The Violence Conspiracy

Violence.

We hear about it, if we choose to tune in to our media outlets, every day in so many ways. News bulletins with people killing people, genocide taking place all over the planet being reduced to a small article of the international news sections of our newspapers. Or for some unfortunate people, violence is a part of everyday life and a very real threat to their existence. It is also a part of the lives of those who act out violently against others.

The sad truth is that it is well known what causes violence. As a rather wise person once said to me :

"Hurt people, hurt people."

While i sit and read on ATS other people throwing judgment at the people who commit violent acts, i think this is neither helpful nor healing for either the victim or aggressor. That is not to say violence is excusable - it is not. However recognising the fact that the aggressors are damaged people is an important step in finding a way to let them heal so that it will not happen again.

The tragedy is that, and this is where i believe the conspiracy lies, the causes of children born into this world becoming violent as they get older is well known.The causes are something which needs to be taught to both children and parents alike - with caregivers often being unaware just how fragile children are.

Below is one of the most complete lists which explain what causes a child to grow up and become violent -

1. All children are born to grow, to develop, to live, to love, and to articulate their needs and feelings for their self-protection.

2. For their development, children need the respect and protection of adults who take them seriously, love them, and honestly help them to become oriented in the world.

3. When these vital needs are frustrated and children are, instead, abused for the sake of adults' needs by being exploited, beaten, punished, taken advantage of, manipulated, neglected, or deceived without the intervention of any witness, then their integrity will be lastingly impaired.

4. The normal reactions to such injury should be anger and pain. Since children in this hurtful kind of environment are forbidden to express their anger, however, and since it would be unbearable to experience their pain all alone, they are compelled to suppress their feelings, repress all memory of the trauma, and idealize those guilty of the abuse. Later they will have no memory of what was done to them.

5. Disassociated from the original cause, their feelings of anger, helplessness, despair, longing, anxiety, and pain will find expression in destructive acts against others (criminal behavior, mass murder) or against themselves (drug addiction, alcoholism, prostitution, psychic disorders, suicide).

6. If these people become parents, they will then often direct acts of revenge for their mistreatment in childhood against their own children, whom they use as scapegoats. Child abuse is still sanctioned - indeed, held in high regard - in our society as long as it is defined as child-rearing. It is a tragic fact that parents beat their children in order to escape the emotions stemming from how they were treated by their own parents.

7. If mistreated children are not to become criminals or mentally ill, it is essential that at least once in their life they come in contact with a person who knows without any doubt that the environment, not the helpless, battered child, is at fault. In this regard, knowledge or ignorance on the part of society can be instrumental in either saving or destroying a life. Here lies the great opportunity for relatives, social workers, therapists, teachers, doctors, psychiatrists, officials, and nurses to support the child and to believe her or him.

8. Till now, society has protected the adult and blamed the victim. It has been abetted in its blindness by theories, still in keeping with the pedagogical principles of our great-grandparents, according to which children are viewed as crafty creatures, dominated

by wicked drives, who invent stories and attack their innocent parents or desire them sexually. In reality, children tend to blame themselves for their parents' cruelty and to absolve the parents, whom they invariably love, of all responsibility.

9. For some years now, it has been possible to prove, through new therapeutic methods, that repressed traumatic experiences of childhood are stored up in the body and, though unconscious, exert an influence even in adulthood. In addition, electronic testing of the fetus has revealed a fact previously unknown to most adults-that a child responds to and learns both tenderness and cruelty from the very beginning.

10. In the light of this new knowledge, even the most absurd behavior reveals its formerly hidden logic once the traumatic experiences of childhood need no longer remain shrouded in darkness.

11. Our sensitization to the cruelty with which children are treated, until now commonly denied, and to the consequences of such treatment will as a matter of course bring to an end the perpetuation of violence from generation to generation.

