Health & Fitness
Gun violence clues lie in early childhood nurturance and neglect
Gun control is a red herring. The clues to the origins of gun violence lie in early childhood nurturance and neglect of our male children.
So long as we dwell on red herring surface issues such as gun control, the underlying issues can never be addressed.
Has anyone noticed that none of the shooters are female?
Rather than rehash old arguments regarding gun control and mental health availability, maybe we should look into how we raise and nurture our sons, our male children in this country such that some of them explode into violence.
An late teacher of mine, Charlie Kreiner once asked us a question I will never ever forget,
"What do you have to do to a male child such that he will agree to kill and be killed in the name of masculinity?"
I ask: "How do we engage with our adorable, delicious, joyous, and loving male children such that they perpetrate domestic violence and become killers?"
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I suggest that there is a clear connection between gender-related nurturance neglect, developing emotional numbness, and the capacity of any individual to perpetrate violence.
Evidence is emerging in neuroscience literature. Watch and listen to neuroscientist VS Ramachandran speak in the TED Talk The Neurons that Shaped Civilization.
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The roots of our capacity to empathize lie in early childhood and in the manner we as young children are treated, or not. We learn that young children are born with an enormous capacity to mimic, mirror, and to reliably reproduce the world they experience.
But the number of mirror motor neurons shrinks by about four years of age and their capacity to learn shrinks as well.
Emotionally neglected children do not develop into adults who have the capacity to feel the consequences of their actions. It is impossible to feel the pain of another if your capacity to feel at all is stunted or missing altogether.
Sometimes it looks like the violence perpetrated on elementary school children; other times it looks like domestic violence in the home.
Gun control is a red herring. The clues to the origins of gun violence lie in early childhood nurturance and neglect of children.