Violence from normal people?

[JoAnneM]

I have been thinking about all these acts of violence from seemingly normal people. Fathers killing their families, employees killing co-workers, etc. Usually these people have lost jobs, homes, money, their "base".

 

I think we (society, not me) are reaping the rewards of not teaching children and young people to fail. You can't hurt their "self esteem" so everyone is given a trophy whether they come in first or last. There are schools where no grades are given because they don't want kids to be "judged". I read that in the Great Depression acts of violence actually decreased while in this recession violence is on the increase.

 

Maybe we should rethink how we are raising our little darlings who can't be punished, scolded, spanked, or told they weren't as good as someone else.

[kenberg]

I am not sure I buy into the causal relationship that you are suggesting. I would say thought hat childhood has changed greatly in the sixty years since I was a child.

 

An example:

 

My granddaughter, now 16, will be visiting England for a week this summer. Last summer she went to Spain for four weeks. A fine adventure I am sure but also very organized. She will have few opportunities to exercise major independent judgment.

 

When I was 13, a friend and I planned a bike trip. We managed to get our parents permission, we loaded a tent and cooking supplies on our bikes and headed out for a few days or maybe a week, I forget. Our parents knew in general terms where we were going and when we would be back but we were, basically, on our own. We camped on the St. Croix river. Not England, not Spain, but it was great.

 

Which is better? I dunno. I liked it my way. it's possible we learned a little more about coping with the unforeseen, but mostly I just enjoyed my childhood. Kids today have great opportunities, all very safe and structured. Possibly I had more fun.

 

Either way, I didn't shoot anyone and I don't think that my granddaughter will either. I don't have much to say about how someone gets to the state where he would do so.

 

 

About spanking: My younger daughter had a very contentious streak in her. On some issue I got frustrated and yelled at her "Do you want a spanking". She put her hands on her hips, glared back and said "Yeahh!". I'm very proud of her for that. She hasn't shot anyone either.

[y66]

In The Lay of The Land by Richard Ford, the 50+ something year old protagonist speculates with pride of parental accomplishment and some irony that this is what his extremely savvy daughter learned at Harvard -- how to fail - and that this had prepared her for just about anything she would encounter in life.

 

Yeah, good idea to start teaching this earlier.

 

re: violence from normal people -- I'm not saying I'm normal, but a few months ago I was driving on a 2-lane road through a swanky suburb and some guy in a Jaguar approaching from a side road looked like he was having second thoughts about whether or not the stop sign he was seeing in front of him applied to him (it did). I didn't slow down. Didn't speed up either. I just thought, dude, I hope you have side airbags. Not my finest moment behind the wheel. Maybe he was a smug, entitled motherf------, or maybe he was just a guy who liked nice cars having a rough day and a moment of not thinking clearly. Next time I'll slow down.

[helene_t]

What stroke me when I moved to England was how polite children and even teeners are here. I cannot help linking it to the more traditional (authoritarian) child raising over here. Then again it could just be rural Lancaster versus urban Randstad and not so much an issue of countries.

 

Read "the nurture assumption". The impact of child raising has been grossly over-estimated.

[luke warm]

i think we have gone too far with the self-esteem thing... in some sporting events nowadays, they don't have winners and losers for fear of damaging someone's young psyche... to me, this is rubbish... i don't know when it started, but it's gotten worse and will never be like it was

[helene_t]

Oh btw, w.r.t. self esteem I agree with Jimmy and JoAnne.

 

Spanking seems immoral to me but whether it is good, bad or neutral for the kids' development I have no clue.

[Winstonm]

Spanking seems immoral to me

 

Naw....it'll just make you go blind. :)

[kenberg]

i think we have gone too far with the self-esteem thing... in some sporting events nowadays, they don't have winners and losers for fear of damaging someone's young psyche... to me, this is rubbish... i don't know when it started, but it's gotten worse and will never be like it was

There are extremes here. My granddaughter's first soccer team, when she was quite young, was organized around tis "no one wins" theme. She quickly moved on. Later, she got a concussion while playing. Her coach took her out of that game but saw no reason she could not play the next game. Her father disagreed and so she lost her position.

 

Again I contrast this with my own childhood. I would take a ball and bat down to the playground, or in my younger days just out front in the street, and see if anyone wanted to play. We understood that someone wins and someone loses, and we understood that if we got bashed in the head we should take a break. It takes adult input to put these obvious truths aside.

