The

faces of
the
violence
Martha Duhne Backhauss

ON APRIL 20 , 1999, ERIC

18 YEAR OLD HARRIS AND DYLAN

KLEBOLD 17 CARRIED OUT

A SHOOTING AT HIS SCHOOL

HIGH SCHOOL, COLUMBINE HIGH

SCHOOL, IN LITTLETON, COLORADO, IN WHICH THEY

MURDERED 12 OF THEIR CLASSMATES AND A TEACHER,
INJURED 23 others, AND THEN COMMITTED SUICIDE.

Similar VIOLENT ACTS that I invoke

They profit teenagers, they have been
repeated with different faces, names and
number of victims in other parts of the
world and raise a cascade of questions,
but the most important one is: why?

René Magritte, The Lovers (detail).

as you see ?

Eric Harris and Dylan
Klebold.
Boys who kill
Countless articles have been written
trying to explain the possible causes of
these events, apparently everything so
inexplicable. Eric and Dylan have been
called murderers, crazy people,
psychopaths, even devil spawns, but
these tragic events raise a very interesting
question for science: what can happen for
a baby to become such an angry and
aggressive teenager?
Science is still very far from po I need
to answer this question, but I
investigated Recent research on the
relationship that exists between the social
and psychological reality of these
adolescents and the biochemistry of their
brain sheds some light on the possible
causes of the aggressive behavior that
they present. they sit The conclusions that
emerge from these investigations are not
so simple as to conclude that violence is
genetically programmed, or that a
murder but potentially hides in the folds escape and there is no supervision "If you
gues of the frontal lobes of the brain, northrow them away, you're in trouble," high
in a childhood with abuse found levels of testosterone, a sex hormone
continuous It is rather an extreme network
extremely complex of factors
biochemical, social and psychological
expo which, together, can perform
mouth on a violent and aggressive person, capable of committing murder. Without
However, understanding the origins of
violence offers us clues about
how to try to prevent it. Have they en-
as you see ?
10
physiological or neurological differences
in people who commit abuse violent
attacks?
The biology of violence
At a clinic in Fairfield, California, Dr.
Daniel Amen conducted studies on 50
murderers and found that their brains
shared some common characteristics. nes.
The structure called Cingulate Gyrus very
slowly in the 50 killers. “If you have
(or CG for its acronym in English), which is times greater than that of Costa Rica,
and the
located in the center of the brain, most
hyperactivity in all of them. He
CG acts as a transmitter of the ce-
rebro, allowing you to change a within the same country.
thought to another. When it doesn't work well, the person gets stuck. graphics.
Worldwide, homicides
in a single idea, to which he returns with-
continuously. Also the bark
prefrontal, which appears to act as a
brain supervisor, it worked
violent thoughts from which you cannot aggressive. If the current increase in
says Dr. Amen. This type of damage
brain can result from strong blows
you in your head as well as from an
important action to harmful substances
the pregnancy.
Other research has found
Since, in general, physical men
physically aggressive have levels
involved, among other functions, in the
development of secondary sexual
characteristics in males (such as beards
and deep voices) and in building mass.
muscular. Studies carried out on prisoners
in different prisons showed that men with
the highest levels of testosterone were, in
many cases, those who had committed
violent crimes. But this relationship is not
always direct and is mediated by many
social factors. I like drug use.
Fourteen different studies have found
found that there is a marked tendency in
violent young people to have
significantly lower heart rates than less
aggressive people. Others is studies have
not found cardiac rhythms Abnormal cos
in psychopaths.
It is also known that males are the
most aggressive sex in almost all
mammals and this has led to some You
tend to assume that men are naturally
aggressive and that violence is a natural
consequence of biology. male gy.
However, the various tions in the number
of homicides in different societies make it
evident that culture has a great influence
on the probability possibility of a man
committing murder sinato. For example,
the proportion of the number of murders
in Colombia is 15
the boys of now have changed
changed in half a generation, or because a
genetic mutation has made them more
of the United States is 10 times larger
than that of Norway. There are even di-
very marked regional differences
youth gods have doubled in the
last 15 years. This is not due to
that the brains they are born with
violence cannot be explained by
physiological or neurological issues, we
must investigate try to find other causes.
The firsts years
The learning capacity of a baby is
amazing: in less than three years, it
crawls, walks, assimilates a language and
learns to relate to its environment. But
