"CHILDREN AND VIOLENCE"

or

The Rats Are Circling

 

    Children and violence!  Adults and violence!  We all wonder why, and a multiple of 'experts' claim to have the answers - but none of them work.

 

    Here's another concept to consider.  When this country was first being explored and settled, the pioneers were constantly able to travel - onward, ever onward - as Horace stated,  "Go West, young man.  Go West!"  The early settlers would pack up and move from their remote homes because a 'neighbor' moved in over the mountain, or hollow, and they felt crowded.

 

    As more people came to this country, and more people moved onward to new regions, the ones already there often would pack up and move again - and again.  Rumors of California swept the nation and a mass migration soon moved its way to the Golden Coast.  Then, when the growth became stagnant, the movers looked around for somewhere else to travel to - and found the journey had to be reversed.  They had reached the ocean and, when they attempted a reversal, it soon turned into a milling around of non-direction.  They wanted to travel TO something, or somewhere NEW.  To make a difference, to reach, to stretch their wings - even if it meant their lives - was worth the prices paid.

 

    And so on, and so on. Now, bear with me a moment.  Put ten rats in a cage (a pretty big cage) and watch them.  Give them enough to eat and drink, something to amuse them, and usually the social structure will quickly have an alpha prime and an order which prevents chaos.

 

    Now, without changing the amount of food, water, and entertainment - add a thousand more rats to this cage.  Viola'!  Violence erupts almost instantly.  Rats turn on each other, they mill around in a daze, they tear each other apart with seemingly random violence.  Fights are constant over the food, water, even the exercise wheel.

 

    People are no different.  The veneer of civilization is very thin.  Pack us into a small cage with no outlet for our energy, and a visible limit to our physical 'yondering', and we go crazy.  Humankind has an inherent 'seeking' for things beyond us at a given moment.  We seek to explain our existence by attributing our 'being' to more than a random chance.  We are the top of the food chain on our fragile bubble - or are we?  Each of us is loaded down with stress factors, consciously or sub-consciously.

 

    Gone are the Heroes - those who were supposed to instill us with a moral fiber. Superman is dead, and so is Kenny (they killed Kenny!).  Now our society puts the anti-heroes on the pedestal of worship. Our political and business leaders lie, cheat, and constantly abuse the system they were sworn to serve.  And we reward them for doing this!  Both parents are forced by economics to work, divorces are higher than ever - and growing.  Children are the scraps of this society.  Parents worry about why Johnny is hyper, why Susie isn't popular.  So we buy them more and more instant gratification to attempt a soothing of the unease.  And, if this doesn't work, we let them be drugged in order to calm them.  It cannot all be the problem of too much petroleum distillate in our systems.

 

    Correct our children - and risk a social worker pounding on the door?  In an effort to 'solve' a problem we have, as usual, attacked it from a misplaced direction.  Blame the parents,blame the schools for not being baby sitters instead of teachers.  RESPECT - is almost a note of history.  Good children - who wants to hear or read about them - that doesn't sell newspapers or pick up sagging television ratings.  But, saturate the media with the bad examples and what happens - emulation!  I shall get attention (sometimes a misdirected familial love concept) by doing what that guy did.  Look at how famous he is, see how everybody is making such a big deal about him?

 

    My idea would be to play DOWN the coverage of the shootings, play DOWN the violence.  Give more attention to those who are examples of what we wish them to be - bring back the Heroes!  Like anything else in life, we learn by seeing and doing.  Show the examples - boycott when you feel strongly enough about something.  ONE single person can change the world if that person believes in something enough and acts on that belief.

 

    In essence, either we have to cut back on the number of rats in the cage, add more of the sustenance needed for the number of rats, pull out their teeth and claws, build bigger and more cages - or give the rats something as a new direction for a focal point (maybe something in order of how to get out of the cage).  As long as we stand outside the cage and merely observe the rats - the chaos will continue.