This question is more important than it may seem at first glance when you consider that throughout history revolutions have often replaced one tyrant with another therefore it is important to understand why this is happening and how to stop it from continuing to happen over and over again. In many case the tyrants often seem to believe they are looking out for the best interest of the public however even if they do believe this they shouldn’t be allowed to preserve tyranny. If they believe their own version of truth they may not be a true advocate of tyranny but they aren’t an opponent either. Ultimately the most important thing is to set up a system with checks and balances from people who are sincere and have different points of views. There needs to be more sincere input from all classes and in the cases where a group of people or even animals can’t stand up for themselves then there needs to be an effort to look at it from the best interest of these people. This is especially true of children who haven’t yet received the education they need to make decisions for themselves and they are the future.

The most effective way to create and preserve a sincere democracy involves a free press that encourages input from sincere academics as well as a diverse segment of the public. The most effective way to preserve tyranny is a press that appears to be free even though it may be controlled by a very small segment of society. 

If someone is in favor of tyranny with themselves as the tyrant they would never come out and say they are in favor of tyranny instead they would try to figure out the most effective way to install themselves in power and secure their power. This generally involves trying to do their best to appear like they are looking out for the best interest of the public. This means unless the public takes a close look at these past tyrants and finds out what type of tactics they used and how to hold them accountable they may continue to choose the wrong people to lead them or stand by silently while tyrants and dishonest politicians take advantage of the public in big ways and small.

Throughout history the most effective way to preserve tyranny has always involved providing better education for the upper classes including about methods to manipulate the public than they do to the lower classes. There have been many cases throughout history where educating lower classes including African American slaves has been declared a crime to keep them from understanding how to stand up for their own rights. Modern Tyrannies have a sophisticated system where they control the information presented to the public on a massive basis mostly from the Mass Media that presents a distorted view of reality. The most effective way to counteract this is to organize information starting with the basics and confirming it a little at a time.

The most effective way that I know of to know whether or not any given leader is an opponent of tyranny or advocate or in many cases someone who doesn’t know the difference is to understand the information needed to make decisions on any given subject. No one person could ever do this so the next best thing would be to set up a system where the basics on any given subject is presented in an organized fashion and presented to the public. This would mean that the public would have the opportunity to check the facts and understand the subject. Instead of trusting the leaders they would have the option of trusting the facts. In many cases the Mass Media and other governmental organizations often present the most important information in a distorted manner so that the public will make decisions that are designed to benefit the best interests of a select group of people at the expense of the majority.

The most effective demagogues often do a good job convincing the public that they are looking out for their best interests by appealing to their emotions and prejudices. In order to avoid this there are two things that need to be done generally speaking. First there needs to be a much better education system for the public. This should be available to everyone if possible. In order for the public to have a truly democratic system they need to understand the basics of any given subject and how to recognize who is the more credible expert when it comes to more complicated things they can’t understand. This should include access to well organized information that they can fact check and an earlier education that enables them to do at least some of the work on their own so they won’t be relying mainly on the credibility of experts many of whom aren’t as credible as they seem. This may be better achieved if there was an educational revolution instead of a violent revolution. In the past revolutions were often successful at overthrowing governments then the people in power didn’t know how to set up a new government so it reverted to tyranny again sometimes even worse. Another advantage of an educational revolution would be that it wouldn’t require violence and it wouldn’t force the opposition to fight to the end often resulting in much more damage than the previous tyranny was doing. This may make it appear as if the previous tyranny was better even though it was seriously flawed. This can’t happen quickly. There has to be a long term effort to make this successful.

The second thing that needs to be done is that the public needs to develop a much better understanding of the methods that are used to manipulate their emotions. This needs to involve understanding many ways that some people are using to manipulate more naïve people. This begins with simple things like peer pressure in school and advertisements directed to children when they are young and impressionable. In many cases the people that have ulterior motives are far more persistent when it comes to indoctrinating children especially if they don’t have good parents to teach them well and look out for them. In many cases it is because the parents may not have been taught well when they were young either so they don’t know how to look out for the best interest of their children. If this is the case then there should be more programs that are open to scrutiny to help these people. Since it often means that if this doesn’t happen then the children may grow up to be more susceptible to false arguments and they may vote on decisions that effect others as well as themselves. An example of this is Global Warming and other pollution related subjects where there are an enormous amount of efforts to distract the public and look the other way preventing solutions.

