Talk show host Bill Maher had a number of guest wrestlers on one of his shows and everyone expressed genuine outrage when he stated the obvious, that professional wrestling wasn’t real. He also wondered out loud how healthy wrestling was for public consumption, pointing out that the solution to every problem in the wrestling world is violence. The anger this question generated on the part of the guest wrestlers was quite startling—they somehow thought the question was unfair and, of course, none of them had a good answer for it. What is Creator’s perspective?

This is a good illustration of the dichotomy between a more normal human perspective and a state of becoming manipulated and distorted in thinking, to not only tolerate violence even being mimicked and not truly real, those in the trade, so to speak, not surprisingly, see nothing wrong with it and feel quite proud of their position in being involved in a highly valued occupation with wide public interest and acclaim to boot. But the conundrum that came to a head in their discussion was clearly the fact that it is questionable conduct, with a questionable end goal in mind, to engage in a physical altercation with other human beings, an event in the real world more likely to be a consequence of criminal wrongdoing by someone, leading to their being subdued and arrested to remove them as a danger to society. When this is dressed up as a kind of playacting and not a real life and death struggle, it is still appealing to bloodlust, and normal people can rightly question the wisdom of engaging in or supporting such activities, and wonder what good can come of it. It is quite true that what you spend time on will tend to be repeated and will grow, and this is especially the case for things offered by the mass media to the public. People only know what they learn and are exposed to; it is far better to have good examples to follow than bad ones. One thing most people would agree on is that it is highly undesirable to have a world where people fight one another physically to cause them harm, bring about pain, subjugate and dominate them to make them surrender, to see who is strongest and most skilled in a form of combat. So to dress it up and confine it to an entertainment, involving only willing participants, keeps the activity itself, its goals, and its energy alive and cultivates an acceptance and tolerance for violence unwittingly. We can assure you that everything coming through the media has influences on people and is often accompanied by subliminal programming, so this begs the question, "What kind of subliminal programming might accompany a blood sport spectacle on television where someone might end up unconscious or sent to the hospital? What kind of encouragement, what kind of sculpting of inner beliefs might be the end result?" We can tell you there is a routine disparagement and lessening of moral standards produced in this fashion by the low level of morality of the entertainment fare being offered.