“You are what you eat.” A statement most associate with food and weight but this is not really the truth that matters. We all feed ourselves with what we crave up until we learn perhaps our cravings are unhealthy. Even in the face of that reality, some persons choose to ignore still.
I was once required to write a thesis paper about social relevance. My topic was quite easily chosen because I remember seeing firsthand the deliberateness of teaching our children to be desensitized to violence. My paper was basically written about cartoons.
In cartoons of old, the theme of violence had a detached and unrealistic nature to them, i.e. they used animals to convey messages of destruction and inevitably the receiving target merely showed up as having charred fur but still lived to make our acquaintance again.
Through cartoons however, the measure of violence acceptable to children’s minds was seriously ramped up with the introduction of “anime” which grew beyond using animal subjects, to taking our youth’s minds into the realm of animated persons. Suddenly it became okay to show regular violence in a more realistic format….human against human.
It has been some time since I wrote my thesis paper and I am sad to say my A+ grade was on target. It cuts into my heart that I am a witness to evidence for being right. We may not care what we eat but our children are regurgitating what they have been fed.