It is hard to see how an educated and informed person could believe that the current system dominated by the Mass Media and the Multi-national corporations is truly democratic. It seem clear to me that few if any people in a high position of power either in the government or the Mass Media are truly tyranny opponents. Some of them may be doing the best they know how to under the circumstances in which case they wouldn’t be tyranny advocates either but others are clearly presenting a distorted point of view so bad that it is clear they are not concerned about true democracy at all and they are tyranny advocates.

For the full HTML version of this blog with table of context see:

https://zakherys.tripod.com/nonviolence.htm

The literal meaning of Apocalypse is revelations and the literal meaning of Armageddon is Megiddo; however these terms are more often associated with the end of times. Even though the current belief is not the original one this is the one I am referring to because many people believe it anyway and they often base their decisions on this interpretation.

In many cases in the past there clearly have been examples on a smaller scale where Armageddon prophecies have encouraged people to pursue a course of action that often brings about their own destruction. Carl Sagan once described a simplified example where there was a prophecy of war following the passing of a comet. This was presented to the people who came to believe it. Then eventually a comet did come to pass and a leading member of society said this meant there would be war and they started beating the war drums and preparing for war. The other side heard of it or perhaps they also were familiar with the same prophecy and they also prepared for war which eventually led to a war and the appearance of a legitimate prophecy. This legitimacy begins to fall apart as soon as you look a little closer and realize that the prophecy helped encourage people to bring about the war and their own demise. A simalar historical example is when Croesus was told that if he attacked the Persians, he would destroy a great empire which he thought was good if it was the enemy he destroyed but he wound up destroying his own great empire.

There are many more recent examples of small scale self fulfilling Apocalypse prophecies including David Koresh, Marshall Applewhite, Jim Jones, Charles Manson, Jeffrey Lundgren and many more. All of these cult leaders pursued a course of action that helped bring about the destruction of their own cults often the death as well either by suicide or in a conflict of some sort. These were all partially encouraged by myths about Apocalypse that often tell people they should trust their leaders who will lead them into victory in a great battle. It is often hard to tell which leader is the Christ or the good messiah and which one is the anti-Christ or the false messiah. Either way people are expected to trust their leader without scrutiny. The scrutiny that they pass up on is what is needed to find out whether their leaders deserve trust. If they allow the scrutiny and the public understands the basics of any subject they don’t have to base their decisions on trust alone. They can often confirm a lot of what they need to make rational decisions. Trusting any leader without scrutiny is almost guaranteed to backfire.

There are also many more of these Apocalypse prophecies and the believers that expect them to come true and may act to bring them about. Some of the larger ones include more widely accepted organization like the Christian Zionists and other fundamentalists. These people seem to believe the way to bring about salvation is to bring about war in Israel so that it will usher in the return of Jesus and the final great battle that will be world wide. Intentional or not some activities have taken place that did stir up unnecessary conflict in Israel. One of the most blatant was when Arial Sharon went to the holy wall with guards in 1999 even though he knew it would anger the Palestinians whether it was to prove that he is within his rights to got their or for some other reason isn’t the important thing. In fact anyone should have had the right to go there but that doesn’t mean it was the best way to defuse the situation. What is important is that instead of trying to educate the public and try to settle the difference in a peaceful way he incited an uprising. The peace process came to a halt including the work that Seeds of peace were trying to accomplish. Further more they went on to elect the person who incited the riot to Prime Minister. It took years before they could partially recover from this and they are still in a constant state of turmoil because they continue to incite each other instead of trying to put it behind them.

The Apocalypse prophecies may also be making it easier to maintain the war on terror based on flimsy evidence in many cases. There may be a lot of people that are allowing their religion to influence their decisions when they do their part to support efforts to save the world by nonstop battle and secrecy. This may not be as clear cut but the implication is still there and even if it isn’t then it doesn’t change the fact that the best way to bring about peace in the long term is to learn how to get along and educate everyone who is capable of learning.

The Mass Media is doing a lot to increase the belief in these prophecies by focusing so much attention on it in what they consider an unbiased manner. The most effective way to be unbiased is to present all points of view including the views of the most educated people who do a good job researching any given subject and showing the work so the public understands and can come to rational conclusions. They have been putting a lot of attention on the Apocalypse lately but they haven’t been doing as much as I think they could have to debunk it rationally. They have also been putting a lot of attention on the Mayan 2012 doomsday scenario as well this could encourage more panic responses by some people who are less capable of sorting out the details and avoiding Apocalypse instead of bringing it about. This just seems to another end of days date of which we have already had dozens if not hundreds and they have often been accompanied with small scale cults that self destructed and often brought others with them. The only difference is that this one is being encouraged by the Mass Media on a larger scale and it is accompanied by many potential dangers which are legitimate like environmental damage, famine, war and other legitimate problems which should be dealt with in a rational manner by finding out the cause of each individual danger and preventing it. It does no good to create a panic that could raise emotions and make people more likely to follow the leader into war.

