Some related thoughts - which may lack a little coherence.

This week my daughter has got into a well crafted american series called Dexter.

In the episode that she seems to have been watching every time I have gone into the living room, the eponymous anti-hero, a serial killer called Dexter, is tracking down a serial killer who kills and dismembers women and then leaves the body parts around the city to taunt him.

This week in the Bristol area a young girl was murdered and the police gave out a gruesome report that body parts had been discovered at various locations. While there is a trial to be had and I haven't followed the details of this case too closely, it does appear that the dismembering may have been the acts of accomplices oin a bid to conceal the crime.

Anyway, it does raise questions (no answers mind) for me about how violence and murder are used as entertainment.

From the whimsical murder mysteries of Agatha Christie, to the brutal realism of Kay Scarpetta murder and murderers have a grim fascination for many people.

In roman times real death in the gladiators arena was the entertainment of the day. Now we have CGI and special effects to deliver gruesome stories from Saw I and Saw II through to Saw LXCVI, and with every teen slasher and final destination movie inbetween. Entertainment with out harm, we let our imaginations dance with death in safety.

There is a fairly common human fascination in enterainment with dark themes, perhaps stmulated by our own mortality and the terrible fraigility of human existance.

There is I think, an entirely separate issue of

a) people understanding the fundamental equality of rights that means all lives are of equal value, and alongside that

b) an awareness that anything where the exercise of one person's pleasure harms someone else, emotionally or physically simply cannot be right.

While arts and entertainment may hold up a mirror to life, it is an interactive reflection - a process. What we see can shape and reshape attitudes. The internet and the exposure of many young people to images that simply weren't available a few short decades ago can change what young people view as the expected and acceptable norms in relationships.

In that field governments are playing catch up trying to ensure that education addresses and prepares young people for the very different world - hence all the fuss about Sex and Relationships Education.

And I suppose that is my final point in an over long post.

Education and empathy are the keys.
People ca educate and books can build empathy, and my recipe for a better world would have more people reading books and talking to eac other about them.