Violence can be prevented

Friday, 9 October 2009

Setting a better example for the Mass Media

The Mass Media isn’t even trying to do a good job. They are controlled by a very small percentage of the population. Some of the problems with the Media have been clearly defined in a book by Robert W. McChesney “The problem of the media: U.S. communication politics in the twenty-first century” 2004. He describes how only five media companies control the vast majority of media outlets. They are forbidden from collusion officially but unofficially they meet with each other at board meetings for other companies supposedly unrelated to the media on a regular basis. They don’t pay for the use of the airwaves nor are they required to give most members of the public a chance to have air time. Some of the few ways to influence the Mass Media is to boycott it or write congressmen. They can and do routinely ignore these methods. They have an enormous influence over the vast majority of the public. A lot of this influence is a result of right wing talk radio which receives preferential treatment by the Mass Media. Bernard Goldberg claims to expose this media Bias in his book “Bias: a CBS insider exposes how the media distorts the news.” He is actually even more biased than the Mass Media and after he was ignored for a while he has been promoted by Fox as an expert at exposing the Mass Media. This should raise major alarm bells. If a Nazi was claiming to expose Hitler would you trust him? If Fox was truly as concerned about reforming media they would start by changing their own practices not claiming every one else is worse. The success of democracy is supposed to be based on the free press. This issue was originally raised when the governments controlled the media. Now there are a small number of companies controlling the media and the vast majority of the public doesn’t fully understand how biased the Mass Media is or how much it influences the public. We need serious Media reform so that there is input from the public and preferential treatment should be given to those that do accurate research and do a good job showing the work. This doesn’t mean that the rest of the people shouldn’t have a say in how the media is run but if I want to know about a particular subject I want to hear from people who have done research not just talking heads who are constantly changing positions and not keeping track of the work behind it or trying to correct contradictions.

This is especially bad when it comes to dealing with violence. Violence is routinely used to manipulate people’s emotions and accomplish goals for special interests. The Mass Media spends little if any time telling the public what the true causes for violence is. They spend much more time using demagogues like Nancy Grace to manipulate the public.

We may not be able to get Media reform right away but in the mean time we can do a better job setting a better example for the Mass Media. This could start with creating alternative Media outlets and drawing more attention to them. With the internet some of this has already happened but it isn’t nearly enough. One of the biggest alternative media outlets available is Wikipedia which is edited by the public. This gives the public an opportunity to set a better example but in order for them to do this they will first have to learn how to do a better job themselves. Wikipedia is currently discussing ways to reform what they are doing. This is a good idea and it is a good opportunity to improve the direction of wikipedia and recruit new users. They are doing a lot of good work but they still have some problems to work out. One problem is how to weed out political objectives that are contrary to the best interest of the majority. In order to improve this it will require more participation from the majority of the public. The public will also have to learn to understand how the media works better and how special interests manipulate the media. They need to spend more time checking sources. In some cases they do this very well but in other cases where there are people on Wikipedia with political agendas it doesn’t work quite so well. One example of this is school violence. Wikipedia has many articles about school violence but very little about prevention. I tried to improve this myself but was unable to accomplish much because of disputes with others in some cases it seems as if the issue of gun control may be part of the problem. There is more about the discussion on gun control in wikipedia than there is about research done by people with the appropriate educational background. There are plugs for politicians and a comment from Ted Nugent about how we need more armed people but when I attempted to provide sourced material from people I considered qualified researchers they were referred to as advocacy and un-encyclopedic. I may not be the best writer on wikipedia but I believe that much more can be done to improve the way this subject is addressed. The assumption that preventing violence based on academic sources should be banned from wikipedia but political speech should go unchallenged seems unreasonable to me. I’m not opposed to presenting alternative view but when Ted Nugent receives as much attention if not more than scholars who research the subject that seems biased to me. I believe that an encyclopedia should provide more priority for academic sources than political sources. This is supposed to be about academic work so that politicians can use the information to make their decisions not the other way around. When politicians or commentators decide what is true then the researchers search for evidence to prove they are right this strikes me as highly unscientific.

The media could do a better job by providing more information from academic researchers about the circumstances that lead up to violent acts which usually involve other less serious violent acts and child abuse. They could give them much more air time than they do instead of the demagogues. In the mean time wikipedia and independent blogs and news outlets can set a better example. Wikipedia as well as other outlets can provide more information from credible sources like James Garbarino, Joanne Scaglione and many others. In addition to the ones I have cited here and elsewhere I’m sure there are many more that I haven’t checked. It is just a matter of looking for them. The problem is that many people have already made their decisions based on information that they have received from demagogues. There needs to be a better effort to teach people about how demagogues manipulate the public as well.

