LIVING WITH VIOLENCE

“America is, by far, the most violent country in the world when measured

against comparable, industrialized nations. Violence is deeply rooted in our

society and has become woven into the fabric of the American lifestyle.

A culture of violence has emerged that invades our lives at every level,

from our most intimate relationships at home, to our schools and

work environments."

This statement contained in an Annual Report by one of California’s Attorneys General, accurately crystallizes the true status of violence in America. Compared with the other advanced countries, America has the highest rate of prison incarcerations, with more than 2 million prisoners at any time, a number that equates to more than quarter of the world’s prison population. It has consistently reported the highest homicide rates in the industrialized world and even more frightening, more people possess some form of weapon for self-protection than all the rest of the world’s population.

The increasing aura of violence in our society and our awareness of violence around us has changed the way we live in our cities. In more and more areas of our cities, because of the increase in gang formation and drug violence, drive-by shootings, daylight muggings and indiscriminate attacks we are beginning to feel like prisoners in our homes and neighborhoods, afraid to venture out alone. It should be no surprise that some of the fastest growing industries in this country are private security and weapons.

Although we publicly lament the existence of violence in our cities, in our society and in our schools, we also are guilty of sending mixed messages to our children. By encouraging wanton violence on our TV screens and in our cinemas, by highlighting and encouraging violence in sport and entertainment, on the playing field and in the video games, by making and endorsing heroes of crooks and criminals, we succeed in indoctrinating our children that violence in society is acceptable, and worse, by our silence, encourage them to think that violence is a reasonable alternative.

Even our media, by their eagerness and insistence in reporting all the gory details of violent incidents contribute to the glorification of violence as a means of achieving solution. By their endless reporting of incidents, repeated over and over, they succeed in persuading people that such behavior is normal and acceptable, making the next action easier to contemplate. Very rarely is an effort made to register the public abhorrence of the behavior and the genuine resentment of the perpetrators. Society, while recognizing that the perpetrator needs help, must not lose sight of it’s responsibility to punish the action, protect the victims and above all, to take the necessary steps to correct the underlying causes.

Tragically we, as individuals and as a society, have yet to learn the lessons from the actions around us. We continue to witness horrific examples of grossly abnormal behavior among our young people such as the Columbine school massacre, the vicious and brutal attack on the homeless and the gang-like act of publicly setting a boy on fire. Though occurring in different areas and under different circumstances, these and the thousands of others taking place daily, appear to have one constant denominator, the progressive disintegration of society’s standards and responsibilities.

But violence is not a disease that can be passed on from person to person and cannot be treated by simply administering a local remedy. Violence is a reflection of the society and represents the worse aspect of the prevailing attitudes within the society. As I see it, even in the midst of so much advancement in the quality and opportunity in our lives, our society has become too indifferent, too immune to its responsibility towards maintaining the quality and consistency needed to ensure the right standards.

We cannot expect our children to do otherwise when we ourselves abandon our own principles, by continuing to glorify violence, by ignoring the needs of our children, by abandoning our family responsibilities as we spend more time away from the home. When we add to this the scourge of easy accessibility of drugs, reduced controls in the schools, increasing domestic violence and marital breakdowns, and so many other social problems, one should not be surprised of the present epidemic of violence.

And yet the answers to preventing this escalation of violence can be simple and effective if we take the time to recognize the causes and make the effort to correct them. As a society, we need to reconsider how we glorify violence in all it’s forms, most especially in the fields of entertainment, sports and video games. Equally we must take time to provide quality time to our children, to encourage them away from the present exposure to the many negative contacts and to provide positive opportunities for growth. To achieve this we need to change drastically from the present direction, something we loathe to do. We have yet to learn the real truth of the statement made by the noted American author, Mary McCarthy:
“In violence we forget who we are”


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LEARNING FROM LIVING

LEARNING FROM LIVING

I would rather think of life as a good book.
The further you get into it,
The more it begins to come together and make sense.