 

The Washington Post magazine has its annual education issue today and of course there is an article about getting into college. Good God. Here is how it went for me: I decided I was interested in going so I talked to my parents who said if I wanted to go I could live at home rent free. I figured I might join the Navy but really wanted to go on so I filled out an application to the University of Minnesota, but no other places. Late in my senior year I was told I had been given a scholarship that I hadn't applied for and hadn't heard of. So I went to the U.

 

There was some Dianne Keaton movie years ago that had some woomen with their toddlers at the sandbox, all fretting about whether their kids would get into the proper preschool. It hardly seems an exaggeration.

[PassedOut]

About spanking: My younger daughter had a very contentious streak in her. On some issue I got frustrated and yelled at her "Do you want a spanking". She put her hands on her hips, glared back and said "Yeahh!". I'm very proud of her for that. She hasn't shot anyone either.

LOL.

 

Read that to Constance and she got a big kick out of it too. It's wonderfully remarkable how kids all come with their own personalities.

[hrothgar]

I have been thinking about all these acts of violence from seemingly normal people. Fathers killing their families, employees killing co-workers, etc. Usually these people have lost jobs, homes, money, their "base".

 

I think we (society, not me) are reaping the rewards of not teaching children and young people to fail. You can't hurt their "self esteem" so everyone is given a trophy whether they come in first or last. There are schools where no grades are given because they don't want kids to be "judged". I read that in the Great Depression acts of violence actually decreased while in this recession violence is on the increase.

 

Maybe we should rethink how we are raising our little darlings who can't be punished, scolded, spanked, or told they weren't as good as someone else.

I don't think the problem is primarily with the way people are "raising their little darlings", but rather, with the way with all y'all lived your lives...

 

Your generation set a pretty piss poor example. In particular, the obsession with short term gratification at the expensive of long term investment is horrific -

 

Crippling education spending so you could all enjoy your tax cuts...

Passing massive deficits on the the next generations...

Destroying the environment...

 

I think this type of example has much more of an impact that whether your beating your kids enough

[PassedOut]

I don't think the problem is primarily with the way people are "raising their little darlings", but rather, with the way with all y'all lived your lives...

 

Your generation set a pretty piss poor example. In particular, the obsession with short term gratification at the expensive of long term investment is horrific -

 

Crippling education spending so you could all enjoy your tax cuts...

Passing massive deficits on the the next generations...

Destroying the environment...

 

I think this type of example has much more of an impact that whether your beating your kids enough

As despicable as the things you mention have been (and I agree with you there) I don't see the direct connection with random acts of violence.

[kenberg]

"You want to know why I did what I did, there's just a meanness sir, in this world"

 

The Springsteen reference goes back to the fifties. It would be good to get people help when they need it, even better to fix conditions that create hopelessness, but whatever my failings, and I have many, I am not taking the responsibility for some nut who grabs a gun and goes ona killing spree.

[TimG]

I was recently reading a thread (on another forum) about butchering home grown chickens and how to deal with telling young kids the truth about where meat comes from.

 

One suggestion was "say how it's [the chicken's] 'purpose in life' and of course play up the 'better place in heaven' thing." Seems to me that the lesson there is that killing something (or someone) is good because the something (or someone) that is dead will end up happier.

 

Someone else told their kids "we will keep the 'nice' ones (the hens) and eat the 'mean and nasty ones' (the roos)." Another good lesson: mean things deserve to die.

 

On another front, I think my kids are exposed to more violence on TV and in movies than I was as a kid and expect that I was exposed to much, much more than my parents were when they were kids. I also think that the exposure cannot fail to desensitize to a degree.

 

How many people were killed in Psycho? I think two. How many in one of the Halloween movies?

 

I don't mean to blame things on the entertainment industry, but I can't help but think that the TV and movies we are exposed to is part of the problem.

[luke warm]

I have been thinking about all these acts of violence from seemingly normal people.  Fathers killing their families, employees killing co-workers, etc.  Usually these people have lost jobs, homes, money, their "base".

 

I think we (society, not me) are reaping the rewards of not teaching children and young people to fail.  You can't hurt their "self esteem" so everyone is given a trophy whether they come in first or last.  There are schools where no grades are given because they don't want kids to be "judged".    I read that in the Great Depression acts of violence actually decreased while in this recession violence is on the increase.

