OPPORTUNITIES TO CHANGE THE VIOLENCE
The following excerpt is from the self help
psychology book, Be Your Own Therapist.
Quick fix ideas proliferate. We keep trying to blame one group
such as movies, television or macho males! But these are really
minor players in the violence problem. Violent behavior is the
result of many different problems: poor parenting, poor criminal
conscience-building, poor self-esteem, loss of feeling, fear of
being soft or vulnerable, rage at the wrong target,
identification with a violent parent, incorporation of violent
parental/ TV messages, etc. But the wealth of causes does not
mean that significant societal changes cannot be accomplished.
Some suggested strategies follow.
1. As described earlier in this chapter, we can reevaluate our
current parenting. We need to stop teaching our children to be
unhappy, we need to place more value on personal integrity and
we need to reduce societal numbing. These are all major causes
of the violence we see today.
2. We need many more free editorials on children's TV about
personal values. What is right and wrong? Schools all over the
country have recently found that commonly held values can be
taught to students in school and that the groups involved
(parents, school personnel and politicians) can come to
agreements about what values should be taught. Without
values, we tend to have low self-esteem that we hope to rectify by gaining power
over another. It doesn't work. (While television and movie
violence are current scapegoats for societal violence, it is
doubtful that violence in these two media makes too much
difference - see previous chapter.)
3. A similar suggestion to one I made in the last chapter (that
children be given more authoritarian messages on television) is:
I suggest that criminals in jail receive conscience-building
messages over loudspeakers several times daily. "It is wrong to
steal. It is wrong to harm someone else. It is wrong to rape.
Etc." Many of today's criminals never received such clear
messages as children, and there is much evidence today that we
as adults can often heal ourselves by giving ourselves the
healthy messages we never received as children. (Obviously, this
would not reform most criminals but it could make a significant
difference in number of crimes later committed.)
4. For neighborhoods that have been taken over by gangs or
drugs, we need to mobilize the army, the national guard, the
marines and neighboring police forces to saturate such
neighborhoods with good guys for a few weeks or months. The
non-police don't have to do police work. They just have to
essentially camp out so that the bad guys depart or lie low. Let
the citizens come together in such safer circumstances, and they
will then become much more effective combating any future
takeover attempts of their neighborhood by gangs or drug
dealers. Citizens will be out in force with video cameras and be
much more assertive toward those with criminal tendencies once
they experience a safer neighborhood. And those involved in
criminal activities may change some of their behavior. Witness
the gangs in Los Angeles who stopped killing one another for a
time after the riots triggered by the Rodney King bashing
verdict. (Yes, I know there were many influences that caused
that gang change, but the presence of temporary added
neighborhood safety for citizens had much to do with citizen
pressure on those gangs to change.)
| I so desire to conduct the affairs of this administration that if at the end when I come to lay down the reins of power, I shall have lost every friend on earth, I shall have at least one friend left, and that friend shall be down inside me..... Abraham Lincoln
|
5. Every state needs to study the current Hawaiian social
service system, which seems to have eliminated almost all child
abuse in those families serviced. The Hawaiian program is based
upon training and educating parents. If your spouse is abusing
you or your children (or you are), then you need to take action.
Take that action now - call the authorities, get help and press
all appropriate charges. Even if you and your children survive
the current abuse, your children as grownups will probably be
violent themselves or suffer violence from others unless you
take action now. Over years, abuse often follows a well-known
increasingly-violent pattern starting with physical threats,
then hitting, beating up, weapons use and finally murder. Stop
the cycle early, while there is still a chance for yourself and
your children.
6. We all need to understand the role of hatred, its virtual
universality in small children, and the skewed emergence of
child hatred against targets of today. We will not be effective
in dealing with others' violence while there is so much child
violence within most of us. Denying our hatreds was part of our
learned numbing process as children. Whatever we have numbed can
erupt in violence whenever it gets triggered.
7. It seems to me that the psychological skewness of the hot
debate about weapons has to do with self-esteem. Those wanting
weapons often feel weak but are unable to admit it, or they have
a very unhappy belief about how unsafe the world is (see Chapter
11). Despite the current impasse, the gun situation in this
society seems about to change dramatically. For as the years
have passed, more and more people have come to believe in
stricter and stricter gun control. With every newly reported
mass murder and family murder- suicide, the opposed-to-weapons
trend in the polls accelerates. The message of "when weapons
are outlawed, only outlaws will have weapons" is an attempt to
spread a fear message to others. The answer to that, of course,
is, "But outlaws will have fewer weapons, and fewer lives will
be lost." Those opposing weapons are not always neurosis-free
either, in their opposition to weapons. For some are playing the
victim role and are lacking in self-esteem and a spiritual
system that can provide inner peace. Nevertheless, fewer lives
would be lost, and we would have much less societal fear if
strict weapon control were enacted. Clearly this would change
the levels of societal violence, perhaps not dramatically but
significantly.
8. The role that governments (at all levels) play in raising
the levels of violence should not be underestimated. We as a
society, with present levels of funding, can promise and provide
necessary basic levels of food, clothing, personal shelter
(warm, dry and safe), and medical care to all citizens. Doing so
would change the level of societal violence significantly
because fears of being hungry, sick or in physical danger would
be significantly eased.
9. So-called spiritual values that consider humans to be
essentially evil/ flawed still contribute heavily to our
problems with violence. People who believe they are evil will
act that way. Similarly, violence is promoted by the unhappy
psychological notion that we are raging cauldrons that need
capping. While one often finds rage and violence beneath our
surfaces, it has been my experience that rage and violence are
absent once childhood issues have been faced and resolved (see
chapter 10).
To sum up, there are many choices we as a society can make to
significantly reduce our societal violence. To some degree, we
are all causing today's violence because we are avoiding some
difficult personal choices. Let's make the hard choices!
Next Excerpt 
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Almost ANY "psychological" symptom can be caused by food allergies/ intolerances. Have you tested yourself for these allergies/ intolerances? |
More Excerpts This Chapter
VIOLENCE: HOW DO I CONTRIBUTE TO THE ADDED VIOLENCE?
TEACHING OUR CHILDREN TO BE UNHAPPY
OUR VALUES & SPIRITUAL BELIEFS HELP CAUSE THE VIOLENCE
THE NUMBING PROCESS
HOW DO WE CONTRIBUTE TO THE HOMELESS PROBLEM?
VERBAL BASHING CAN LEAD TO VIOLENCE
OPPORTUNITIES TO CHANGE THE VIOLENCE
HOW INGRAINED IS THE VIOLENCE?
This Chapter's Quiz
Book Table of Contents
Psychology of Sex Education - Psychological Sexual Health Care
Self Help Free Read - Book Online
OPPORTUNITIES TO CHANGE THE VIOLENCE © 1995-1999