want violence and they like violence. They don’t like the world, they don’t like our materialistic attitude. They don’t like a lot of our nasty ways of making money, they don’t like a lot of the fiddles we do. They don’t like seeing poverty. They want a better world.”
The quote is from Agatha Christie’s Passenger to Frankfurt, and seems contradictory on the surface. Christie’s character is describing the mindset of the world’s youth in the late 60’s and early 70’s. Forty years later, it seems to even better depict the direction of Gen X’s and Y’s.
Can someone like violence and at the same time dislike poverty and desire a better world? Look at our obsession with movies like Fight Club and its real life, professional counterpart. 
Blood, gore, and other violence are more prevalent in entertainment than ever before. Violence simply for the sake of violence. Yet war protests continue in one form or another, X’s and Y’s are more involved in relief efforts state-side and abroad and seem to genuinely care about the poor.
A contradicting heart? Maybe I just don’t get it, but something seems wrong with this picture.
from my notebook 