such a young brain is also extreme.
 ly vulnerable to psychological wounds
that occur during this period. A small
child who continually lives expe tension
riences (such as abandonment no, abuse
or even terror), you experience physical
changes in your brain. The flu
continuous flow of chemical
substances related to behaviors
that produce ten sion, tends to
restructure the functioning of
the brain, putting its defense
system sa in a state of
constancy alerts you. The
result is a child who shows an
aggression impulsive sion.
For him, which Any attitude
that you interpret as hostile can
increase the level of hormone
in your brain. monkeys related
to responses to stressful
behaviors.
In other children, constant contact
with pain and seeing lence, can block
the natural response to situations
tension, like a button that has been
pressed so many times that it stops
working. These are the mu kids with
antisocial personalities, who
often mind have a low
sensitivity sensitivity to the
needs and emotions of other
people.
There may also be a
genetic component that leads
to a person antisocial nature. Aspects
of tempera ment such as irritability,
impulsivity, hyperactivity and low
sensitivity to the emotions of others may
have a biological basis. The way in which
a baby who is naturally unreactive to
displays of affection develops depends It
will depend on the capacity of your
parents. to stimulate him and form
emotional ties with him. When a small
child is not excessively aggressive, it is
due Train the family not to continually
confront him, challenging him and
fighting with him, but rather teach him
non-violent ways to solve his problems
and thus reduce his frustration.
Different parental responses produce
different brains and therefore to, different
behaviors. Behavior is the result of a
dialogue between the brain and
experiences and, although people are
born with some characteristics biological
statistics, the brain has many several
blank pages. The infinite number of
messages that a child receives from his
environment will give him the pattern of
how he is expected to behave. carry when
Eduard Munch, Madonna (detail).
he is an adult. This is why parents that
bad treat their children physically or
psychologically, they were often
mistreated when they did not even us.
The criminals, in mu Many cases have
parents who abused alcohol
and drugs, were criminals and
were beaten children.
This sequence of events does
not always occur, but it is a
risk factor: having grown up
in a violent or lacking
affection environment
increases the probabilities.
facts of creating people slow
to repeat the vicious circle with
their children. You can tell a
child a thousand times that it is
bad to attack and hit others, but if
they have treated him badly,
insults and insults, his parents yell
at each other, and he observes
that violence is the way
problems are solved, he is
likely to understand that this
is an acceptable way to
behave.
Happy violence?
Current popular culture, in
songs, video games,
Internet, movies and
programs more than
television, it offers many
ahem plos in which the
smallest character, or the one who has
been humiliated and attacked, manages to
take revenge, killing and destroying
destroying his opponents.
George Gerbner, a researcher at the
Annenberg School of Communication at
the University of Pennsylvania, has es
studied for more than 30 years the effects
of television on its viewers and found
found that on average there are more than
five violent scenes in an hour of
programming mation in prime time and
25 acts saw slow per hour in the cartoons
that are broadcast on American channels
on Sunday mornings, which are the same
ones broadcast by our channels.
as you see ?
1
1
commercial ends. A child who for If you
watch three and a half hours of television
a day, you will have witnessed more than
8,000 murders and 100,000 acts of
violence on television by the time the
premium ends. estuary.
Never before has culture been so
saturated with violent images. In the first
Just a Die Hard movie shows 18
murders; in the second, 264. In Robocop
I there are 32 dead; in its sequel, 81. The
three Godfather movies piled up 12, 18,
and 53 bodies, respectively.
What is the message of all this saw
lence? The amount of violent scenes in
the media encourages the idea that
aggressive behavior is normal and even
desirable. “Living in a burdensome
society day of violence generates
aggression in some people and a lack of
sensitivity, insecurity and anger in
others," says Gerbner, who also thinks
that the great danger of television is that
it has become poured, not into mere
entertainment, but into a modern religion
that presents It has a vision of the world
that is coherent, violent, aggressive,
repressive, dangerous and false. “Happy
violence” Gerbner calls the type of
violence seen in the media; spectacle
violence, without consequences. Will any
viewer stop to think, as part of the film's
plot, about the widows, the orphans, the
mothers, or what the 264 deaths in Die