There doesn’t appear to be many people at wikipedia who are interested in providing more information about prevention. There is plenty of academic work to provide good information about prevention and the rules of wikipedia usually gives preferential treatment to academic work. The exception seems to be when there is political opposition. When this happens it can be countered with political support. The benefit in the long term could be very large if it helps to advance public understanding of the problem and how to solve it. The invitation for discussion by Jimmy Wales and Michael Snow is welcome and I hope it leads to improvements in wikipedia. Wikipedia has a lot of potential but it can’t be any better than its contributors and that is the general public. This virtually guarantees’ that there will be a significant amount of disagreement. The public is in my opinion not as educated as they could or should be and this can’t be fixed quickly. It will surely be long effort to correct superstitions. This requires a long term education project which many educational institutions may have to help with. Wikipedia can be one of them.

To read the invitation for discussion by Jimmy Wales and Michael Snow see:

http://volunteer.wikimedia.org/

For my recommended article see:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Zacherystaylor/preventing_school_violence

For a proposal submitted about setting a better example see:

http://strategy.wikimedia.org/wiki/Proposal:Set_better_example_for_Mass_Media

For more about how Wikipedia can be reformed check Wikipedia out for yourself or read the following:

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

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

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

Posted by zakherys at 12:56 PM EDT

Updated: Saturday, 6 November 2010 10:58 AM EDT

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Thursday, 8 October 2009

External links suggest a site

The following sites have been recommended by various authors of violence prevention book. If you would like to sugest a site to add please do so in the comments section.

* http://www.prepareinc.com
* http://www.yellodyno.com
* http://www.al-anon.alateen.org
* http://www.civitas.org
* http://www.ncvc.org
* http://www.parentpacks.com
* http://www.missingkids.com
* http://www.ncmec.org
* http://www.ymca.net
* http://www.soccer.org
* http://www.littleague.org
* http://www.autism-society.org
* http://www.fullpower.org
* http://www.paxusa.org
* http://www.gdbinc.org

* http://www.aclu-sc.org/school.html
* http://www.ncpc.orgeduleo5.htm
* http://www.cfchildren.org
* http://www.nea.org/issues/safescho.
* http://www.character.org
* http://www.edweek.org
* http://www.edletter.org
* http://www.nssc1.org
* http://www.ncsu.edu/cpsu
* http://www.safechild.org/bullies.htm
* http://www.cdc.gov/nccdphp/dash/violence/index.htm
* http://www.dropoutprevention.org
* http://www.nassp.org
* http://umn.edu/~serve
* http://www.search-institute.org
* http://www.safeschools.org
* http://www.aauw.org
* http://www.edc.org/HHD/hatecrime/id1_homepage.htm
* http://www.ed.gov/pubs/HateCrime/start.html
* http://www.ed.gov/pubs/Harassment
* http://www.ed.gov/pubs/Harassment/climate1.html
* http://www.ed.gov/PressReleases/02-1994/parent.html
* http://www.tolerance.org
* http://www.dontlaugh.org
* http://www.pflag.org
* http://www.apa.org
* http://www.naswdc.org
* http://www.glsen.org/templates/index.html
* http://www.cwla.org
* http://www.learningpt.org/
* http://npin.org/index.html
* http://www.trauma-pages.com/
* http://www.hrw.org/reports/2001/uslgbt

* http://www.naeyc.org
* http://www.childabuse.org
* http://www.patnc.org
* http://www.crimeprevention.org
* http://www.misterrogers.org
* http://www.teenchallenge.com
* http://www.cnn.com/2003/EDUCATION/0904/sprj.sch.bullying.prevention.ap
* http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2005/04/050420091955.htm
* http://www.fightingcrime.org
* http://www.isafe.org
* http://www.josephoninstitute.org/Survey2000/violence2000-commentary.htm
* http://www.talkingwithkids.org/nickelodeon/pr-3-8-01.htm
* http://parentingteens.about.com/cs/bullying/a/bullying.htm
* http://www.safeyouth.org
* http://www.bullybeware.com/index.html
* http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2005/04/050411100940.htm
* http://schoolshooting.org/

Posted by zakherys at 2:54 PM EDT

Updated: Thursday, 8 October 2009 3:01 PM EDT

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Tuesday, 29 September 2009

These solutions are not new but they are still not getting across to the public.

There have been experts expressing the idea that child abuse is a major contributing cause of adult violence for hundreds if not thousands of years. The problem is the message isn't getting through to the majority of the public. Some of the best organized research is the newest including work done by James Garbarino and Joanne Scaglione but others have done research much earlier. Alice Miller has done some of her most important work at least 20 years ago. Vincent Bugliosi has cited some research in the seventies that indicated that child abuse was a contributing cause of violence, there is even some work in the Warren report from 1964 that supports this concept. They described how rough upbringing made both Lee Harvey Oswald and Jack Ruby problem adults, even if the rest of the report proves to be flawed this part has been proven to be accurate. Sigmund Freud has done a lot of research on this subject over 80 years ago. A lot of the details of his work have been challenged but the fact that child abuse and bullying leads to latter abuse has only been reinforced. There is even work written by novelists up to at least 2 hundred years old supporting some of these solutions. Moll Flanders by Daniel Defoe and Oliver Twist by Charles Dickens both support some of the conclusions on this page. These weren't written by psychologists but the novelists clearly knew more about human behavior than most people.

