It's A Mad, Mad World

My husband and I were watching the news last night and amid all the shootings, stabbings, natural disasters, and people going crazy like the Toronto Mayor, we turned to each other and asked "are things going crazy?"  It seems like lately more and more violence and craziness is a happening.  Is it just me?

Social media and digital news allows mankind to report things faster and more accurately than ever before.  Couple that with the fact that people love to spread dirt around, maybe it's just that we are able to see more reports of bizarre behavior.  It's kind of like thinking there is an epidemic of an illness when in actuality more people are reporting it.  That could also be the case for the increase in violence that I observe.  According to a site I came across, the FBI has been reporting statistics since 1957 and there has been an increase not only in criminal acts, but incarceration for those acts as well.  This site also supports the theory that violence media is a cause. I used to poo-poo that idea, because I grew up with westerns where people were shooting people all the time and I didn't grow up to be a killer.  But I recently heard that PG-13 rated films have had a dramatic increase in violence scenes over the last 5 years so now I think that there really is a whole media-induces-violence thing going on.

Apparently killing for humans is not natural, again according to this site, and people have to be trained to do so. Violence also begets violence; we learn this behavior from our parents and therefore from others close to us as well.  According to the writer, when a young person sees a violent act happening on TV, it is as if it is really happening because that's how their brain works.  Seeing violence over and over again desensitizes the brain to these acts and after a while they bear no relevance to the difference between fantasy and reality and they begin to act in kind. So yes, I think the world is going crazy after all.  It's time to make a change.

Why?

A friend of mine and I were having a discussion about why there are so many young people involved in crimes – like murder.  We had each gotten text messages about two arrests in Norristown of two kids who were arrested for murder.  One was a murder by an 18 year old and the other was a murder and arson by a 20 year old. We each had different opinions on what is happening.  I hope there are people out there looking into this to find out why these things are happening.

It seems like violence, gun violence in particular is epidemic and the perpetrators of these crimes are young men, younger than 21.  Not all of them are mentally unstable as in the case of Adam Lanza who killed all those children at Sandy Hook School, or at least that part hasn’t come out.  I am not under the theory that violent games cause this type of behavior.  I know plenty of people I work with who play those games are not prone to violent actions.  My friend subscribes to the theory that modern technology causes it and I am under the theory that the American diet is the culprit.  All that sugar and high fructose corn syrup makes us crazy. 

Whatever the issue is, I hope that someone gets a handle on this.  This killing spree that these young men are on is jut not right.  Not only do I feel bad for society in general, but I feel so bad for their families who will never see their sons again or will have to visit them in prison for the rest of their lives. 

Another One Hits the Deck

Every day you turn around and there is another shooting, another home invasion, another angry person.  What is it with people these days?  Why do people resort to violence as the way to solve problems?  It saddens me that violence is often the direction people go. 

In my humble opinion the biggest reason that violence is used is due to ignorance.  But, I have heard many reasons such as poverty, high school drop outs, and drugs as a reason for violence, and I am sure many of them are good reasons.  When one is ill-educated, they can’t really think of any other way than to react; they have no experience learned or otherwise in not using violence.  That seems to tie in with the low economic status as well, but many people who are highly educated have been involved in physical altercations, so it is not clearly a one to one relationship.  Drugs certainly have a factor, especially alcohol.  We have all heard of “beer muscles” being a reason for many scuffles that come along. I am sure there are many studies out there on why people use their fists rather than their words to fix problems.

But the biggest disappointment is when they bring a gun into the equation.  Moreover, I think that in some cultures it is more accepted to swing fists or shot first and ask questions later.  At the risk of sounding sexist, violence is much more prevalent in the male species probably due to hormones and the expectation that a guy is going to stick up for themselves or be labeled a “sissy”.  It continues to be my biggest wish that people will use other methods to decide life’s problems in the future.  It is a big wish.

Family Resemblance

I have a picture on my bureau of my mother and me and another picture of my son and me and it’s really amazing to me that my son and I look very similar as infants.  I am always amazed at the family resemblances when I look at pictures like that.  My son and I also have similar personalities although he has not followed a similar path in finding himself, I can see that we both come at life from different viewpoints.

It raises the question of nature over nurture that I have heard many times before.  The question is that if the same person were brought up in a different area would he/she be the same?  There have been many research projects, mostly involving twins, which have been done on the subject.  The Wikepedia article on the subject explains it as:

Nature versus nurture" in its modern sense was coined[1][2][3] by the English Victorian polymath Francis Galton in discussion of the influence of heredity and environment on social advancement, although the terms had been contrasted previously, for example by Shakespeare (in his play, The Tempest: 4.1). Galton was influenced[4] by the book On the Origin of Species written by his cousin, Charles Darwin. The concept embodied in the phrase has been criticized[3][4] for its binary simplification of two tightly interwoven parameters, as for example an environment of wealth, education and social privilege are often historically passed to genetic offspring.

With the recent spate of youth violence the subject has come up again in some circles.  Are certain people prone to violence or is it something that can be “nurtured” into or out of the person?  Whatever the situation is we need to figure something out regarding how best to approach the situation.  With the lack of funding that is certain to become more of a reality than it is now, these solutions will need to be creative enough, and workable to the point that our tax payers are not overly burdened or municipality resources not stretched too thin.