Hard II would imply?
Born to Kill was the favorite film of
Dylan Klebold and Eric Harris who
managed to bring together, in the
basement not of their houses, an arsenal
of four ar but of a high caliber, a bomb
made with a 10 kilo propane tank and
more than 30 small bombs built by
themselves with gunpowder, nails and
broken glass. And a good part of society
is American still thinks it's his legitimate
right to have access to weapons.
What can we conclude?
We are all terrified by the events that
happen were given at Columbine High
School, but we live in a society where
violence has become a spec taculum;
abuse of children is daily boys and
women; intolerance is a constant in
relationships between people people from
different ideas, cultures, religion nes or
sexual preferences; impunity
as you see ?
12
G.V.
Violence in full color
George Gerbner was born in Hungary and
emigrated to the United States fleeing
fascism. He fought in World War II and
became a hero. gnaw. Back in his country, he
dedicated himself to studying the effects of
television on the public, particularly violence,
and began to count murders and their
frequency in that mass medium of
information. Currently, from the Annenberg
School of Communication at the University
town of Pennsylvania, United States, has
been poured into one of the experts on the
subject.
After thirty years of analyzing it, he saw
lence on television in the United States—at
least half of those programs are broadcast
play in Mexico—and their influence on
television pectorals, Gerbner concludes the
following:
• Never before has a culture been so
flooded gives violent images in full color;
Of course there is blood in fairy tales das,
stabbings in mythology, murders in
Shakespeare, and wars and battles in
textbooks, but these representations of
violence are cultural expressions
legitimate, even necessary to balance
tragic consequences.
• The selective and symbolic use, defined
historically richly, the violence of
heroism, cruelty or authentic tragedy has
been its replaced by violence with a
happy ending.
• Americans spend a third of their free time
watching television.
• Only 1.3% of the characters that appear in
the series broadcast in the best ho Rare
are poor.
• For every white male victim there are 22
female victims who belong to me. racial
norms.
• The bad guys are mostly male, from the
lower class, young and foreign (mu Latin
boys).
• There is no difference between violence
present told with humor and the one that
seems serious; In fact, the first is more
dangerous because it makes violence seen
as a behavior acceptable ment.
• In general, television gives the idea that
the world is worse than it really is. This
causes feelings of fear and even
seriousness and that people are willing to
accept take extreme government
measures against violence.
• Violent acts on television rob the public of
the tragic meaning of life that is
necessary for compassion.
Gerbner, who heads the Movement for the
Cultural Environment, does not recommend
census ra but proposes diversifying
programming in order to produce less violent
materials and more programs that portray
minorities and women in a favorable light; In
short, let the stories be told more by who nes
have something to say that for those who
have They have something to sell.
 of certain sectors of the population tion
is not the exception, but the rule; more
than half of the population tion lives in
poverty and justice Ticia is no longer
blind (has she ever been?), but she does
have skin color and class so cial. It
should be just as terrifying as the events
of Columbine, having learned I see a
four-year-old child begging for money at
eleven at night like someone who sees a
traffic light.
It is very simplistic and even
comfortable to label tas, blame others,
find a cause, only one that ex explain
these murders in which so many lives,
hopes, dreams, fu turos. But the issue of
seeing lence is extremely complex and
has many different facets. And, truth be
told, it is not foreign to us.
If the conclusion was
ra that the main cause of the increase in
violence in three teenagers are only in a
path function guide development of your
brain or behavioral behavior tada in their
chromosomes, we could do a lot to
combat it. But if it is the result of many
factors, the problem is really complex.
And in this cocktail of factors, all We
both have our share of responsibility ity;
aspects in which to think, decide and
act. /and

Martha Duhne is a biologist; For several years he has

been dedicated to the dissemination of science, especially
in audiovisual media. She has been a producer, among
other programs, of Ciencia hoy , on TV UNAM,
inter@100.xia , on channel 11.

We thank doctors Marcelino Cereijido, researcher at the

Center for Research and Advanced Studies of the IPN,
and Humberto Nicolini, head of the Clinical Research
Division of the Mexican Institute of Psychiatry, for their
advice in the preparation of this article.

Eduard Munch, Madonna (detail). as you see ?

1
3