The problem is that the message that is getting through to the public is being controlled by people who cater to emotions and political beliefs more than to research. There are plenty of research papers that are being presented to the public but they are often contradictory and they are rarely explained in detail so that the public understands the work behind them. The beliefs the public seem most likely to adopt tend to be those that are repeated over and over again in a forceful way. These beliefs are rarely ever held up to appropriate scrutiny. What we need are more scholars that are communicating with the public in a better manner. There needs to be a better effort to explain to the public how these scholars come to their conclusions and the public needs top be taught to think things through instead of rushing to conclusions. As long as the information the public receives from the highest profile leaders and orators is designed to manipulate emotions without checking facts then efforts to prevent violence will be severely limited by ignorance.

Both Lonnie Athens and Dorothy Otnow Lewis wrote about some of the political obstacles the encountered when trying to investigate the causes of violent behavior. They both wrote about how in the 70s and early 80s there was little or no grant money available for this kind of research. Dorothy Otnow Lewis helped finance her work by taking legal fees for testifying in criminal trials. She often testified for the defense about mitigating circumstances. She was criticized for trying to earn money getting criminals off at times. This doesn’t seem to be a reasonable allegation since most of these criminal defendants had little money and some of the money she earned went to researching violence. There appears to have been more financial incentive for those who attempted to maintain the status quo which involves blaming the defendant and declining to look much farther for possible mitigating circumstances or for the true causes of violence and how to prevent them. Fortunately there seems to be some indication that this may be beginning to change. Some of the more recent books coming out seem to indicate that there may be more research going on into the subject.

One of the reasons that may have helped to spur the more recent research into the subject was the school shooting outbreak that began in the late nineties. This could be the only possible silver lining to these school shootings, as far as I can tell is that the only possible benefit that we could receive from them is to learn from our mistakes. Unfortunately the research still isn’t getting through to the majority of the public. There are more research books on the library shelves for those that care to look for them but the majority of the public doesn’t generally do this. The majority of the public still relies on the Mass Media for a lot of their information and the Mass Media isn’t trying to get this message across to the public. What we need is a better effort to get the message across to the public.

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

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

Posted by zakherys at 2:19 PM EDT

Updated: Friday, 2 October 2009 12:11 PM EDT

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Monday, 28 September 2009

Organizational skills

The organization of information is underestimated by the majority of the public. This includes simple things that many of us take for granted. This isn't just limited to this blog and the subject of preventing violence. One of the most important things is simple indexes which a surprising number of books don't even have. Summations with hard facts that can be confirmed are also helpful. Organized source notes are helpful but they are often not done in reader friendly way. Sometimes many books include notes that should be in the text in addition to sources so you have to go back and forth which makes it harder for the reader. Chronologies, Acronyms, bibliographies and casts of characters are also helpful. If the publishers wanted to educate the public in the most efficient way possible they should already know this and they should already be doing a much better job. Yet they aren't either because they aren't trying enough or something else. Wikipedia and some independent web pages actually do a better job organizing information than the professional scholars in many cases.

This blog is organized in two different ways so that the reader can find information easier. The first is chronologically as most blogs are the second is according to subject matter with a table of context so that the reader can look at the overall context in a more organized manner. Most of the entries were made so they can be read as an individual blog entry so there is a lot of redundancy. Some of this redundancy may be weeded out of the html version at some point but the blog entries will remain intact since some people may read single entries. To read new entries check the blog version.

Researching the subject of violence prevention takes organization just like anything else. One of the ways to do this is to make a list of violent events and look in to the causes leading up to the events. This could include lists of mass murderers and school shootings and other violent events. Then a look into the upbringing of the perpetrators could help understand how they became violent. This is what some researchers like James Garbarino, Dorothy Otnow Lewis and many other academics have done. This research has also been done by some people like John Douglas and Vincent Bugliosi who are much harder line when it comes to punishment but they still agree that abusive childhoods helped lead people into criminal behavior and therefore improved childcare will help solve the problem. Improved statistics will help understand the subject and there are many ways that the researchers and publishers can improve the education of the public about how to prevent violence.

Good organization of information comes in handy when there is a dispute with people who disagree about the cause of violence. This is especially important when dealing with demagogues who cater to peoples emotions. Demagogues often ignore inconvenient facts and present multiple contradictory versions of the truth. They are more likely to get away with it when there are few records of the contradictions and people move on before anyone notices the contradictions. In order for the organizational skills to help it is important for people to take the time to sort through the facts.