The above quotation by the famous American Conservative Rabbi, Harold S. Kushner, always impressed me as a powerful comment on the real meaning of life and learning, worthy of inclusion in any educational program.
Learning is generally defined as a “process of acquiring knowledge or skill through study, experience or teaching”. But to me, true learning is much more complex than this. It can only be considered meaningful when it is accompanied with changes in the basic understanding and behavioral potential of the individual. It is not merely the acquisition of information but rather the assimilation of such information and its incorporation into the individual’s being.
........In truth, we are what we learn.
Of all the great teachers we encounter along the way, the experience of Living is by far the greatest and most effective of all, a fact recognized by most of the great thinkers and philosophers throughout the ages. The great ancient Roman philosophers Pliny and Tacitus insisted that Experience is the most efficient teacher, and Julius Caesar publicly acknowledged that Experience is the teacher of all things.
The history of the modern world is replete with examples of people who have become very successful in every conceivable aspect of life without completion of the appropriate “formal education”. This should not be surprising since in most instances their success is based on their innate ability to maximize their life experience. The following are some of the thousands of examples of people whose contributions have changed the course of history:
Abraham Lincoln, considered one of the greatest U.S. Presidents, finished 1 year of schooling, then continued by self-teaching to become a lawyer.
Andrew Jackson, successful as a soldier, lawyer, judge and U.S. president, was essentially home-schooled without formal education.
Benjamin Franklin, one of the greatest sons of America, a founding father of the nation, inventor, scientist, author and entrepreneur, was primarily home-schooled.
Christopher Columbus, the great explorer who discovered the Americas was essentially self-taught, learning all the intricacies of sailing from experience.
Frank Lloyd Wright, possibly the most famous architect of the twentieth century, never continued beyond primary school.
Henry Ford, the father of the assembly line for car-making never completed high school.
Winston Churchill, considered one of the greatest British statesmen, historian and artist, failed high school and never attended college. He was credited with saving Britain during WWII.

……The list is as endless as it is international.
Over the last generation, in our lifetime, most of the very successful inventors, entrepreneurs and game changers have been high school and/or college dropouts who chose to abandon the formal programs of learning to go their own way. These include:
Bill Gates and Paul Allen(microsoft), Michael Dell (computers), Larry

Ellison(oracle), Steve Jobs(apple), Larry Page and Sergio Brin(google), Mark

Zuckerberg(facebook),
Because of their efforts, they have succeeded in changing the world in unimaginable ways over a period less twenty five years. In all these cases, these exceptional people chose to forego the conventional road to enrichment, and trusting their instincts, go forward learning as they moved on.
The real truth is that we are all endowed with the ability to learn from experience, if we only allow ourselves the flexibility to do so. Instead we tend to spend our lives locked into certain boundaries of our own doing which we zealously guard under the pretext of “the right way”, afraid or unwilling to venture forward and risk failure. As a result we are left out on the periphery while we admire and sometimes envy them and their achievements.

Perhaps we should all take heed of the observation of the great British scientist, author and futurist, Sir Arthur Charles Clarke who advised:

The only way of finding the limits of the possible,
is by going beyond them into the impossible.

