Enough Is Enough

What makes a person abusive – is it nature, nurture, evil, or simple sadistic tendencies? I guess everyone has their view on this but I think when we break down the causes as a society, we eliminate the brutality of it. In a funny way we are almost justifying the acts themselves.

A woman that has been brutally abused and speaks of pain should not have to justify it with, “he’d been abused as a child”. This is a conditioned response of our psychoanalytical, ‘no one is simply evil’ culture. It is simplistic and childlike and, to be quite blunt, dangerous. Justifying violent acts of any nature is like adding a small amount of water to a pot and watching it boil and then wondering why, after it’s boiled to vapor, we are left with nothing in the pot. If we continue to give it permission we will end up with a society that holds nothing as valuable and worthy. We will boil down to nothingness if we do not have a sense of morality governing us. If we do not re-emerge as a society that not only does not condone violence but reprimands it, we will continue to have murdered men and women falling in the name of permissiveness. We keep fighting against violence but do little to prevent it in the first place like ensuring moral, ethical and religious education of our youth and adults.

Studies linking violent video games to school shootings show they make children more aggressive, however companies are still selling them en masse. It speaks loudly of our complete disregard for ethical childhood development.

The increasing incarceration rates in the United States indicate that rather than investing in re-education programs that show proven results in preventing offenders from re-entering the system, we somehow justify it by not doing anything about it or by ignoring the issues at the core of most of these problems – poverty, isolation and lack of opportunity. An unaware man or woman cannot change if they are not taught coping skills and job skills when they end up in the system. I would even argue that philosophical and religious dogma should be taught in these centres as well, to develop a sense of greater principle based on the understanding of man, the positives of rational thought and yes, religious values. Our complete avoidance of all religious principles has given today’s youth nothing to lean on as far as what is good and bad.

On top of this we further justify negative acts by labeling everything as a personality disorder, but we have failed to identify that these may not be labels but rather the absence of core values. For example, a sociopathic personality disorder – what does this truly mean? Does it mean a person will murder you for ten dollars? While we continue to search for answers on why and how, we do nothing to protect what matters – human life. I just don’t know how you psychoanalyze the death of a child, sister, brother, mother or husband to anyone. How do you tell a woman who’s been raped that the person who did so had reasons? We are glorifying criminal behavior even on television shows where a serial murderer is seen as the hero. If we continue to justify all acts of violence, how can we be surprised when a society has to witness a man shot in the back on video camera before we call such acts murder. Do we need the reality of film to get that a man’s life matters? Do we only want the reality show? I can only hope that one day we once again begin to value human life more than our need to justify and permit violence. In a society looking for the whys and hows, we are forgetting how to prevent violence and how to stop making excuses for deplorable behavior. What will it take before our humanity says no to violence? I am tired of the justifications, aren’t you?

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Photo by Melinda Cochrane – All Rights Reserved

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