In a perfect world I wouldn’t criticize other people’s organizational skills and then use insufficient organizational skills myself, however this isn’t a perfect world. I try to do the best I can but I don’t believe I do as good a job as I could with more time. If you have any suggestions about how to better organize this blog feel free to post your suggestions. A close look at how a lot of books blogs, web sites etc. would help find ways to better organize information and develop recommended standards for everyone to use. This would dramatically improve the educations system.

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

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

Posted by zakherys at 10:45 AM EDT

Updated: Thursday, 1 October 2009 11:06 AM EDT

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Tuesday, 22 September 2009

Misplaced blame

The blame for something is most likely to be misplaced when someone jumps to conclusions without thinking things through. This is more likely to happen if someone never learns to think things through in the first place. People are not born knowing how to think things through they have to lean it based on what they are taught from their parents or whoever raises them. If their parents never learn how to think things through they can’t teach it to their children.

The blame for problems is often misplaced if the proper place for blame is those with more political power. There is a long history of this because if you blame those in political power they may punish you. An old example of this is when the Romans persecuted the early Christians and they needed someone to blame so the blame shifted to the Jews. This was done because it was safer. In Jesus’ time supposedly he was a Jew and so were his followers so it doesn’t make sense that they were responsible for his death and the history says that it was the Romans that finally crucified him, however if they openly blamed the Romans they knew they would also be persecuted.

This is also common when a parent abuses a child, for example if a father abuses a son and is constantly complaining about blacks or Jews or some other group that he may dislike the some may learn early on that if he wants to receive positive feedback from his father he should also blame the same group. If this works to obtain positive feedback and it is repeated often enough then the boy will believe it. In this case the boy’s prejudices will be developed as a way to obtain positive feedback instead of as a result of rational thought. If this starts early it may develop into a pattern. This is often the way many prejudices start. Once someone starts thinking this way they often react more to emotions and less to reason and they become much more difficult to deal with for other people. If you look closely I think you may find that many of the most widely spread prejudices are the result of indoctrination and abuse that people receive as a child. When Hitler was abused as a child he couldn’t strike out at his father who he learned to respect but was often told that the Jews were to blame. He didn’t become an anti Semite until he was older but as a child the abuse made him very angry and he looked for someone to blame and he also developed a desire to avoid the abuse by becoming the one with the power. Many violent people start this way. They get the impression that the world is full of abusers and victims and they try to avoid being the victim by holding power over others and become the abusers.

It is very common for leaders to use misplaced blame to manipulate the public and divide them amongst themselves. One common example is the conflict among workers that often sets some workers against others. This is a very old tactic, when the dominate belief was that blacks were inferior the business leaders often claimed the blacks were the ones taking away jobs now they often blame it on illegal immigrants. The irony is that a close look will indicate that illegal aliens are guilty mostly of being born in the wrong country. The discussion about free trade is being dominated by the corporations in the press. What they rarely if ever mention is that they are in favor of equal trade but opposed to equal rights to a safe environment or worker rights. This results in a lot of misplaced blame.

Demagogues often use emotions to exaggerate prejudices and redirect the blame for any problems that may be occurring at any given time. They use this method to keep the crowd under their control. The biggest threat from demagogues isn’t the one you recognize from people like Hitler and Manson but the threat the people don’t recognize from those they admire and respect. This is why the public needs to do a better job keeping their leaders accountable. In order to catch misplaced blame it may be important to rethink some of the basics that may have been put above reproach. If these basics were accurate in the first place then they will hold up to thorough accurate scrutiny.

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

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

Posted by zakherys at 12:08 PM EDT

Updated: Saturday, 12 March 2011 12:30 PM EST

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Monday, 14 September 2009

Abuse impairs creativity and can create indoctrination

When a child is abused by a parent the child may become scared of the parent and may seek to obtain approval in the most effective way possible. This often may involve agreeing with what the parent says regardless of how consistent or rational it is. This method can be used to pass on prejudices from one generation to the next. If a parent dictates the truth to the child without explaining how conclusions are drawn this may lead to irrational beliefs. This would involve indoctrination whether it is intentional or not; it may lead the child to adopt many contradictory beliefs and prevent the child from figuring things out on his own. This may mean that when the child grows up he may be dependent on the leadership of others to direct his life. A child like this may be much more susceptible to joining fringe cults like the Manson or the Jones family. Both these cults attracted followers who had no place to go and came from abusive families. I’m sure most if not all fringe cults also attract similar followers although I haven’t seen the research into most of them. If the only way a child learns to fit in with friends is to agree with them regardless of what they say this may lead to an insecure adult who may become overly dependant on the crowd for support. A better alternative would be for the parent to spend more time listening to the child. When the child is always asking questions this should be encouraged most of the time. It may be annoying but this is a very important part of the educational experience.