Instead of try to lead people into a great battle they should have been trying to find out how to avoid any battle at all if possible if not how to minimize the damage and build a society that will know how to get along better afterwards. This isn’t what Apocalypse prophecies generally do. The way to accomplish this is to study the battles in the past and more important the things that led up to these battles so that we can figure out what the causes of them are and how to prevent them. This hasn’t been done in the past based on prophecy so if people want to avoid wars and the destruction of the planet or lesser conflict they need to try something different.

Wars are not the only things predicted in many of these prophecies and some of the other things in some of these prophecies often seem to be coming true as well. If this is the case then it is important to organize the different threats whether or not they are part of a prophecy or not. Then regardless of what the threat is the best thing to do is to figure out what the cause of is and prevent it.

One example that has often been portrayed as a potential cause of Apocalypse is a potential asteroid impact. The people in the past couldn’t have known to predict this since they didn’t even know that asteroids existed but it has recently been reinterpreted as a possible cause of Apocalypse. This has been played up a lot in recent years yet it isn’t a new threat. The only thing that is relatively new is the ability of the public to understand it. There haven’t been any major impacts that could threaten civilization in thousands if not millions of years. There is no reason to panic about this in fact NASA has clearly outlined a two step effort to avoid it generally speaking. The first step is to set up a system to track asteroids and find them long before they hit the Earth. The second step involves experimenting with new technology to find out how to safely divert them. A third step should be added to educate the public better. NASA is financed by tax dollars they should do more to let the public know what is going on since they are working for the public. This doesn’t have to be expensive. They already have a massive amount of data available to their own scientist. They just need to make this available to the public in a way the people can understand it starting with the basics. In the past when I checked NASA’s web site it hasn’t been as organized as it could or should be and they have often changed it sometimes for the worse. They should set it up in the most organized way possible and keep it that way without fancy graphics to amaze the public. The most important thing should be to educate the public.

Other potential dangers should also be handled in the most rational manner possible whether any one believes it is associated with Apocalypse or not. The most important one may be the damage being done to the environment and the governmental and Mass Media control structure that is preventing this from being dealt with in a more rational manner.

For the full HTML version of this blog with table of context see:

https://zakherys.tripod.com/nonviolence.htm

Wouldn’t it be a good idea to find out why we always have at least one enemy to guard against and address the situation even if it is entirely their fault? 

There are always plenty of people that we have to guard against whether it is a country that wants to go to war with us, terrorists or predators including mass murderers and pedophiles. Finding out the cause for this may not be easy but if we want to avoid having enemies all the time someone needs to try and then get the message across to the public. There are some people that have actually been trying to do this but the Mass Media and the politicians haven’t been doing a good job giving the bully pulpit to the right people. As I have stated before the biggest problem is child abuse. This is true whether it is the abuse that a mass murderer receives before he becomes a monster or the widespread abuse that many children have to go through around the world providing a lot of angry adults ready to fight wars. There are of course many other problems that need top be addressed but this is the most important one. 

George Orwell warned us over fifty years ago about this when he predicted that the world would constantly be fighting one enemy or another and constantly switching without acknowledging the enemy has changed. Big Brother always used this as an excuse why the leaders couldn’t tell the public what was going on. They advise the public to just trust the leaders who lead them from one war to another. This wasn’t the result of a gift of prophecy; he just recognized a repeating pattern of history than satirized it in his book. Then the public for the most part forgot much as Orwell described in his book where the public always forgot the stories were changing. There was little or no effort by most of the public to learn from this and when necessary put his description in clearer ways so that the public could understand his message easier.  

