Violent Ends

My Sunday involved, at various times of the day, the evocation of three distinctly differentiated styles of violence: the cartoon violence of Kingsman; the bitter, hard, flat, mundanely nasty violence of Ondaatje's Billy the Kid; the mechanised horror of the first day of The Somme as depicted in Joe Sacco's remorselessly brilliant The Great War. Yet I've not been directly involved in any situation involving actual violence for many years. It's an odd discrepancy when you think about it and, I feel obliged to add, I'm not someone who consciously seeks out violent material for the excitement it might engender. Quite the opposite.

We're a violent species by nature, certainly, and to some degree by nurture. Yet that violence can be controlled. I suspect it's wise to acknowledge the reality of our potential for violence first though.