Most of not all people develop their behavior patterns early in life, some of the most important behavior patterns begin developing at a very young age. If children are abused at an early age they become angry and grow up to be violent. If they are taught to control their temper and think things through they develop good reasoning skills. If they are accustomed to constant arguments where people don’t listen to the other side they often grow up with a closed mind and worry more about proving they are right than figuring out what is true. Children that are taught to discuss problems and listen to the other side are much less likely to grow up to be argumentative adults.

Once you understand this it helps to understand what type of childhood someone probably had based on their behavior as an adult. If someone is infatuated with programs that use a lot of hype like Nancy Grace or Glenn Beck and thinks they are credible sources of information it is likely that they spent a lot of time arguing with others without learning how to settle their differences as a child and never grew out of it. In some cases this may have a very serious effect on democracy or lack of democracy. A recent example is the incident with Joe Wilson who yelled out during Obama’s speech. He may have had some legitimate complaints but that isn’t the way to address it and at other times apparently he has adamantly advocated for false claims including denying that the USA gave weapons of Mass destruction to Saddam Hussein. Some of his followers have backed him up with emotional support that isn’t based on accurate facts. This could lead to making important political decisions based on lies. This kind of behavior could be a major threat to democracy since democracy won’t work if the public isn’t informed. It is very difficult in the short run to deal with people who respond more to emotional pleas than to rational discussion that explores both sides of the issue. One way to handle this could be to use further emotional pleas carefully designed to advance an argument but this doesn’t lead to understanding the subject even if it does work. In the long run it would be much easier to understand how these behavior patterns develop and educate children right from the beginning. If children are taught rational reasoning skills from the start they will do a much better job thinking for themselves. This will not mean they won’t make mistakes but it least it will be their own mistakes not the mistakes of their leader. This will also mean that different people will make different mistakes and if they talk it through rationally they will be able to work out the details and correct the mistakes. The alternative is to believe the person who yells the loudest or the one who is the most charismatic. Unfortunately this takes a long time but if it is done right it will last much longer too. This means focusing more on educating children than on debating older people. In the short term adults still have to be dealt with.

This doesn’t mean that reeducation can be forced on people that would lead to more problems than solutions. But there should be a better effort to explain social behavior to the public and make more accurate information available to them so they can do a better job making decisions.

Posted by zakherys at 1:33 PM EDT

Updated: Tuesday, 15 September 2009 10:59 AM EDT

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Wednesday, 9 September 2009

Public relation campaign for child abuse prevention

A public relation campaign to prevent child abuse would be a major step in the right direction. In order to reduce child abuse in the most effective way possible it will take as much cooperation from the public as possible. Teachers and social workers can’t be everywhere and many people don’t understand how much damage child abuse does in the long run. Most people see the immediate result but fail to see the long term damage that child abuse does. In order to do this in the most effective way possible it must be done in a educational manner not a manner that appeals to emotion and leads people to rush into something and overreact. This means avoid using the hype and disgust that the demagogues like Nancy Grace and Geraldo Rivera use.

A good public relations campaign will accomplish at least two different things, it will inform the public how much damage child abuse does so that people will realize how important it is and it will provide the public with some ideas about how to fix the problem.

The first step would involve informing the public that most if not all violent felons suffered from violent upbringing. It could also involve informing the public that abuse leads to bullying and delinquency at school. Abuse is a major cause for school drop outs and many other problems. In most cases the cause and effect isn’t immediate but there is an enormous amount of research available to prove that it is real. This could involve letting the public know where more information could be found on the subject. There are many books in the library on this subject if you care to take a look and also plenty of web sites.

The second step could involve informing the public about programs that have been proven to help prevent violence and let the public know how to participate in them. There are plenty of child care organizations that could help participate in these programs. This should start on the least controversial programs since that is the most effective way to get something done while further discussion goes on. In some cases even the least controversial programs may meet resistance until the public understands them better. If this is the case it will help to make the case with as well organized information as possible. It is important to help prevent abuse as soon as possible. Rehabilitating children after they have been abused has proven much more difficult than preventing the abuse in the first place. In some cases it may even be impossible. For example if you don’t start the rehabilitation until the abused child becomes a violent adult it will be much tougher. Informing the public that the most effective programs start at as young an age as possible and maintain some prevention activity. Letting the public know where to get involved so that they can help stop violence will be a big help since many people care about the subject but don’t know what to do to help. One example of a very effective program that may help is the child visitor program. The way this works is that when at risk mothers seek prenatal medical care the people at the hospital offer to let them participate. They will receive visits from a nurse or social worker who receives basic training and helps with simple child care chores and provides advice and counseling. This has proven to be very effective and it doesn’t involve much if any conflict which may occur if they wait until the abuse occurs. Unfortunately there are penny wise and pound foolish people who don’t understand this program so they resist it. It is important to explain to the public how this work and ho effective it is so they understand it is much better than building more prisons.