The most powerful governments and the Mass Media have always been using the enemy Du Jour as an excuse to keep secrets from the public and often to manipulate their emotions for their own purposes. There are some things that they can teach the public without infringing on the secrecy supposedly needed to protect us. This includes the research that many good academics have already done on how child abuse leads to future violence. There is also a lot of work on different ideas on diplomacy including organizations like the Peace Corp, Seeds of Peace, Habitat for humanity, the Marshal plan and much more. A more accurate perception of how the economy is run could also be presented to the public. In many cases the Multi-national corporations that dominate our economy often deal with tyrants that repress their people and the tyrants that they supported in the past have often become future Enemies Du Jour. There is much more the public can learn about how past conflicts have arisen and how future conflicts can be avoided. In many cases it may involve letting the public know what really has been going on in the past in a more organized manner. There are many cases where the US government and other governments have clearly mislead their own people while they lead them into war often based one the excuse of national security which often turned out to be a false premise. This includes the Gulf of Tonkin incident plus the fact that the US government was propping up the South Viet Nam government at the time, the weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, The installment of Pinochet, the reinstallment of the Shah of Iran in 1953 and many other cases.  These have been reported in many cases by reputable sources and acknowledged by the government itself at times. However that doesn’t mean the message has gotten through to the public or in some cases even to the members of congress. Joe Wilson made a passionate denial of the fact that the USA sold chemical weapons to Saddam Hussein despite the fact that this has been reported in the news on several occasions. If the congressmen aren’t even willing to acknowledge accurate facts how can they be trusted to make rational decisions? 

Not only do some congressmen make decisions based on emotional beliefs but so do a large percentage of the public partially thanks to the media demagogues who are constantly leading them on. Instead of trying to get the facts straight the public is routinely encouraged to jump to emotional conclusions and follow their leaders to fight the Enemies Du Jour. There is little effort if any by the Mass Media to focus the attention of the public on the root causes of conflicts abroad and at home and to find rational solutions to them. The Mass Media and the government is using the threat of the Enemies Du Jour as an excuse to avoid accountability and this is a much bigger threat to democracy even than the legitimate enemies.  

There is also some doubt about whether the Enemies Du Jour are legitimate enemies in some cases but even if they are the Bush government obviously over reacted so did the Mass Media and the Mass Media is still overreacting. One of the biggest enemies the USA has been fighting is of course Al-Qaeda who is supposedly responsible for 9/11. They are not nearly as powerful as the Mass Media and the government often makes them pout to be with a massive amount of propaganda. These are a bunch of people who have little if any rational education and their base is supposedly in the caves of Afghanistan and Pakistan. There funds were initially provided by Osama bin laden who is or was a millionaire. It’s hard to believe he still has much money if any or even that he had as much money as they claimed before. Keep in mind that during the eighties he was funding the war against the USSR instead of running his business.  We are supposedly trying to defend against people with box cutters shoe bombs and other primitive devices. This is supposedly adequate to justify the secrecy and the obsession with the war on terror. I don’t dispute that terrorists are a problem but keeping the public in a constant state of panic and shrouding most of the activities of the government in secrecy isn’t the best way to solve the problem. Like any other problem the best way to solve it involves finding the root causes of the problem and preventing them. In this case the root causes of the problem is that these people come from parts of the world with little or no rational education available to them instead they have a massive amount of religious indoctrination forced on them. Another part of the problem is that they really are being oppressed by both their own governments and in most cases other governments often with the help of multi-national corporations. In many parts of the world the multi-national corporations are extracting the resources of third world countries and providing little in return to the local residents. This includes little or no effort to educate them. Without a good education and when they see that their resources are being shipped abroad is it any surprise that they are angry at the western governments. Also in many cases they are fully aware that western governments have propped up past tyrants and supplied weapons to their enemies. One of the most obvious cases is Iran and Iraq where not only did the USA pop up the Shah in the fifties but in the eighties they provided arms to both sides of the war with Iran keeping it going and many of the common people paid the price. When Sadam Hussein attacked Kuwait, a rich country, the USA stepped in and made promises but then when Sadam attacked the Kurds and other Iraqi’s the USA abandoned them. What they need to solve this problem is mainly more education for the public and better democratic opportunities. Lethal force should be at best the last resort not the first. In most cases the education needs time to take effect so this has to be a long term commitment. The most important thing the military can do is to protect the schools and other social institution until the countries are more stable. This may not seem like it should be our responsibility to many but when you consider that USA corporations and governments are partially responsible perhaps it should be especially if the USA continue to claim they are fighting for democracy. Also in the long run it will be cheaper to educate the public than to fight one war after another. This I very similar to the idea that if you educate a single child right the first time when they are little kids it is easier than to wait until they are troubled teens and try to reform them. It will just be on a larger and more complicated scale so people have to stick with it longer.

