ALL RED FEATHER MATERIALS ARE ALWAYS FREE TO STUDENTS AND TO THOSE WHO TEACH THEM....T R Young

TITLE

MODELLING VIOLENCE IN AMERICA

by

T. R. Young
The Red Feather Institute

A very wise woman, Sissela Bok, at Princeton, made
the case on PBS the other day that children had
several models for violent behavior in our culture.

In this editorial, I would like to add a footnote to 
her presentation.

Among the sources for such modelling the behavior
of young people are:

	a. family violence.  A great many children see
		violence, both verbal and physical, regularly
		in the home.  While class and ethnicity weigh
		in when violence occurs, stress and unmanegable
		problems for parents, especially male parents
		also push adults into pre-theoretical violence
		toward children and women.

	b. the media.  Commercial media must sell audiences
		to business.  Sex, violence, music and mystery
		all reach deep into the human psyche to entrance
		us. Entrancement by violence, in the same moment,
		helps circumvent rational appraisal of advertizments
		as well as providing depth modelling for violence.

	c. sports. Football especially offers violence modelling.
		Professional Hockey may be even more violence but has
		a much smaller, much older audience.

	d. the malls.  Malls in America are filled with electronic
		games where for dimes, quarters and dollars, children
		may rehearse violence and may hone such skills as are
		useful to effective destruction of those defined, by
		the game, as enemy.

	e. the State.  The USA, in its role as policeman to the global
		economy makes recourse to violence and threat of violence
		where ever local problems threaten to obstruct the flow
		of goods, raw materials and profits to and from the Group
		of Seven [or Eight or Ten].  Politicians add their voice
		to the modelling process...children pay scant attenation to
		most until the actual bombing and shooting make the news.

	f. private militias.  In several states, various militia groups
		composed mostly of males marginalized by great structural
		changes in race, gender and occupational relationships.
		For such men, the State becomes class enemy in that it often
		sponsors new racial, new gender and new occupational relations.

	g. organized crime.  One must include organized crime as a source
		of modelling violence.  Some estimate that organized crime
		contributes from 10 to 25% to gnp.  And, given the great
		profits from hi-jacking, from drug trade, from pornography
		and from smuggling forbidden goods, violence often flares.

For most of human history; for most societies, violence was institution-
alized.  Young men were trained for violence and were used to do violent
deeds.  In modern high tech societies with commodity markets, violence
is a problem more than a solution.  Young men have ever fewer institution
roles in which to be 'manly.'

For at least the last 4000 years of human history, in many, many societies, 
patriarchy gave social and moral power to men; they could 
without great moral onus batter and bruise women, children, serfs, slaves
and others under their social umbrella.  In modern high tech societies,
women and men alike must compete to sell their labor power. In a putatively 
egalitarian society, children women become class enemy to men...as do 
'foreign' workers.

The globalization of the economy has ravaged occupational and community 
relationships around the world. Pre-theoretic violence flares in most 
unpredictable ways; here one finds ethnic 'cleansing,' there one finds 
outbreaks of domestic violence, and elsewhere one finds underground groups 
bombing, assassinating and subverting the social order.  

While many if not most people follow more appropriate paths in times of 
trouble, some do not.  Many turn to religion for support, inspiration, 
guidence and solace; many try to improve their own lives with education, 
counselling and family aid.  But some turn to violence, to drugs and to 
self destruction in the face of so much turmoil; so much sadness.  

The solution is not, as we seem to assume in America, more prisons and more 
social control but rather more social justice aimed at providing redress to 
those great structural transformations which have so altered and have 
forever changed racial, gender and economic relationships.

						TR Young, Editor
						FROM THE LEFT