The media can be a very important help with a good public relations campaign but unfortunately if they wanted to help address this problem they probably already would have done a better job of it. They may still help address it more if they receive a little encouragement. In the meantime there can be a grass roots movement to inform people about the subject through community organizations like the PTA and many other organizations as well as on-line organization to inform the public. A good grass roots organization could be part of an effort to obtain cooperation from both politicians and the Mass Media. By setting a good example at the grass roots level and pointing out that the Mass Media may not be up to par it may encourage them to change. Another way to help would be to inform the public about how counter productive the typical demagoguery used by the Mass Media is. When someone from the media demonizes criminals and inspires hatred it only increases the level of emotions and distracts people from real solutions. The most effective way to stop violence involves controlling emotions and improving efforts to find rational education based solutions.

If the Mass Media doesn’t do a better job addressing this subject and many others it would be very helpful to create more interest in alternative media. With the availability of the internet there is an opportunity to create a much better media at least from the editorial point of view. Research and investigation will be tougher since they require a bigger budget but much of the work is already available at libraries and existing organizations. The creation of a better alternative media and informing the public about how the Mass Media receives preferential treatment by using the airwaves at no cost and very little input from the public could help elect more sympathetic politicians and create better laws to help develop a more fair mass media policy with more input from the public.

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

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

Posted by zakherys at 3:09 PM EDT

Updated: Saturday, 22 January 2011 10:40 AM EST

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Saturday, 5 September 2009

Violent health care town hall meetings

In order to understand how to reduce or eliminate the violence or uncivil behavior going on now at the town hall meetings about health care it is important to take into consideration things that are not happening as well as things that are. In fact the things that aren’t happening may be as important if not more important than the things that re happening. What should be happening is a discussion about how to improve health care that starts with the simple basics because that is where some of the biggest problems are. The reason people are getting upset is because their health care needs aren’t being fulfilled and for the most part as far as I can tell the high profile debate being presented on TV isn’t changing that.

In order to provide the best health care at the lowest cost one of the most important things is preventive medicine. There are many things that can be done to prevent people from getting sick in the first place without much cost to the public. Anti-smoking programs, weight loss programs and nutrition advice can be done mainly by better education the public. Some things like exercise can be done by the individual for nothing contrary to what advertisers want you to believe you don’t have to spend money to exercise. Some people think that buying equipment will help motivate them, this isn’t new but it has never worked before. Advertisers have been pushing this idea for years but most of the equipment they sell just winds up in the basement ore being used as an expensive clothes rack. The media has spent very little time discussing preventive medicine and when they do it isn’t always as productive as it could be for example CNN recently mentioned preventive medicine in relation to diabetes. It is important to mention a lot of different diseases and how to prevent them but they shouldn’t present them as isolated cases and ignore the rest. In this case they just mentioned one disease and addressed just that one, what they could have done is mention that there are many and started with on example providing a source to a longer list of other examples. This could have involved telling the public where they could go for more details on each subject.

Another important way to cut health care costs is to improve health care for children. This is where preventive medicine is most effective. If children get regular check ups and advice about preventive medicine they are much more likely to lead a healthy life with much lower medical bills throughout their lives. Good health care at the beginning of life is more important than at any other time, this should start before children are even born.

The health care debate seems to be spending little if any time reminding the public of the most obvious basics about how insurance works. The way insurance works is people who buy insurance pool their money by paying premiums to health insurance providers. The insurance providers pay their own expenses make some profit and put the remainder to pay for health care. This way if you have a sudden large health care expense you are covered in theory but if you are healthy you still pay even though you don’t need medical attention. This means the healthy help pay for the medical costs of the sick. It also means that insurance companies don’t actually provide any health care at all. What they do is organize the financing. The more expenses they have the higher premiums have to be to cover costs. This means that when they spend money trying to convince the customer that they are covered they may actually be taking away from the money available for treatment. Once the public understands this they will realize there is a serious problem with the way health care is currently being handled. This is important to consider when trying to cut costs. If the objective is to provide better service and care for the customer at less cost then expenses for the insurance companies should be kept to a minimum. The insurance companies spend an enormous amount of money to influence the way this is interpreted but their objective is to maximize profit not look out for the best interest of the customer. Once you understand this it may be clear that the capitalist way may not be the most effective way to accomplish this goal.

Another thing that is hardly being mentioned about health care is the patent laws. Part of the reason the cost of health care has sky rocketed is because when the public wasn’t paying attention the drug companies and politicians extended the length of patents to an unreasonable period of time. In many cases the research may have even been funded partly by tax dollars and the patents are still being extended. This is similar to what they did with copy right laws. Robert McChesney wrote about this in “The problem with the Media: U.S. communications politics in the twenty first century” It would be helpful to read a similar study on what they did with the patent laws, right now I don’t even know what they are just like most of the public which is part of the problem. It would be helpful to know what is happening in other countries where there are better patent laws. There was plenty of talk about people going to Canada to get their drugs much cheaper. It would help to know what Canada’s laws are. There was an attempt to make it sound like there was greater risk of bad drugs if people went to Canada. I doubt if there is much truth to this it was probably done by the same media that is misrepresenting the health care problem and gets advertising money from drug companies. This is part of the problem with the media that McChesney wrote about.