The Obama government isn’t doing much better as far as I can tell. Obama seems to have taken a few small steps and promised to do more but he could do much better. If nothing else he could use the bully pulpit to educate the public much better about the causes of these problems with the help of many academics that have studied any given subject. Then he could do much more to advance diplomatic and educational programs around the world hopefully with the support of the public at home and abroad once they understood the subject better. The problem is that he was put in a position to win the presidency with the help of donations from the same multi-national corporations that are part of the problem. No high profile politician can gain national office or statewide office under the current system without the support of money that can only come from the supporters of the multi-national corporations. In the long run we need a better system where the control of the elections and the media is reformed. This doesn’t mean more censorship when it comes to reforming the media but less. In the past the Mass Media has had the bully pulpit to stand up for their right to free speech then they have used it to drown out everyone else’s right to free speech.  We need a system that enables the scholars that have studied any given subject and the common man to have more influence over what the Mass Media presents to the public. In order for the common man to know what to do with their right to free speech they need better access to a good education that isn’t distorted by indoctrination from the Mass Media. 

In the short term we need a better grass roots effort to educate the public with or without the help of the Mass Media and as the public becomes more educated they will understand how the enemy du jour is being used to manipulate their emotions. This can be done in many ways and I suspect that in some cases it is already happening but the Mass Media isn’t reporting on it so many members of the public don’t know about it; instead many of them are being led by demagogues like the ones who seem to be organizing the tea parties including Dick Army. Organization like Free Press and Vote Smart as well as many anti-war organizations can do a lot to educate their members. Also more can be done to organization like Wikipedia to organize information so that the public can understand it if they can overcome the opposition by some people within Wikipedia that are resisting this. I have written more about that on another page cited below. 

If Obama or the Mass media do more to educate the public about this in the right way fine but they can’t be trusted to continue to do this in the future. If they could be trusted to do this they would have done it long ago instead of praying on peoples emotions and demonizing the enemy du jour. 

For the full HTML version of this blog with table of context see:

https://zakherys.tripod.com/nonviolence.htm  

For links to Free Press and Vote Smart see the following

So are other people; we have more in common with the animal kingdom in some way than most people realize.

Animals that have dysfunctional child hoods also become violent when they turn into adults. The similarity is clearest when you look at our closest animal relatives including Chimpanzees, Gorillas, Orangutans and even Baboons. Jane Goodall has found that when a baby Chimpanzee is abused by their mother they also become abusive to their children. She also found that Chimpanzees participate in what could be considered primitive warfare. There were chimpanzee communities that fought with other chimpanzee communities over territory similar to what primitive tribes may have done thousands of years ago.

When Chimpanzees Gorillas or even Lions are removed from their environment at a young age they don't learn how to take care of themselves in the wild and become domesticated. This has been demonstrated by many researchers of wild animals including work studying Primates, Lions, dogs and many other animals. Domesticated animals rarely if ever can be returned to the wild without the help of a reintegration program by those that know how to reeducate the animals. This is because when they take the animal out of the wild they disrupt their education system that has been set up by nature. When children are uprooted from their environment as a result of a more or the diverse of parents they often encounter transitional problems especially if they don't receive help. This has also proven to be a problem for foster children who are moved from one foster home to another.

The disruption of communities can also be seen on a much larger scale when different forms of government have been disrupted. When the Europeans took over many less developed countries they disrupted the tribal government. Then when they left and control was handed back to the natives in many cases the natives didn’t know how to handle the new power. In this case the new leaders often became tyrants like Idi Amin or Robert Mugabe. The problem here is that the previous form of government was forgotten and there was never an education system set up to teach the public how to create a new form of government. Other societies that succeeded in setting up republics that are much more civil in the past did so because they had a segment of the population that understand how to set up a reasonably good government although these have rarely if ever been perfect. When the Europeans were in power they followed the same procedure that deprived the local population of the education they needed that the southern slave owners did in the pre- civil war US. By making sure the natives didn’t have a good education they made sure they couldn’t challenge their authority. This later meant that without a good education they couldn’t challenge the authority of the tyrants that took over after the Europeans left. Without the Europeans they just wound up replacing one set of tyrannical government with another. This will continue to be the case at least until the people are allowed the opportunity to receive a good education and they know how to govern themselves again. This doesn’t have to mean returning to tribal ways but they were better than what they have now and it is worth considering so that they can restore the good aspects of the tribal ways. They can also incorporate the best aspects of more advanced democracies into the new form of government when they develop it.

