As The Smiths frontman Morrissey states in his song The Last of the Famous International Playboys

"In our lifetime those who kill The newsworld hands them stardom And these are the ways On which I was raised"

As a western society we are rather enthralled by violence, and are taught to love it from an early age through the media we consume. Alongside the bloody sports and video games we're all enamored by, we most notably try to obsessively pick the brains of killers in order to comprehend their rather primal actions in a modern world that now condems them. Perhaps it's an innate and extremely subconscious (or conscious in many cases) need within all of us to watch the violence we wish we could enact, now instead be inflicted upon others. Theft, murder, rape, and genocide are the some of the few unequivocal truths we've had as a species since our hunter gatherer days, but to most of us they don't make sense within the current world atleast not on their base levels. All we really know is that looking at violence or partaking in it, connects us back to a nervous system arousal we've come out of touch with from the comfort and safety of our homes.

You might say that violence is not an inherent trait within the human race, as it is more beneficial to love ones neighbor rather than bludgeon him with a lead pipe, and while that is certainly true, power and control are far more intoxicating than brotherhood. Violence is a display of control like none other, whether it'd be as small as control over a relationship, or as big as control over the entire world, our ancestors proved there was no better way to assert dominance than to "show who's boss" with a rock.

America particularly is a culture of violence, as we started our roots through a war rationalized by the greatest thinkers and philosophies from the enlightenment. We give our country's ambitions certain monikers to remind us of this, the war on drugs, war on terror, and war on poverty all named that in order to invoke the instrinsic need to gather our arms quickly and fight for what's right/glorious. War is enticing as it allows us a chance to be noble, and fight for something bigger than ourselves

However what do we do when this fascination with control and gore forced onto others, shows right back up on our doorsteps? We'll go to any length to apply ethically and logically sound reasoning as to why the blood is on our hands, until we become the enemies ourselves in need of rightful punishment.

Violence is an attempt to control something that is ultimately out of our control because it is a way of asserting our own will over the world. When we use violence, we are trying to force our way on others, and we are trying to make them do what we want, but what does this mean when our own will is ultimately abstract and absurd in itself?.

- xoxo Machine Girl xoxo