12. People whose integrity bas not been damaged in childhood, who were protected, respected, and treated with honesty by their parents, will be - both in their youth and in adulthood - intelligent, responsive, empathic, and highly sensitive. They will take pleasure in life and will not feel any need to kill or even hurt others or themselves. They will use their power to defend themselves, not to attack others. They will not be able to do otherwise than respect and protect those weaker than themselves, including their children, because this is what they have learned from their own experience, and because it is this knowledge (and not the experience of cruelty) that has been stored up inside them from the beginning. It will be inconceivable to such people that earlier generations had to build up a gigantic war industry in order to feel comfortable and safe in this world. Since it will not be their unconscious drive in life to ward off intimidation experienced at a very early age, they will be able to deal with attempts at intimidation in their adult life more rationally and more creatively.

The above 12 points are taken from www.alice-miller.com...

As i stated recently on another thread,What i always find interesting is that almost invariably it is those people themselves who were spanked that are of the belief using violence against a child is is an acceptable and healthy form of parenting. Such individuals will often dress it up under the guise of "discipline" - ignoring the fact it is an act of violence - you are causing physical pain to another human being. Any time one human being uses force or inflicts pain on another, it is violence. This is an inescapable fact. At the National Center for the Study of Corporal Punishment at Temple University in Philadelphia a large research project inquired of adults the reasons for their beliefs, both pro- and anti-paddle. Most thought they had arrived at their belief logically, but in truth, the real determinant was their own childhood history. Those who had been spanked, paddled, switched, whipped etc. tended overwhelmingly to believe in it. Those who had not been hit, and had attended non-hitting schools, did not believe hitting did any good or were shocked and dismayed at the very idea. The action-language of our childhood overrides logic more often than not.

As far as i am concerned

1. in my country, our laws rightly protect adult persons from being hit by other adult persons;

2. this is because hitting another person would be wrong. It would be harmful, hurtful, disrespectful and humiliating to them; and

3. children are persons too.



[edit on 6-3-2008 by the titor experience]

If you cannot put in the hard work of good parenting which requires communication, a TON of patience (and that includes dealing with loud hissy fits in front of others at the shops) as well as boundary setting and instead feel the need to take the easy option of silencing your child through violence - you are in my eyes, more often than not, engaging in child abuse.

The conspiracy lies in the fact that so many people are unaware of what damages people and pushes them towards an increased risk of being violent.
While i do not suppose to know who is suppressing this information or why it is not being taught in schools and to parents - it is a tragedy of epic proportions.

[edit on 6-3-2008 by the titor experience]

TTE, great find, I"m so glad you posted this. Alice Miller is a top notch Jungian analyst and writer. For decades, she has written about the root causes of violence. AFAIK, she grew up in Switzerland during WW2 and saw alot of violence.
She has written a number of books, all excellent. She further goes on to explain why spanking kids is not a good idea - as it CAN lead to violent behavior in adulthood.

As a woman I knew once said "I was just about to spank my kid for hitting his sister, when I stopped and realized that I would have been doing the same thing to my child, that I told him not to do."
I think it's important to stop and think about what messages spanking sends to the kid. For one, it's a direct statement that because the adult is bigger and stronger, they can hit the kid and the kid can't fight back very much. It tells the child that the adult is all-powerful, simply because they are stronger than the child. Do you really want to teach your child that?

Thanks for posting - flagged.

reply to post by forestlady


Thank you for your post. I agree entirely and wonder why it is Governments are not forcing parents to take classes educating them about this prior to child birth. I do not know about the USA, but i know in Australia there are too many parents who are not properly equipped to handle the gift and priviledge of being a parent - to the detriment of the child.

From what I've seen on ATS, it seems to me that the Americans are really big on spanking their kids. Some of them just about think that you're being a bad parent if you don't spank your kids. I don't know what it would take to convince them this isn't a good thing.
I agree with you, that prospective parents need to take parenting classes. I mean, you have to prove you're capable of driving safely before you're granted a license, but anyone can have a child?