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LIFE'S ATTITUDES

LIFE’S ATTITUDES

In the field of human endeavor, Attitude is everything. In any situation many outcomes are possible, but the final result, positive or negative, is much less dependant upon ability than it is on attitude. This is probably the most powerful of the multiple components of human behavior.
Attitude can be defined as a complex psycho-physical state involving the total emotional make-up of the individual, including feelings, beliefs, values and disposition, resulting, if it is not consciously modified, in a predictable response. Simply put, attitude is a function of interpretation rather than reality. Henry David Thoreau, the great 19th century American philosopher, very precisely and accurately described this state of affairs as follows:
“It’s not what you look at, that matters,
……It’s what you see.”
In my practice, by way of demonstration to my patients, I often used this simple sketch to illustrate the impact of attitude on subsequent behavior;
You are standing outside your home and you notice in the distance that a person was approaching you with his hands raised and holding an object. If you thought the object was a knife, you would quickly turn and run away, but if you thought he was bringing you a gift, you will turn and run towards him. His action has not changed, but your attitude would determine your subsequent behavior. If in fact he was bringing you a gift, he would appreciate your coming forward, and be disappointed if you ran away. As you no doubt would expect, his subsequent expectation and therefore his attitude toward you will be affected by your action.
It is not difficult to understand that unless we are very careful in correctly interpreting attitudes of others toward us, we are likely to make the situation worse by our resulting response. So much of our pain and suffering can be avoided, or at least modified, if we take time to understand the impact of attitude on our lives and the need to adapt to the changes as they appear.
Equally, in a global context, success or failure, trust or distrust, joy or anger, belief or disbelief, love or hate, even peace or war, all have their foundation on people’s attitude and their willingness to recognize and adapt to changes. Every day we witness examples of how “attitude” is manipulated by people to achieve their own, personal aims. From the businessman, who uses subtle advertisements to get you to use his products, or the politician, who, by a mixture of fear, lies, threats and promises is able to harness your support and commitment to achieve his agenda, or the religious leader, who by deliberately misrepresenting other’s views is able to persuade members to reject them. These are but a few examples of many that operate in our day-to-day living that form the very foundation of existence.
The unfortunate tragedy of this situation is that despite the fact that we are all aware of the impact of attitude on our life, we seem to have difficulty in recognizing and changing our attitudes. As a result we continue to repeat our mistakes over and over. We appear to be conditioned to hold on to existing attitude even though they are clearly causing us unnecessary inconvenience, rather than make the effort to adapt. This behavior is not significantly different from the addictive model where the individual continues the pathological behavior despite efforts to correct. Like the addict, they would rather risk pain and suffering with their current attitude than make the effort to seek an alternative, more appropriate solution. In the end everyone, both individually and globally, will continue to suffer because of prejudice, fear, uncertainty and manipulation and continue to view everyone else with distrust and suspicion.
But change is possible if we could learn to adopt positive attitudes and to work to neutralize negative attitudes. Over and over we have witnessed, both at the individual as well as the group level, that growth and development take place after positive attitudes have taken hold. We have all seen seemingly entrenched hostilities and distrust replaced by respect and sharing, and life-long enemies become friends. However, this will not occur by just talking about what has to be done, but rather by a slow and deliberate process of desensitization so that people become less resistant to receiving correct information and rejecting negative ones. Under these circumstances people are more likely to be more receptive and less inclined to distrust or fear change, and as a result, more willing to undergo modification in attitude.
Above all, what we need to do is to redouble our efforts both as individuals and globally,
to do everything in our power to encourage positive attitudes and reject negative attitudes, to be more receptive to positive efforts from others and to always examine our behavior to ensure that we bring the right attitude to our life and our interactions. By doing this consistently and deliberately, we might begin to grow positively and perhaps we could take to heart the profound observation of the very talented American ice-skater Scott Hamilton:

“The only disability in life is a bad attitude.”

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Attitude is everything.

Be kinder than necessary, for everyone you meet is fighting some kind of battle.

Live simply, Love generously, Care deeply, Speak kindly, and
Leave the rest to God.

Life isn't about waiting for the storm to pass,

It's about learning to dance in the rain.
……… Author Unknown

Excellence is not a skill. It is an Attitude.
……..Ralph Marston

The greatest discovery of my generation is that;
a human being can alter his life by altering his attitude.
.......William James

Attitude is a little thing that makes a big difference.
…….Winston Churchill

A positive Attitude causes a chain reaction
of positive thoughts, events and outcomes.
It is a catalyst and it sparks extraordinary results.
........Wade Boggs

There are no menial jobs, only menial Attitudes.
……William J. Bennett

A happy person is not a person in a certain set of circumstances,
but rather a person with a certain set of attitudes.
………Hugh Downs

People are not disturbed by things,
but by the attitude they take of them.
……Epictetus

Our Attitude toward life, determines Life’s attitude towards us.
….John N. Mitchell

Your living is determined not so much by what life brings to you;
As by the Attitude you bring to life.
……Khalil Gibran

Attitude: It is our best friend or our worst enemy.
…… John C. Maxwell

Weakness of Attitude becomes weakness of character.
…..Albert Einstein.

I discovered I always have choices:
Sometimes it may only be a choice of Attitude.
……Author Unknown

If you don’t like something, change it.
If you can’t change, then change your attitude.
……Maya Angelou

The Problem is not usually the problem;
The problem is your Attitude about the problem.
……Author Unknown

Your Attitude is more important that your Aptitude.
…… Zig Zigler

A strong positive mental Attitude will create more miracles,
than any Wonder Drug.
……Patricia Neal

The greatest part of happiness depends on our Attitude;
Not on our Circumstances.
….Martha Washington