If you are not familiar with contemporary civilization, if you had come from another time or another planet, one of the things that would surprise you is that millions of people pay for the fascination of seeing how human beings kill each other and cause suffering. , saying it is for “entertainment”.
Why do violent movies attract such a large audience? There is a huge industry, part of which is sustained by human beings' addiction to unhappiness. It is obvious that people watch these movies because they want to feel bad. What is it that motivates the human being to want to feel bad and say that this is good? The body of pain, of course. Much of the entertainment industry is directed at him. So, in addition to reactivity, negative thoughts, and personal drama, the painbody is also indirectly renewed through film and television. It is pain bodies that write and produce these films so that other pain bodies pay to see them.
Is it always "bad" to show and see violence on television and on movie screens? Does all that violence feed the body of pain? At humanity's current evolutionary stage, violence is not only widespread but on the rise, as the old egotistical consciousness, amplified by the collective body of pain, intensifies before its inevitable death. If the films show violence within its broader context, if they show the origin and consequences of that violence, if they show what it does to the victim and also to the perpetrator, if they show the unconsciousness that is behind it and what goes from generation to generation (the anger and hatred that live in the form of pain-body in every human being), then movies can play a fundamental role in the awakening of humanity. They can be the mirror in which humanity sees its madness reflected. That which recognizes madness as such (even if it is its own) is sanity, it is the awakening of conscience, it is the end of dementia.
Those kinds of movies exist and they don't feed the body of pain. Some of the best anti-war movies are those that show its reality rather than an idealized version of it. The body of pain can only feed on movies in which violence is presented as normal and even desirable behavior, or that glorify violence for the sole purpose of generating negative emotions in the viewer and thus becoming a "cure." for the body addicted to pain.
The tabloids primarily sell not news but negative emotions: food for the body of pain. "General outrage," screams the headline three inches away, or "Wretches." The British tabloids are true masters at this. They know that negative emotion sells many more newspapers than news.
The news media in general, including television, tend to thrive on negative news. The more things get worse, the more emotional the presenters become, and many times that negative emotion is generated by the media itself. Painbodies just love it.
(A New Earth, Eckhart Tolle)