Part 3: Violence in America: Homegrown Terrorism
To understand these young people behaving like animals before our eyes on TV, it is necessary to better comprehend what chronic stress does to kids in their formative years. These consequences often last into or through adulthood. Many of these young environmentally, educationally, and medically deprived kids begin to early on hold a grudge against the affluent people they see on their electronic devices. Their attitude more often than not becomes one of “you don’t like me and so I don’t like you. And if I get the chance I will hurt you like I have been hurt all my life by the affluent culture, of which I have never been a part.” Kids learn general attitudes early on.
The point so far is that most all of us know many of our governmental policies generate injustices to kids born in these ghettoes. But we all, in varying degrees, have a strong sense of ‘family values’, which dictates the notion, for example, that “over my dead body is some of my tax money going to pay for education in any other communities” or “I pay money for my health care or the health care of my family and I don’t want it being used to pay for free health care for others”. After all, the American way is each pays for his own way. Yet, this is not ethical, it abrogates the Golden Rule, it goes contrary to the teachings of Jesus and all the prophets of all major religions. We have this fixed image in our mind that those who can’t pay their own share for these benefits deserve their fate. While there are often invalid reasons why many adults can’t afford to pay their share (like the real wealthy), certainly it is absurd to claim kids are to be held accountable—they certainly didn’t earn being born into these American ghetto communities.
Collectively we seem to have a bad attitude towards our poorer communities. If our wealthy country can afford to let the top 2-5% of our citizens own 90% of our wealth, then it seems we can well afford to provide excellent education and health care to all our kids. Period. It seems rather right that we, collectively, should spend as much tax money on every child for their education, regardless of where this child lives. It seems ethical that every child receive excellent health care regardless of where this child lives. If we can justify driver tests and fines for how all our people drive, then it seems a tad more important that we more closely monitor how every child is being raised. Unfortunately, we also have strong feelings that only parents have any real say on how their children are being raised.
Given the current and ever increasing human overpopulation of our planet, there is an absolute necessity for all governments to enforce, in some way, responsible reproduction. The notion that we all have a right anymore to reproduce like rabbits, if we so choose, is idiocy. Sanity needs to reign here, but there is apparently no evidence it really will. I reckon that anything which follows here is therefore moot. We seem hell bent on self destruction of our own species. It may not be total self destruction, but billions of people are going to have to perish via Mother Nature’s laws. So far the only restrictions on population growth have been religious wars, international terrorism, childhood deaths from preventable causes, Recreational Drug Abuse wars, massive unemployment rates in many areas, lack of clean water, and an increasingly armed population, angry for varied reasons, backed by ‘stand your ground’ laws, and fueled by an outrageous distribution of wealth to a few.
Nevertheless, let’s proceed with blinders on here relative to the last paragraph and look more closely at what we know from science about the current consequences of a child being raised in one of our urban, suburban, or rural ghettoes. A substantial accumulation of scientific knowledge about the effects of chronic stress on humans now makes clear just how damaging chronic stress is to kids living in ghetto conditions. Some will be quick to point out that most kids living in a modern ghetto have more amenities and ‘stuff’ than poor kids ever did back in the days of Lincoln. Being poor back in the days of Lincoln did not come hand in hand with chronic stress. If a dozen people lived in a one room cabin, that was the norm. Most lived off the land or worked in simple jobs requiring few skills. There was a strong community presence—people knew each other well for miles around. Judged by today’s standards, I guess I grew up poor in my formative years. But I never felt I was poor. All the kids in my town went to the same schools no matter the neighborhood. Health care costs were minimal since none of modern day medicine was available. A few antibiotics existed and after that you simply got well or died. Things were relatively stable and most everyone could find jobs with living wages. Not that many women actually worked outside the home. Those people who had jobs had job security and got raises every year until they finally retired. Today the average young person can expect to have 30+ jobs and few of them come with any job stability—and many jobs come with non living wages.
These young people living in our ghettoes are well aware of how much better others have it than themselves. How the affluent actually live, is on all the gadgets they spend a lot of hours on every day. Naturally such children wonder what did they do to deserve having so little? Chronic stress is inevitable whenever we are boxed in with no apparent road to success. Chronic stress is by no means limited to ghetto kids. However, the degree of chronic stress is often maximized in these children. It would take a book to take each potential consequence of chronic stress and go through the mechanism involved. Thus, here—a small book actually—we will simply list these consequences—and if anyone wants to learn the mechanism, just google “chronic stress and whatever particular consequence is of interest’. Just be sure the source you read on the internet is derived from actual scientific studies. Never use ’Sarahpalinites” as a source to understand anything (the blind leading the blind).
This topic is so complex that we quickly reach for some general principles with which we can logically start, and then proceed further. General principles have exceptions and this applies here too. Chronic stress is a condition which can occur across all economic groups, in all kinds of cultures, and in all kinds of environments. Kids born in wealthy environments, strangely enough, are more likely to suffer from chronic stress than those born in middle class environments. The kinds of situations which can generate chronic success are numerous, just as the genetic capability to tolerate chronic stress is quite variable. The best situation is to have genetic resistance to chronic stress, a middle class environment, and the road to success come in a steady but progressive fashion. Too much for nothing does not generate contentment (contentment comes from within), while endless hurdles or lack of opportunity for success is most likely to create the most sever cases of chronic stress. Support from others plays a major factor in most success stories, and this support can be from individuals and/or from governmental programs existing to provide support for the least fortunate. This view of the forest enables us to now view the individual trees which make up the forest.
Let us keep in mind that our body’s general stress response mechanism is geared expressly for dire situations in which our physical survival is at stake (being chased by a lion). The stresses created by our own thoughts and worries and fears about short term problems are not helped at all by our body’s general stress response. We hardly need endless increases in heart rate, blood pressure, or any of the effects this stress response has on the digestive, renal, endocrine, or metabolic systems. Many of the conditions from which we will die originate from excess chronic stress. It also needs to be remembered that too much chronic stress in our formative stage has harmful effects on our adult physiological status. It is this latter general principle which we focus on in this musing.
Ethics hardly permits us to ensure all children are brought to birth and then walk away from the environmental conditions which exist for that child. In fact, when the planet suffers from human overpopulation, as it does today, it is unethical and disastrous for this kind of irresponsible reproduction to continue. The successful survival of our species as a whole supersedes any individual right to reproduce at will. To deny this is to suggest that we can really survive another doubling of the global human population as has occurred in my lifetime.
Another generalization, again with exceptions, is that many social, learning, and emotional acquired mental states can be negatively altered in the formative stages of children in our urban, suburban, and rural ghettoes—these acquired mental states can rarely be changed after adulthood all that much. The damage has been done. If the only efforts made by a society, collectively through it’s government, is to try to make it right for the grown adults in such ghettoes, little will be accomplished. Again, the damage has already been done and it took 18 or more years for that damaged state to be formed. There is no claim here that none can be saved, but the science here dictates that many cannot. They will never be responsible productive citizens with appropriate social interactions with others. We can, I suppose, blame it all on the parents, but society as a whole is responsible for the environments in which children spend their formative years. Part 4 to follow
