“Violence Begets Violence”
The following URL is reflective of a changing global culture, and in this case, just where the tensions are heading as our own society is becoming a seething cauldron of anger between the have’s and the have-nots. For more than a decade now I have been harping away using the phrase “violence begets violence”. The problem with using violence to punish these ‘have-nots’, raised in ever expanding rural, suburban, and urban ghettoes is simply this: violence is no deterrent for those raised in environments where violence is rampant and poverty reigns.
While it is true that people have for ages lived in poor environments with hardly any material comforts, they did, for the most part, live off the land, or had menial jobs which paid them enough to have enough food to eat, some meager shelters to live in, had a relatively safe community environment, and they had decent community schools to attend—often not the best, but at least minimally functional.
As a physiologist I have been harping on what happens to a person, especially someone in their formative years, when they live in an environment which creates chronic high levels of stress hormones in their body. Every system, but especially the central nervous system, is negatively affected by the chronic presence of these hormones. The ability to handle this varies from person to person, but for many the nervous system ‘derangement’ is significant and affects their learning ability, their memory, their emotional state, their attitudes, their social skills etc. By the time they are teenagers there is often little ‘normal’ about their mental state. Only at that point does our society finally direct some attention to these ‘kids’ and for the most part that means jail, at the average cost of $30,000/yr/prisoner.
The whole purpose of the formative years is to provide a proper environment for body systems to develop properly. Unfortunately, many of the ‘defects’ are not likely to be correctable after the formative years. Thus we have a huge population of young, mostly incorrigible socially damaged products of environments which we should never have allowed to fester, grow, and become even worse. And surprise—these end products of our ghettoes rarely make good parents. Thus, those who put all the blame on parenting are being a tad silly. On top of this, all these people now have smart phones, internet access, and media gadgets which make them aware constantly, all day long, how the have’s live compared to how they live, and the anger grows. Anger and poor formative years environments do not mix well. On top of that, job opportunities often don’t exist, and if they did, who is going to hire them—their mental state is often emotionally and conceptually unstable. We already have put in jail so many people in the U.S. that we now have 25% of people globally in jail, in our own jails. Multiply the number of people in our jails times $30,000 per year/inmate and the cost is astronomical.
Because the increased violence and the nature of the violence has been increasing slowly over the last couple of decades we feel powerless and numbed by it all. This kind of street violence and terroristic types of acts are not unrelated. Most of the terroristic acts in the United States are not being done by foreigners. Terrorism, by its very nature, is virtually impossible to stop. Any of us, if our goal is just to kill a bunch of strangers, could do so most anytime, wherever we find a bunch of people. How do you get tough with people who actually plan to die with their violent or terroristic acts? In some respects, they were raised like animals, they live like animals and they they often die like animals—being killed by engaging in acts of violence.
The answer is clear—you don’t solve the problem via violence. We have proven that well enough in Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan, Somalia, South America, Africa, the entire Middle East——our War on Drugs—our mandatory prison sentences— and our increasing physical police assaults on innocent citizens who ‘look’ like they might be products of these rural, suburban, or urban ghettoes.
We have effectively ‘walled’ off the have-nots from our own daily lives. For all practical purposes we simply have isolated the ‘haves’ and the have-nots. When 2-5% of citizens own 90% of our country’s wealth, it simply verifies that we don’t have the right priorities, that we have let too many young children grow up in these ghettoes where we do not give them good health care, good schools, good teachers, a safe environment, job opportunities—-but rather let be social environments which are as toxic as they are stressful.
The URL below is not something where most people are going to read each article. This newspaper is just for one city—New Orleans, and I think just is one weekend of ‘activity’. I went to read about one incident and was stunned to see I could scroll down and I don’t think I even had the patience to scroll down far enough to get to the end. I mean ‘wow’, can implosion of our whole society be far behind?
Will I be able to get through my terminational years before such an implosion? Obama kept things fairly quiet with his empathy to various groups, but he never could find a way to reign in the wealthy and spread the wealth out more reasonably, so which group (have’s or have not’s) is going to teach the other group a lesson they will never forget seems right on the horizon. If history is any lesson, the have’s, with so much to protect, always lose to the the have-nots who have nothing to protect. One side has a massive arsenal of weapons of mass destruction, and the other side has violence and terrorism as their weapons—PLUS the have-not’s now are well armed with gadgets which will make “roving’ riots the possible and eventual strategy on their part. The police and national guard can’t be everywhere at once. Then what do we do? For the moment it beats me.
One thing about the evolutionary process. None of us can ever know when we will get the short end of the stick. The wheel of fortune spins, much as it did for our birth, progress will continue to be achieved on evolutionary time, not human time, while individuals of any species will be tossed around at random until the laws which govern the evolutionary process weed out the good from the bad, with temporary setbacks en route——but in the end, progress is achieved, opening the door for a new and better product. Will this process ever end? Well, for us yes, but then individuals were never the focal point of the process. I prefer that I be more important, but all things considered, I will accept enough is enough, and having no choice, will accept my own brief existence sacrificed for the best interests of the whole evolutionary process. It is what it is, so be it.
http://www.theadvocate.com/new_orleans/news/crime_police/article_3a4917b4-5b3f-11e7-b336-e76679525c42.html
