Desensitized
When we were about the age of ten we were told we were being desensitized by television cartoons with violence and that our young lives shouldn't be infiltrated with such graphic images of a coyote with jet pack on its back trying to catch and kill a bird faster than the speed of a locomotive. The violence of it all. It must stop. It must end. Our parents should put an end to our Saturday morning cartoons where a rabbit dressed up like a granny dropping everything in the house including a kitchen sink on someone trying to swindle little old ladies out of their money was oppressive to young minds and encouraged them to be violent. It would desensitize us, they said. We would get use to seeing violent images at the expense of our innocence.
When we were fifteen they told us we were being desensitized to wars, famines and poverty around the globe. With their negative images and onslaught of oppressions but pay it no mind it's just the world in which we live; and have no fear they were here to save us with their continual coverage of the situation and would be ready when called to shut down would be oppressors to our way of life, with their negative images and onslaught of oppressions but pay it no mind it's just the world in which we live.
When we were in our twenties we were told we were being desensitized to the atrocities of evil dictators who were on the prowl in foreign countries searching for a way to destroy all humanity and that by the might of being right we would end such evils in all places far and wide to share our freedoms and freedoms messages in foreign soils and minds to bring them into an industrialized set of human rights where they too could be desensitized like us to the horrific imagery being displayed scene after scene in such tawdry manners that they must add a rating to every show on television in order for parents and guardians to make sure that young children were safe from such sadistic minds that would, first chance they had, sneak into our children's lives to accost them. In order that they may grow up to be free from such malignant images at such tender young ages.
When we were in our thirty's we found out that we had been desensitized to the images on television for entertainments sake and a tornado here, or an earthquake over there, in the middle of tidal wave wasn't so bad. Different but not bad. After all we had been desensitized to the ideas of violent images whether natural or man made. But remember, with our desensitization came the fact that the world we actually lived in was nothing like those images on television save only for the war segments where someone we knew, had known, or would possibly meet would tell us of their involvement in such a war as was seen on t.v. We were desensitized to the very idea of bad being bad so as to be okay with some bad but not all bad when bad was really bad and then again not bad enough. When not bad enough we should protest? No wait, why would we do that. Stuff like that only happens on t.v. Then came cell phones with news alerts and those of us who have been desensitized know its just a waste of data because they told us so when we were just children. Yet they want our attention, our comments or replies (no, not really they have super computers for that) to remind us all when we chance to read it that we have been desensitized and the dictators of evil have been vanquished because of our desensitization thanks to their tattle tell natures of exposing the world to what really goes on when desensitizing an entire generation reaches success.
Did I hear about what happened where today? No. I was busy in my desensitized mind trying to describe what being desensitized meant after all these years of being desensitized.
On second thought, can I just have a bowl of cereal and go watch cartoons where a rabbit dressed up like an old lady drops a kitchen sink on a bad guy who was completely desensitized to the well fare of the old ladies?
Jade Jaspers