An important part of the health care debate will always include seniors of course. They are the ones that require the most health care. This is where some of the toughest choices need to be made and it doesn’t help if demagogues are trying to raise the emotional content of the debate. Like it or not at this point in life there may be a tough choice between the length of life and the quality of life. Making the most accurate information available to the public ion the most effective way possible is important to this situation. If important information is withheld for political or emotional reasons then decisions will be made based on a false sense of reality and this almost always leads to unnecessary mistakes. We need a serious discussion about hospice and how to make the end of life as pleasant and peaceful as possible. Demagoguery will not help this. Another thing to keep in mind is that excessive discussion about this will only distract from more important aspects of the debate like prevention and child health care.

It would also help to provide a list of other health care systems and let the public know where there are descriptions of them so they could compare them. In the USA there is a common assumption that we have the best system in the world but this is clearly not true and it would be foolish to automatically assume that socialist systems are bad without looking at how they work. The more organized the foreign programs are the easier it will be to understand and pick only the good aspect of these systems.

The media has contributed to the tension by simply not even trying to cover the subject well. All these simple basics could have been covered much better by the media if they wanted to. Instead what seems to be happening is that people are being divided into groups supporting different complicated plans that no one understands and they are being played off against each other. This is a classic divide and rule tactic being implemented by the politicians and media commentators. The people in the lower and middle classes are fighting amongst themselves and the corporations are making all the money while providing inferior health care at excessive costs.

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

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

Posted by zakherys at 10:55 AM EDT

Updated: Tuesday, 3 November 2009 1:34 PM EST

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Friday, 4 September 2009

How to create a monster

Start by abusing your child. Occasionally slap him when he gets older make the beatings more violent. If he fights back hit him even harder. After a while he will become nervous and scared of you, when this happens it is a matter of time before he gets nervous and does something stupid. When this happens give him a break instead of hitting him again laugh at him and humiliate him a little bit. If he cries threaten to give him something to cry about. This is good since when ever he tries to think things through and discuss things you can hit him. This way he will learn to settle everything with violence. When he goes to school he may be very nervous so the other older abused children will sense this and they may take out their anger by bullying him. When this happens and he comes home beat up blame him not the bully. Tell him he should have stood up for himself and teach him to fight so you can have a tough kid you can be proud of. If he gets in trouble later in school and the teachers call you and ask you to discipline him you can downplay it then reluctantly agree to hold him accountable. When you punish him make sure he knows he is being punished for being caught not for causing trouble itself. This way he’ll learn to hide it and avoid getting caught next time. An occasional compliment for winning a fight would be a good idea. You might also want to cheer him on if you ever see him abusing animals. It would help if you gave him positive feedback for something and this is as good as any other thing. Feel free to demonstrate so that the kid could get the idea from you to begin with. It would also be a good idea to beat up your wife a little so that he learns that kind of behavior is acceptable. Teaching the kid to blame minorities for all the problems in the world will be a good idea too. It doesn’t matter whether the minorities deserve any blame or not in fact it may be better if they don’t as long as you keep repeating it often enough not only will you convince your kid that it’s true but you’ll reinforce your own belief that it is true. Teach him all kinds of superstitions and mix this up with mythology so he won’t be able to sort out right from wrong. Neglect him when you feel like drinking and when you punish him for something make sure it isn’t consistent and it is often over trivial things and done in an emotional way.

If you’re the mother of a child being raised like this you can do your part to by verbally abusing him to and telling the kid all this abuse is for his own good. You can also join in on the abuse especially when the kid is smaller so he still can’t stand up to you. In fact it would be much easier if you made sure you started beating him while he is still you otherwise he might realize he can fight back. Of course he may eventually be able to fight back any way when he gets bigger so you have to be ready to find more effective ways to keep him under your power. Otherwise you’ll just have to get rid of him which might not be to bad an idea since then someone else will have to deal with the monster you created. At that point you might want to think about places to put the blame because you certainly won’t want to take it yourself.

If the child is a girl be sure to treat her just as abusively after all with woman’s lib movement woman have just as much right to become monsters as men. This means they have just as much right to be abused as a child. If this isn’t new ignore it after all we don’t need to let inconvenient facts get in the way when trying to create a monster.

If there are discussions about stopping violence be sure to join in and dispute anything that might help address the situation in a rational manner. It would be a good idea to propose all kinds of ideas that are counterproductive and do much more harm than good. Ideas that are tough to implement and wait for the last minute will do the trick nicely. After all why should you settle for creating just one just one monster when you can help preserve a system that creates many.

