What does it mean when a culture is imbued, surrounded, immersed, in images of militarized figures? Soldiers in body armour, armed to the teeth, police in bullet proof vests, armed with pistols and tasers and batons, swat teams with military equipment and armoured vehicles and snipers with helmets and balaclavas. Police in airports and government buildings and high-schools. Endless images of soldier heroes on T.V., in video games, in movies assault our senses constantly. Camouflage clothing became a fashion statement . Popular T.V. shows (And how many of those are cop shows? Cop Operas) are increasingly violent. The bad guys are increasingly shown as vicious and brutal and terrorist or drug cartel connected while the “good” guys supposedly restrained by the inhibitions of due process and legality are nearly thwarted but for the brave actions of rogue cops or clever violent avengers who work tirelessly on the borders of the law. And because the “criminals” are so fiendish…we applaud the heroes who may step over the line…to put and end to evil.
We shouldn’t be surprised to find kids obsessed with guns. Kids are generally powerless in our society and guns are icons of power. They haven’t yet earned or learned their own power. They can’t participate as adults even though they have as much access to information and they need to make incredibly complex decisions in their own environments. And some of those environments move much faster with much more immediate consequences than many adult environments. Still “power” and “authority” are needed among kids and they are expressed in very different ways than in the adult world.
Kids need solutions to problems that are desperately urgent to them. Unfortunately some of the problems and solutions would seem utterly simpler to many adults. As a consequence adults make the mistake of trivializing the problems kids face…and that tends t make the dilemmas worse. If you’re the kind of kid whose heroes wear armour and carry weapons…and if you’ve been allowed access to or ownership of guns…then frustration and anger can make for dangerous decisions. (No, not always.)
The President of the United States recently declared that the massacre at a Florida high-school was perpetrated by a person with mental health issues…that the kid was, in effect, crazy. Kids in his school and environment knew that his frustration and anger were reaching critical levels…not that he was crazy…but that he was experiencing kid dilemmas that they understood because they all had those dilemmas to a greater or lesser degree. Their options for solutions, for coping under similar circumstances may have been better than his. They knew that too, as well as knowing his fascination with guns. He even warned them…repeatedly, in terms that kids understood, where adults might not. And the kids alerted the authorities. And we now know that the authorities in question didn’t take it seriously enough. Maybe they thought it was just kids being overly dramatic…who knows?
The point here is that we have woven a web of violent cultural references around ourselves and no one is more immersed in it than our kids. Some choose violent options because they’re the most powerful ones available and their life experience hasn’t provided enough non-violent alternatives to them yet. But they can’t wait until they’re older to solve a problem that’s happening now.
As a society we need to stop seeing these things as isolated individual acts by crazy people and see them as they are. They are a consequence of the society and culture we’ve built and maintained. And we need to build with them, a support structure that enables them to participate fully in society…and to have access to tools and solutions that work in their environment. We cannot resolve their problems as adults…and they can’t solve their problems as kids…but together we might be able to see that our adult problems and their kid problems are very much connected and maybe we can look for ways to solve both…together.
Chagal4's Blog 