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<title> Our two ways of looking at violence </title>
In the TV news we see children who have lost their legs when they have stepped on land mines. We hear about people being murdered for no apparent reason but being in the wrong place at the wrong time. We hear about criminals shooting security guards while commiting bank robberies. We think that those acts of violence are terrible and despise those who commit them. After the news we watch an action movie and don't bother at all about the violent acts commited in the reality of the movie if it isn't a friend of the hero's getting shot, blown to pieces, being stabbed ten times or being killed in any other gruesome way. 

This two-ways-of-looking-at-violence phenomenon is peculiar, and examples can be found almost everywhere. Take sports for an example. A hockey player who punches another player will get a couple of minutes detention. If I would do the same thing on the street I would have to pay the one I punched money or even go to prison for a short time. The only real difference between the two acts is the location. It's accepted to fight in a hockey arena but it's not okay to do it in the street. The objective in ice hockey isn't to hurt your opponent which lead us to consider the sports where the objective as a matter of fact is to hurt the opponent. Take professional boxing for another example. The objective of the sport is to punch the opponent into unconsciousness. I could do that to someone who bugs me in a bar, but that would not be socially acceptable. There are a lot of other sports where the idea is to defeat your enemy by force. That's the same idea that apply in warfare. Is boxing and similar sports war in a small scale? 

Humans don't only enjoy watching violence they celebrate the memory of it as well. The best example of this phenomenon is the revolutions. All revolutions haven't been violent and all revolutions aren't celebrated today, but there are some like the French Revolution which is celebrated every year the 14th of July. The French Revolution was a massacre where people were executed in thousands. If a similar act would be happening today it would be called barbaric. But still the French celebrate their revolution and so do people of other nationalities who have their own revolutions to be proud of. Does this phenomenon mean that the cause justifies the means? Was the beheadings in the late 18th century France basically a good thing? The purpose and the ideas of the French Revolution were basically good, weren't they? Even if the revolution led to a lot of beheadings and later on the rise of Napoleon and then even more deaths? It seems to me that a good cause can give violence approval. But what is a good cause? The communists in the Soviet Union believed they had a good cause and worked for the greater good of man. Did that cause justify the deaths of approximately nine million people during the Stalin terror? 

I don't know why we have such an ambivalent way of looking at violence, but it seems to me that there exists what we would call justified violience, something that most people approve of. It seems to me that a good cause or the right location or circumstances can make violence something good. But is it really violence we are against when we go to a meeting and protest against the spreading violence? Shouldn't we say stop the "unjustified violence" instead? Is there any justified violence? Can we really say that a fight in a hockey arena is any different than a fight in the street? Does the location really justify violence? Does a "good" cause justify violence?
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