 

Maybe we should rethink how we are raising our little darlings who can't be punished, scolded, spanked, or told they weren't as good as someone else.

I don't think the problem is primarily with the way people are "raising their little darlings", but rather, with the way with all y'all lived your lives...

 

Your generation set a pretty piss poor example. In particular, the obsession with short term gratification at the expensive of long term investment is horrific -

 

Crippling education spending so you could all enjoy your tax cuts...

Passing massive deficits on the the next generations...

Destroying the environment...

 

I think this type of example has much more of an impact that whether your beating your kids enough

well luckily we have your generation to set everything straight... now there'll be peace on earth, clean air and water, and a thermostat in the white house (for global temperatures, doncha know)

[kenberg]

I was recently reading a thread (on another forum) about butchering home grown chickens and how to deal with telling young kids the truth about where meat comes from.

 

One suggestion was "say how it's [the chicken's] 'purpose in life' and of course play up the 'better place in heaven' thing." Seems to me that the lesson there is that killing something (or someone) is good because the something (or someone) that is dead will end up happier.

 

Someone else told their kids "we will keep the 'nice' ones (the hens) and eat the 'mean and nasty ones' (the roos)." Another good lesson: mean things deserve to die.

 

On another front, I think my kids are exposed to more violence on TV and in movies than I was as a kid and expect that I was exposed to much, much more than my parents were when they were kids. I also think that the exposure cannot fail to desensitize to a degree.

 

How many people were killed in Psycho? I think two. How many in one of the Halloween movies?

 

I don't mean to blame things on the entertainment industry, but I can't help but think that the TV and movies we are exposed to is part of the problem.

I go along with much of what you say here. One of the differences in entertainment now is that kids just see so much. Every Saturday I went to the movies. Sometimes I went in between. I don't think the main difference is that I watched Hopalong Cassidy and the Cisco Kid, I also saw Key Largo and various war movies. Someone getting sizzled by a flame thrower made an impression but mostly I was doing things that were not passive intake of stuff, however violent or non-violent.

 

Of course not all kids are sitting on their butts watching tv but many are. It may not make them into violent nuts but it can't be doing them much good.

[jdonn]

I don't think the problem is primarily with the way people are "raising their little darlings", but rather, with the way with all y'all lived your lives...

 

Your generation set a pretty piss poor example.  In particular, the obsession with short term gratification at the expensive of long term investment is horrific -

 

Crippling education spending so you could all enjoy your tax cuts...

Passing massive deficits on the the next generations...

Destroying the environment...

 

I think this type of example has much more of an impact that whether your beating your kids enough

As despicable as the things you mention have been (and I agree with you there) I don't see the direct connection with random acts of violence.

I think there is a direct connection to poverty, which certainly has a direct connection to violence.

[Winstonm]

I haven't noticed too many "random" acts - mostly the violence is directed at a particular groups of people.

 

Drones hunting al-Qaeda by dropping bombs on Afghan wedding parties - now there is some random violence for you.

[jdonn]

That was also a random point to stick in this thread.

[Winstonm]

That was also a random point to stick in this thread.

When I think of random acts of violence I think of Charles Whitman back in the 1960s who climbed into the tower in Austin, Texas, and shot people on the street - truly indiscriminate killing, or the guy who drove his truck into the Luby's restaurant and then shot total strangers.

 

I am not seeing that type of violence nowadays - the killings seem to me less random - classmates, coworkers, ex-coworkers, families, etc.

 

To me, the militaries drone bombings have more in common with the indiscriminate Texas tower shooter than recent domestic killings - so I somewhat disagree with the concept of random violence by normal people.

 

I would concur with increased violence by normal people.

[Hanoi5]

I agree the root of the problem is education. Not only formal education but the one received/given at home.

[kenberg]

"Violence by normal people", with or without the adjective "random", may be a little tough to define. I doubt JoAnne had a precise definition in mind. From her examples, I took her to mean something like "violence without the purpose of gain or the purpose of revenge against a specific individual". So I wouldn't much distinguish between a guy climbing a tower and shooting students and a guy in a classroom shooting students. Two different guys so two different reasons, if "reason" is an applicable word, but I don't see the two events as all that different in terms of cause or prevention. In both cases, I start by saying they are nuts. Which I guess rules out the "normal people" part. Maybe, if we want to try to get at it, it could be agreed to look at purposeless violence. The killer has a purpose, it's to kill people, but beyond that he will gain nothing and frequently kills himself.