On big difference between man and other animals is their ability to set up educational systems. When people spend more time with their children they can teach them to be much more productive and civilized than other animals. But if they only teach them part of the job they often become dysfunctional. People have a much better research and educational system. This has been true for thousands of years; however they haven’t been giving all people equal opportunity for a good education. By withholding education from a large segment of society they maintain a powerful class system where some people have more rights than others and the education they need to stand up for their rights. One of the biggest advantages people could have is the enormous amount of academic work that has been done over the past hundred years. There has been an enormous amount of advancement in the understanding of human behavior in many subjects including psychology, psychiatry, anthropology, sociology, criminology etc. they have all found a significant amount of research that indicates how important the early child rearing is to our culture and how this could affect violence prevention. Unfortunately this message isn’t getting across to the public so in order to take full advantage of this there needs to be a much better education system set up and ideally there should be a better public awareness program to let adults know more about the subject.

For the full HTML version of this blog with table of context see:

https://zakherys.tripod.com/nonviolence.htm

Ironically Dave Cullen provides some information that contradicts his claims that there is no evidence that bullying led to murder. This may involve looking at the work of some other sources other than the ones he cited though. Dave Cullen cited some work by Dr. Robert Hare that abusive upbringing doesn't create psychopaths but it does make it worse. Dr. Hare also indicated that Psychopaths never develop empathy in the first place. (p.241-2) If this is true then the violence from bullying could have also been a contributing factor and almost certainly was; however it may also indicate that a closer look at the early care that Eric Harris received as an infant and toddler may have some influence on the subject. There was insufficient information in his book to confirm or refute this but it is implied. Dave Cullen’s book has been portrayed as the most credible and comprehensive book on columbine debunking many myths about Columbine. For the most part this is accurate he does a very good job debunking a lot of the false assumptions about Columbine; However this one exception is an important one. There have been a lot of stories about wide spread bullying at Columbine and there has also been a lot of stories about denial of this and Cullen is only making the denial worse. Cullen backs up the downplaying of bullying as a contributing cause by pointing out that in the tapes made by Klebold and Harris they don’t complain about being bullied quite the opposite they bragged about doing the bullying. This is not surprising but if he checked with better psychologists like Garbarino he might have found that denial of abuse isn’t uncommon. The victims of Bullying prefer not to think of themselves as being victims therefore they deny it and resort to bullying other to prove something to themselves. In fact they do talk about being angry at the world, if their not angry about bullying then what are they angry about. The tapes do seem to state they are angry about a lot of trivial things but I suspect that is just because they can’t express themselves very well. This could result from denial and other emotional problems which they obviously had. The fact that Cullen does such a good job debunking many of the myths at Columbine is what makes him seem more credible and for this reason it is more important to correct the mistakes he made. In many cases first hand points of views tend to be more biased since the person may have a interest to protect but in this case I think Brooks Brown may have done a better job than Cullen. Perhaps it would be better to look at “No easy answers: The truth behind death at Columbine” as the comprehensive look at Columbine.  

I suspect that if I checked with other experts I might find that many believe that psychopaths are created more by nurture than nature. In fact I suspect many researchers will say that most of these disorders including Schizophrenia, multi-personality disorder are created partly as a result of abuse as a child and exasperated in many cases by bullying.  I suspect this is also true for road rage or roid rage. Road rage is just like any other kind of anger in a stressful situation and people who do a better job dealing with their anger are much less likely to succumb to road rage. Roid rage is the result of steroids. This means in order to have it you have to start by taking illegal drugs. This is almost certainly much more common among people who have to prove themselves perhaps in many cases because they are reacting to a history of child abuse and bullying. Then they respond by deciding they aren’t going to take it any more and they start muscling up. Michael Kay Green may be a clear example of this. He had a troubled relation ship with his father first and then he may have become a paranoid schizophrenic who used steroids before he became a rapist and killer. This is just one of many cases where the child abuse and bullying came first then came one psychosis or another.   

Declining to put more emphasis on this is like trying to teach calculus without going through basic arithmetic first; however that is what many people from the Mass Media do anyway. The Mass Media often portrays any one of these causes of violence as the one and only cause and often ignores the most important contributing causes. Many researchers may realize that child abuse and bullying are leading causes of violence later in life but when the subject is explained to the public it is rarely ever made as clear as it should be. In some cases it is actually refuted. In order to get this point through to the public it needs to be repeated on a regular basis the same way they now repeat the quest for justice by punishing people on a regular basis. In fact this is actually more important since it could do a lot more to prevent violence. If punishment as a deterrent worked half as good as the advocates of this solution claim it would have worked much better by now since they have been doing it for a long time. That doesn’t mean they have been doing it consistently for a long time that is also a problem that needs to be addressed. Punishment in the past has often been politically motivated.