Stuart's Thoughts 4/22/2018

Hate and Violence

Another OLLI class that recently concluded was entitled "Why People Kill and Policies To Stop It".  The instructor, Dr. Margaret A. Zahn, Professor of Criminology/Sociology, N.C. State Univ. was Director of Research and Violence at the National Institute of Justice following the 9/11attacks.  The course dealt with various aspects of violence but focused on two major categories of violence and killing of recent importance, mass killings in schools and businesses as well as international terrorism.  Also considered were individual instances of murder which arise from such things such as various domestic disputes.

In reviewing the rather extensive literature, it became obvious that certain reasons for killing appear to be characteristic of the above mentioned categories.  Current major world terrorist activities are primarily being perpetrated by Islamic fundamentalist groups.  These groups presently operate in a variety of Islamic countries throughout the world, particularly in Africa, Asia and the Middle East.  Al Qaeda, ISIS, Hamas and Boko Haram are a few of the groups recently in the news.  The primary goal of these groups is to drive the U.S. and all western influence out of Islamic countries and gain absolute control of territories where new radical Islamic societies can be established under sharia law. Brutality ands killing are their chosen tactics to achieve the terrorists' goals. These groups have no interest in diplomacy or negotiation.  They only seek total victory and relish the opportunity to kill as many "non-believers" as possible in their perverted form of Islam.  Short of a total reformation of the entire scope of the Islamic religion, the only solution for the balance of humanity is complete elimination of these terrorist groups.

Mass killings such as those recently encountered in schools are characteristically carried out by a person who feels isolated and shunned by his or her peers.  It's a person who feels unaccepted by fellow students or, in the case of work place mass killings, a person who feels unfairly treated.  In nearly all of these cases, warning signs abound and many time include outright threats.  Early identification and remediation of such, at risk, individuals would be the most effective way to reduce and possibly eliminate this unfortunate category of killings.

Domestic violence and other individual random killings have a broad range of causes but characteristically result from uncontrolled episodes of extreme anger.  A spouse finding his or her partner in bed with another has the potential of inciting intense jealousy and anger that often results in a killing or killings, particularly if a gun is handy.  Dr Zahn relayed a situation where a young boy shot and killed his father after being put through an extremely traumatic event.  Upon getting home from school a bit late, the boy's father picked up the boy's pet cat and strangled it threatening to do the same to the boy next time he was late coming home from school.

A wide variety of other murder situations, including gang violence, were reviewed and we had access to extensive literature and statistics relating to all aspects of violence and killings both in the U.S. and around the world. I was struck by the observation that we truly live in a "gun" culture with an insidious fascination with violence.  Just consider how much of our entertainment focuses on violence.  Video games where young children search to kill adversaries in a make-believe world,where so many TV shows and movies feature violence and where violent and often bloody extreme fighting contests n TV appear to have only replaced the gladiators of ancient Rome.

I refer to a "gun" culture because the U.S. has far more guns in the hands of its citizens  than any other country and I fully believe that semi-automatic and military style weapons should not be generally available to people other than the police or the military.  However, having said that, I realize that even in the complete absence of guns, knives, explosive devices and even vehicles can be effectively employed in causing murders.  Ultimately, it comes down to controlling those individuals  inclined to be violent.

I want to now briefly turn to a related topic that has an equally damaging effect on our society and that is hatred.  In all my 80+ years, I have never seen so much hatred in our society.  The extent of disrespect and hatred we encounter daily among politicians and the news media is very discouraging. There are no longer any constructive interactions between politicians.  It used to be that following elections, members of both major parties would come together in an effort to solve the nation's problems and issues.  Sure there were differences of opinion but ultimately they came to some form of agreement.  Now spurred on by a disingenuous news media, only interested in drumming up sensationalism, we only witness ugliness and discontent with absolutely no cooperation.  In fact, we only see obstruction and repeated rounds of hatred.
If we are truly interested in making a better world for future generations let's begin by replacing violence with cheerfulness in our entertainment, replacing ugliness with mutual respect in our politics,  replacing negative sensationalism with optimism in our news media and replacing hatred with compassion in our personal relations.