Current status of mankind and its culture

Happy New Year to all my readers!

In the first morning of this year I opened my computer and looked for the news. And noticed that islam had once more reminded Britons about its presence in their society and that terrorism by car had arrived to Japan. Both phenomena are relatively new and tedious.

Also in Finland several small occasions had taken place. Small fights during the night, shooting to air by a legal weapon (hunting is popular here, so guns are common), banging a door with an ox and even a catfight at a street.

The truth is that the night of New Year rarely goes without some kind of fights in Finland. I hope that also this time everyone participating would regret, and be punished as the law says.

The cases in UK and Japan are more serious. In neither case the problem was not linked with alcohol as in the Finnish cases (not to say I accept that), but had a more serious roots. However, as I do not have details in those cases I will not comment more on them.

Instead, I will go back to the onset of our calendar. At that time the Roman emperors organized happenings, where the theme of amusement was violence and cruelty. The gladiators fighted against each other´s, and - if people so wished - murdered their contestant in front of thousands of eyes. To me that sounds like a shocking culture and I am happy that such behavior has been left behind in our western culture.

Or has it?

I ask because perhaps the best boxer ever, Floyd Mayweather, made a lot of money by beating a Japanese kickboxer who nobody though would have any chances against him. Despite that the fight was organized - and actually also another one earlier.

There is a small difference to the gladiators. The guys getting beated are motivated by money, whereas the early gladiators had no real choice. Although later there were also voluntary gladiators, who were also looking for money in largely the same way as Mayweather and his contestants from from the realm of kickboxing.

The biggest difference between the ancient and the modern gladiators I am discussing here is the fact, that in the Roman fights the aim was to have an exciting and even fight between the gladiators. And that the life of the loser might have ended. In contrast, the contestants of Mayweather did not even dream about winning the fight, and Mayweather himself probably did not want to hurt them badly - and definitely not to kill. Instead - the fight was organised just to have a big amusement show.

To me it is odd that someone was ready to pay huge amounts of money to organize such a show. And so many people were willing to see this "fight" although everyone know it was not more than one-sided assault based violence entertainment.I hope that the source of this interest was not a hope to see a murder-case like in the ancient gladiator shows.

After this long introduction, my question is : what does this all tell about the current status of mankind and its culture?

Related thoughts:
Seeing sex developed novel cultures
Rape statistics in Finland and Sweden are breaking prejudices

The original though in Finnish:
Mitä väkivaltaviihde kertoo ihmiskunnan tilasta?