Community violence: causes and solution perspectives Part 3 of 3

BY ERROL A. GIBBS

Part 3 is a brief exploration of community violence —causes and solution perspectives. This short discourse is neither an attempt to compare nor to analyze violence within communities, the prevalence of violence by religion, race, class, colour, culture, or any other human characteristic ―social or economic. Following are some causes and solution perspectives from a community viewpoint —non-scientific, but underpinned by citation, and intellectual and empirical observation.

VIOLENCE ― CAUSES: From tribal societies up to sophisticated constitutional Western democracies, violence plagues human existence. What are the causes of violence? James Gillian, M.D., presents a close-up observation and scientific perspective in his far-reaching thesis: Violence ―Reflections on a National Epidemic (James Gillian, M.D.). Likewise, The Global Health Education Consortium (GHEC) and collaborating partners have presented their exhaustive thesis: “The Causes of Violence and the Effects of Violence on Community and Individual Health” (Stephen C. Morris M.D. (September 2007).

Violence has a face and a human spectrum. It begins with the child. The child starts his or her journey within the family, the first society of “altruistic love.”  The wise King Solomon counsels: “Train up a child in the way he should go, and when he [or she] is old he [they] will not depart from it” (Proverbs 22:6) (circa 961 BCE). His or her nurturing demands a two-parent home as the ideal. Absentee parents, primarily the male partner, unwittingly sabotage the survival of children, giving rise to potential vulnerability and insecurity.

Childhood abuse, fear, and anxiety often manifest later on in life as mental illness and violence. Youths and adults are the offspring of the un-nurtured and the abused child. Youth violence is a barometer of the strengths or weaknesses of the human ecosystem, with parenting at its nucleus ―enabled by family members, governments, religious institutions, community, educational institutions, business and industry, and governments.

The roots of violence grow in potency when the human spirit is broken, underpinned by other forms of violence (social, economic, emotional, and physical). Poverty, lack of self-esteem, social and economic exclusion, and powerlessness undergird youth violence on their journey to adulthood. On the other hand, greed for money, wealth, and power undergird religious, racial, and cultural division, and the ensuing violence perpetrated by adults.

The prevalent nature of violence in communities throughout the world seems to indicate that violence is in the DNA (deoxyribonucleic acid) of humans —dormant. A myriad of circumstances that some human beings are ill-equipped to manage, and seems to trigger the violent nature of otherwise peaceful human beings. People respond in a state of bewilderment regarding the violent behaviour of a person or people with whom they are familiar.

VIOLENCE ―SOLUTION PERSPECTIVES: How do peoples and nations begin to reverse the inescapable violence in the postmodern culture? EDUCATION! Education is the base upon which to build stable and viable nations. However, in spite of billions of dollars of expenditure in modern education, observe the human condition through the prisms of inequities, unjust laws, political apathy, wars, terrorism, and refugees of war.

Observe the public distrust with the political elites, the cyclic collapse of nation’s economies, and the moral failure of “educated elites” in academia, high finance, politics, and religion. Observe the decline in the display of international peace and harmony, the hoarding of strategic resources, corporate greed, the accumulation of excessive wealth, global terrorism, and the advent of World War III, as many trend watchers postulate.

Observe the exponential growth in the “deficit-financed” Prison Industrial Complex (PIC) as the use of legal and illegal drugs persists as anxiety, stress, depression, loneliness, and worse of all suicide and violent criminal behaviour continues among children, juveniles, youths, and adults. These human conditions confirm a universal decline in the modern educational models to solve human problems, with violence at the apex. The cost of building self-esteem in children is far less expensive and less complicated.

There is a need to educate students beyond the pursuit of Academic Information Literacy (AIL) and adopt a Wholesome Education Curriculum (WEC) that transcends AIL as the principal goal of student’s spiritual, moral, social, intellectual, and physical development. These five elements constitute their wholesome growth to fully actualized self and engender positive self-esteem.

Positive self-esteem in children is arguably the highest predictor of well-adjusted children, youths, and adults, and an antidote to a non-violent existence. (Zoukis, 2014) Wrote: “Recidivism is a problem of the highest magnitude. Every year we, as a nation, spend over $60 billion on prison systems, a limited portion of which is used on first-time offenders. This is money drained away from early education initiatives, state universities, and other essential social services” (https://prisoneducation.com/prison-education-news/the-cost-of-recidivism-victims-the-economy-and-american-pris-html/).

The solution to violence, therefore, requires the creation of an “educational human ecosystem” that links intrinsically, all elements of human development, at every level of the human pyramid. These include the individual, marriage and parents, family, community, corporation, and nation. Likewise, to create awareness in students of the intrinsic links that bind the positive aspirations of all human activities without regard to color, race, culture, or religion, for the betterment of humankind.