I think it is more than just distorted perception. Violence just is not a part of the average man's life anymore. Maybe Israelis, and even then, it is only the threat of violence. Ukraine is an aberration. I think the modern instruments of war preclude humans from engaging in violence in a culturally meaningful way. You could think of a handgun as a nuclear weapon at a personal scale. It's incompatible with the style of warfare that humans engaged in for the majority of their history. To say nothing of nuclear weapons! And it's very, very hard to imagine going back to less fatal forms of warfare. Your opponent would just bring a gun to the knife fight.
Then we have the monopoly on the use of force by the state. Non military citizens have to content themselves with violent ideation, of which we have many forms.