"We live in a world where we have to hide to make love, while violence is practiced in broad daylight." John Lennon

I read this quote from the late John Lennon, which struck me as simple yet profound. We live in a society that glorifies violence but shames anyone for the act of love or sex,

Think about it 

Why do we tolerate violence every day from our media, our leaders, and irrational people all over the world? We see violence that is sanitized to appear less graphic, but any image of people engaged in making love is considered obscene. 

Why is sex dirty, but violence isn't?

We seem to have our priorities backward, but I don't know the solution to the problem other than continuing to point it out and hope people listen. When you ask them, everyone prefers love over violence, but they cannot find the resolve to put that into practice.

We're trained to tolerate an intolerable amount of violence without question.

Our society has become numb to violence like never before. Mass shootings once were isolated incidents that generated headlines because they were out of the ordinary. Today, mass shootings don't make the news unless there are ten or more people shot. We see this, and we choose to ignore the problem. But at the same time, people are upset over drag queens reading to kids.

We see violence every single day on TV programs, but they aren't realistic. Showing someone is shooting a person with a gun, and they fell without massive visible damage from the bullets. It is just like kids playing with toy guns where there are no after-effects, which condition us to ignore the harsh realities of the violence that consumes our society.

It is not a popular opinion, but I believe, for the benefit of society, that the authentic images of shooting victims should be shown alongside, or in place of, the smiling, happy faces that we see after a mass shooting. We need to be shocked and act, which seems the only way to accomplish that.

Wrong priorities 

Why is love obscene, but violence is accepted and, in some cases, glorified?

Simply put, there isn't enough love in the world. We spend too much time trying to divide ourselves into groups that we miss out on and ignore our shared humanity. We are all deserving of love and respect. There is no such thing as an illegal person or any group that another should ostracize. The division only serves to create fear and paranoia.

Not enough resistance to the programming society enforces

Ever since the arrival of mass media, especially radio and TV, propaganda has been spoon-fed to us by the media and their corporate masters. Controlling the message makes it easier to manipulate the population into behaving precisely as the elite want us to behave because that reinforces their power structure.

We can do better, can't we?

I am an optimist, but conceiving a societal change is hard. Until enough people see the immoral attitude that we live with and decide to change, nothing will happen other than the completely useless "Thoughts and Prayers" bullshit.

Be kind to one another.