Model Of Desensitization

Individuals become desensitized to certain things such as violence and bullying when they are overexposed to these things in their environment. Maggie Nelson in her essay “Great to Watch” explores the violence prevalent present culture. She claims that repeated exposure to violence make individuals desensitized. Desensitization to violence not only reduces responsiveness towards violence, but can also increase support for violence such as the event of Bernie Goetz, where Goetz shot four African American in the New York City subway. Malcolm Gladwell, in his essay “The Power of Context: Bernie Goetz and the Rise and Fall of New York City Crime” discusses the event of the Bernie Goetz incident to demonstrate the history of violence in New York

Since violence had become part of every individual's life, they see it as a regular event, which reduces the hatred for violence. Nelson implies that when an individual get exposed to controversial violent acts such executions, those individuals are less likely to react and take action against this violent topic. Nelson argues that “Model of shaming-us into-action-by-unmasking-the-truth-of-our actions cannot hold a candle to our capacity to assimilate horrific images and to justify or shrug off horrific behavior” (Nelson 300). Desensitization to violence takes away the individual's senses of supporting “right” and “wrong” cause of violent acts. As a results, individuals either try to justify the violent acts or just ignore or deny. Likewise, instead of getting horrified by the news of the murder of Matt Shepard, some residents of Laramie became defensive, by attempting to deny the existence of intolerance in their town. Loffreda writes that‘“Hate is not a Wyoming value,’ residents kept telling each other, telling the visitor, telling the press. ‘We really take care of each other here,’ a woman told me one day in a coffee shop, echoing a dearly held ethos I’ve heard from many in Laramie ”(Loffreda 254). Media, through their twisting and manipulation of the murder was

Gladwell discusses how by changing or fixing little issues existing in society, the authorities of New York City fixed bigger problems. First the authority realizes the problems, as Gladwell writes that “Like graffiti, fare-beating could be a signal, a small expression of disorder that invited much more serious crimes” (Gladwell 152). Gladwell presents a solution to regain insight as a community through being aware of the small issues in the community. When community became over involved with violence, they ignored the little issues such as graffiti andfare beating. Likewise, Nelson claims that when individuals pay too much attention and become too involved in violence they become unaffected by the violence. Nelson writes that “In light of the heightened state of perception conjured by Cage’s piece-its profound capacity to “return us to our sense” via an emptying out of input rather than an overload” (Nelson 306). To realize the problems in the New York Subway system, authorities needed to “empty out” their over-attentiveness towards the violence and “return” to their sense, which enables them to see the issues that are actually causing the