Violence and Anger

Violence and Anger

Violence and Anger

Not cancer, AIDS, drug abuse or heart disease, but violence. More people have died violently in the past century than in any other. There is no basis for assuming that the next decade will be any less violent because we are not taking any steps to make it so.

Every year, there are millions of acts of violence. Some are fatal, some result in permanent injury or mental scars. Others end up orphaning their children and widowing their spouses. There are public and private agencies attempting to deal with the plague of violence in our country, but their focus seems to be on the overt act, such as firing handguns or battering spouses.

If they can prevent these acts, they feel that they will have prevented violence. But the underlying issues that instigate the individual to seek violent solutions has not been identified or addressed. Another mistake that we make is to treat violence as if it were a natural force, an animal instinct which we have no power to control. Criminals have been using this excuse for years. It exempts them from the consequences of their self-indulgent behavior. We need to stop taking these self-serving alibis at face value if we hope to break the cycle of violence.

The cycle is not transmitted by our genetic inheritance from our less evolved ancestors. It was modeled for us by the significant others we encountered in our young lives. We learn to accept brutality as an efficient problem solving technique. It requires no cerebral exertion at all. Kids who were exposed to violence often raise their kids using violence. They feel justified in doing so, "If it was good enough for me, its good enough for them. That's fair." We cannot argue with this childish logic. It is not logic at all. There is no rational think involved. It is the emotional convictions that were formalized in their childhood being replayed on an endless loop. An emotional legacy passed on from one generation to the next.

It should be noted, that the notion of learning by example is not absolute. Some children of non-violent parents become violent on their own. Conversely, many children of violent parents reject this brutal example. Some go to the extreme of crusading against violence. Others find a middle ground, where they can solve interpersonal problems cooperatively as equal members of the human race.

There is no instinct for beating up first-graders. If there were, everyone would be doing it, not just bullies. Civilized human beings take time to learn how to manage their emotions. The problem is that hardly anyone has the time to teach it these days. We should be teaching young people how to express their anger appropriately, finding a middle ground between too much and too little.

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