Most important of all don’t let anybody know that you are trying to create a monster; the best way to do this is to avoid telling even yourself. Keep in mind if you let others know how to create a monster they might interpret this as things to avoid doing to prevent violence. If you can convince yourself of your own B.S. stories that would be ideal. If you don’t know how to this you may have missed your opportunity you should have gone through this same training as a child.

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

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

Posted by zakherys at 12:36 PM EDT

Updated: Thursday, 15 October 2009 12:10 PM EDT

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Wednesday, 2 September 2009

Consistent punishment guidelines

In order for punishment to work as a deterrent as many people claim is the primary purpose there needs to be a consistent set of guidelines and the public has to know that it will be enforced fairly, this should include the jury pool. In the nineties there was a report prepared by a group of expert scholars to set up a recommended set of guidelines for punishment of certain crimes. This wasn’t a strict guideline with no flexibility; it gave judges the option to go outside the guidelines when he/she thinks it necessary. In this case the judge would be required to provide and explanation for why he went outside the guidelines. Ideally this would involve making the law as simple and easy to understand as possible. One problem is that there are so many different laws about so many different subjects that people don't even know what the law is. There is no guarantee that these guidelines are ideal but by putting it in writing and showing the work they can enable them to find and fix any mistakes that may be in there. Unfortunately these guidelines whether these guidelines are perfect or not were never implemented and the current system is highly inconsistent. There were politicians and commentators calling for tougher penalties and fewer excuses. These calls for tougher penalties also hampered research into the causes of crime and prevented people from understanding the most effective ways to prevent crime.

Punishment does work as a deterrent if the individual cares about the future and he thinks there is a good chance of getting caught. However this isn’t always the case so it is important not to rely solely on punishment. Punishment should be combined with education programs and most important prevention programs. People are much more likely to respect the rights of others if they have a reasonable life and others respect their rights. This is why abuse victims and social outcasts are often more likely to commit crimes.

In order to understand what the most effective guidelines to prevent further crimes it would help to have an organized list of different guidelines from different states and countries for their punishment guidelines. This won’t be the only contributing factor but it will be a step in the right direction. Additional information about other contributing factors should be added in as soon as possible.

The most important set of guidelines for punishment may not be the ones in criminal law for adults but the guidelines for little children. The reason for this is that this is where the education system and justice truly starts. The precedent set here should be carried over into the adult justice system. If there is a good system in the early child hood education system it will be much easier to set up a system for adults. The earlier intervention and rehabilitation happens the more likely it is to succeed. There is often a belief that rehabilitation doesn’t work, in the most extreme cases this is probably true but the reason it is true is because they didn’t address the problem soon enough. There are few people if any who would argue that someone like Gary Ridgeway or Richard Ramirez can be rehabilitated adequately enough so they can be returned to society. According to Dr. Stanton E. Samenow the most extreme felons are not susceptible to rehabilitation biggest they never had a sense of order to begin with. The biggest reason for this is that most serial killers suffered from a brutal upbringing that made them very angry and emotionally unstable. They are so far gone it is hard to imagine that they can ever be safely released. For those that believe that their rough childhood should be considered mitigating circumstances it is usually to avoid the death penalty and perhaps to obtain more privileges within prison. The fact that they are already so violent and that violent upbringing creates more predators is another reason to make sure they don’t have an opportunity to abuse members of the next generation. TV lawyers that try vigorously to get people like this off are for the most part done for propaganda purposes or drama I suspect.

This doesn’t mean that all felons are beyond rehabilitation but the ones that are treated the earliest and with the proper education programs are the ones that will be the most successful. There are often objections to providing educational opportunities to felons that aren’t provided to others. The most effective way to address this is to try to provide more educational opportunities for everyone. This can be done by making information more readily available to everyone in an organized fashion. The internet could be a very effective way of improving that. The more social injustices are reduced the less likely we are to have a big problem with crime.

Another important thing to make punishment more effective would be a more effective way to provide equal opportunities for legal defense. The current system provides much more lenient punishment for the rich than for the poor. Looking at social justice before it gets to the courts is also very important to make punishment more effective. If a class of society doesn’t believe they’re going to get a fair shake they are much less likely to care about punishment. If they are often subject to unfair treatment whether they commit a crime or not they may not care about punishment. If they don’t care about their own future punishment won’t deter them, they’ll just be concerned about living for the moment. If they only care about living for the moment they’re not going to let the threat of long term punishment deter them.

My point isn’t that punishment shouldn’t be part of the system it is an important part of the system but it shouldn’t be the sole focus of the effort to prevent crime nor should it be considered the most important effort.

Posted by zakherys at 12:43 PM EDT

Updated: Friday, 4 September 2009 10:44 AM EDT

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