Mom, the flag, apple pie, and violence
There is no way to peace. Peace is the way.
Children have never been good at listening to their elders, but they have never failed to imitate them.
Violence in America. It permeates our society as our movies, our TV shows, our video games, our music and, frequently, our sports reflect. In comparisons with other industrialized nations, the U.S. maintains an immense lead in such categories as homicide and suicide rates for males fifteen to twenty-four years of age. Why do you think this is so? If such acts of violence were inherently part of who humans are, wouldn’t more folks from around the world be shooting first and asking questions later?
I was a pretty shy, sensitive kid. In another time and another place, I might have been some sort of artist, though probably not a musician since I’m essentially tone deaf. But I was raised in the small southern town of Tullahoma, Tennessee, during the 1950s. And during that era, if you weren’t a rough-and-tumble kid, you’d probably be written off as a sissy.
Now, most of us guys knew what was expected of us even though the boys’ code of conduct was rarely spoken aloud: It’s OK to punch one another but don’t hug or get too touchy-feely. You might get away with expressing your anger, but not emotions that might make you appear weak (hurt or sadness). And one thing was certain: boys absolutely do not cry.
I still remember the surge of power I felt when after being goaded mercilessly by the fifth grade class bully I finally became enraged and wrestled him into submission. My friends congratulated me. Hail the conquering hero! But my elation was short-lived. My heart sank as I watched my opponent slink away, mumbling about his ripped jeans and his fear of his mother’s reaction. It didn’t take long, however, to learn to conceal these outbursts of compassion, from others and from myself.
In Tullahoma in the ’50s if you wanted to be in the in-crowd, you played football. And I did it to be accepted, but I also did it because I loved the game. And I was good at it. I played not just to win, but to pound my opponent with such force that he would withdraw from the playing field. I was successful on both counts much of the time, and I was rewarded for it. By the time I was a senior at Tullahoma High, I was captain of the football team, played in an All-American all-star game, and won a scholarship to play at the University of Tennessee.
Though societal beliefs and dictums led me toward the path of aggression, I made the choice to follow it myself. I assumed a counterfeit persona, yet had no memory of the beliefs that I’d taken on to hide my fear of not belonging. So I continued to present myself as a tough guy with an added streak of cynicism thrown in for good measure. Sure there were times when the tender part of me surfaced. But most of the time I lived the distorted image of manhood that I had cobbled together from cowboy movies, TV, comic books, my peers, my coaches, and the other adults around me. And in the four decades before I woke up, I created suffering for myself (and sometimes others) because of my choices.
It’s no surprise that today’s kids have become more violent. They’re merely taking on the code of conduct of a society grown more violent, a society in which violence is glorified as never before, and in which a violent solution to a problem is often deemed an admirable response. What else could you expect?
If we truly want a less violent world, if we want a world in which we treat one another with more love and greater respect, there is one place to start. Each of us must start with him- or herself—in the thoughts we think, the words we speak, the actions we take, the energy we send into the world. We can debate this until the cows come home. We can teach values in our schools. We can exhort our youth with words of wisdom. But your kids, my kids are not really paying much attention to what we say; they are, however, closely watching what we do.
Saturday, March 3rd, 2001No Comments »
RSS feed for comments on this post.
| TrackBack URI
You can also bookmark
this on del.icio.us or check the cosmos
