Collegiate Times

What?s your favorite television show? How about your favorite movie? Are they kid-tested and mother-approved? If your answers were something along the lines of ?Teletubbies? and ?Cinderella,? then, yes, you probably aren?t offending anyone. You are well liked in censorship land.

If you are an adult, with slightly more mature tastes, then your answers are probably similar to the likes of mine: ?Family Guy,? ?Wedding Crashers,? ?South Park? and ?Saw? to name a few. Or perhaps you?d rather watch ?Gilmore Girls,? ?Laguna Beach,? ?Real World,? ?Garden State? and ?Scary Movie 4.?

Whatever I left out and you named, I can just about guarantee that it has one, if not all three, of the deadly, desensitizing sins that the Federal Communications Commission and extreme rightists detest: Drugs, sex and violence.

It is in our genes, our DNA, to have a natural curiosity for death, pain and destruction. Likewise, it is biologically natural for us, as organisms, to be interested in sex and reproduction.

Place yourself in the scenario of driving down a highway. Up the road and to the left you see flames and explosions. You hear people screaming in agony and fear.

Naturally, out of curiosity, you turn your head as you roll by, possibly even slowing to a halt. Perhaps you get out of your car to help. Perhaps you get out in order to get yourself a better look.You?re curious ? not scared and disgusted. If you don?t get out, then maybe you simply ?rubber-neck? like the cars in front and behind you. You?re fascinated, and you aren?t completely sure why.

Now imagine the same situation with a naked man and woman standing on the side of the road. You look. Of course you look. Your eyes grow wide and you maybe even chuckle to yourself uncomfortably. Have we always been so immoral and desensitized to the world around us to not cry and pant and scream in agony with those people in their car crash? Yes.

I ask you to recall your high school history class and everything you can remember about the late and great Roman Empire.

Think back to gladiators and dangerous beasts battling one another in carnage and death as thousands of people of all backgrounds watched and cheered in wonderment and anticipation. They laughed, whistled and yelled for the destruction of humans and animals before them. Were we simply barbarians back then? No.

Now remember, in the same time period, the aristocratic Roman dinner parties, with their never-ending supply of wine and food that inevitably led to full-scale orgies and sexual displays. Recall the naked statues and paintings of female and male figures. Think of the bath houses where citizens went to talk openly and nakedly, sometimes men and women together at once. I ask you: Is mankind worse today?

Turn those thoughts to what you know about British literature. A man named William Shakespeare wrote a multitude of plays. And in these works, proclaimed some of the greatest literature in history, did the characters not kill and lust after one another?

I believe he once wrote, ?Graze on my lips; and if those hills be dry, stray lower, where the pleasant fountains lie? (from ?Venus and Adonis.?) It?s not Dawson?s Creek, sure, but I?ve never heard of any Shakespearean critics discussing the desensitizing of 16th century Europe. Lastly, remember how our precious country was won. Remember the wars and battles and destruction caused in order to be a free nation.

Remember the battles of years afterward ? the mindless and dehumanizing treatment of slaves, the irrational world wars, the dehumanizing internment camps. Were those historical wars forgettable? Were we less human then? No.

There are always going to be groups of mothers and concerned politicians that believe society is going in the wrong direction, that think life as we know it is becoming more immoral by the day.

To them I point and laugh, read them a Shakespearean sonnet and turn on ?Gladiator.? ?Watch,? I say, ?We may not be a righteous and ethical species. In fact, we may be downright rude, crude and irresponsible. But at least we?re consistent.?

Statistics can be biased and skewed, linking video games, music and television to debauchery and delinquency.

But the fact of the matter is, and always has been, that we are simply human. We?re violent, sexual and deviant by nature. No, we aren?t becoming more so. We aren?t raising children who can?t comprehend inhumanity and grotesque violence. Instead, if anything, we are growing more ?civilized.?

Rather than stadiums of real death and war, we?re removing the fascination to a virtual world ? a safer world, where the blood can be turned off with the flick of a switch.

And when that switch is on, when the TV is blaring, when in Rome ?