 

For myself, I am not at all sure that on a per capital basis this sort of violence is greater now than it was, say, fifty years ago. If it is, I have no strong idea why. Military strikes? As far as I know, violence in the US did not increase after we dropped atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Environment? The polar ice caps are melting so I'm going to go out and shoot a bunch of people? Seems unlikely.

 

 

Education (formal): The well-off kids get much better than I got when I was young, the less well off get much worse than when I was young. It was much closer to even in my youth. Not great, but much more even. The gap in educational opportunity is huge, and this must be addressed. It's not hard to imagine this leading young people into crime. I'm agnostic on whether it produces more purposeless violence. Education needs attention for a whole bunch of pretty obvious reasons. I think money is far from the whole issue, but it helps.

 

Education (informal): I imagine if Dad is slapping Mom around it doesn't do the kids any good.

[Winstonm]

The gap in educational opportunity is huge, and this must be addressed. It's not hard to imagine this leading young people into crime.

 

An interesting point, Ken. I hadn't realized how bad things were educationally, but I was aware at how often community colleges were all that was available financially to the middleclass.

 

The key issue in violence (according to experts) is a feeling of "I don't have anything more to lose". It is this hopelessness that needs to be addressed. The polarization of wealth and educational opportunities certainly contributes to these feelings of nothing to lose.

 

After all, the same "nothing left to lose" sentiment was a contributing cause of the French revolution.

[jdonn]

I agree about improving education as a good way to reduce violence. The nice thing about improving education is it leads to a perpetually better system. The current generation of children who received better educations become better teachers for the next generation, etc etc etc.

 

The not-nice thing about improving education is that, even though it would be virtually unanimous that it should be done (of course with great disagreements as to how) it takes a long time for the differences to show up in society. That makes it politically difficult to undertake, because we spend more money and don't immediately have anything to show for it, and then your opposition gets on you for spending more money. I certainly don't envy Obama (or anyone else involved) for having to try.

[onoway]

I remember reading a study years ago ( so no possible way to cite the exact one now) of small children being put into rooms with lots of toys to wait for the "official" study to start. One room had general sorts of tv programs playing in the background and the other had violent programs playing in the background. There was a strong measurable difference in terms of the amount of "antisocial" behaviour (yelling, kicking, hitting etc.) in the room with the violent TV programs as opposed to the other room.

 

Considering that so many Northamerican kids grow up spending massive amounts of time both watching violence on tv and committing mayhem in video games, it doesn't surprise me at all that the level of violence has gone up, it is just mildly surprising it hasn't gone up more.

 

Better education is a wonderful concept- but that is an entirely different thread as I don't think that is going to happen without a major overhaul in most education systems. I believe most schools are more like factories now, way too big and impersonal.I think the environment contributes to antisocial behaviour in that too many kids are competing for the attention/approval of too few adults.Also, there are too few adults to cope appropriately with problems when they do arise. Most kids would do as well/better out of there if there was anyone around to structure bits of their day around learning things like how to read and manipulate numbers and getting a sense of the wonders that are out there to know about.

 

Read something the other day: "Parents are too involved with trying to give their kids the things they didn't have when they grew up and not involved enough with giving them what they DID have that enabled them to succeed."

 

OTOH isn't it sort of the duty of every generation to think that the next generation is sending the world to hell in a handbasket?

[y66]

Alan Paton spent a dozen or so years as headmaster of a reform school in South Africa. In Too Late The Phalarope, which he wrote in 1953, the young male protagonist struggles to fight off temptation, succumbs, and then he and his family are destroyed. Very different from a random act of violence but maybe not so different in that what might have changed the outcome, in Paton's view, is if the protagonist had been able to talk to his father in a way that could maybe be described as feeling listened to with interest and empathy. Not that empathetic listening is sufficient or that it changes anything for guys like the Javier Bardem character in No Country For Old Men or the guy Springsteen recalls, but for many nearly "normal" people, it makes a difference, or so Paton would have us think. I think he has a point.