When people are forced to submit to overwhelming power, as is true for most abused children, and women and men trapped in domestic violence, and incarcerated men and women, they often survive with resigned compliance. The best way to overcome ingrained patterns of submission is to restore a physical capacity to engage and defend. Some people, however, become deskilled by fear and are vulnerable to attacks because their executive function—their frontal lobes go off-line, and they freeze. However, when you mind your own business and mentally have the message, “Do not mess with me,” in your mind, you are not likely to be bothered by people hiding in the bushes. Still, people cannot put traumatic events behind until they are able to acknowledge what has happened and start to recognize the issues they are struggling with.  As a teenager from the middle of nowhere, you have limited prospects. You spend your free time watching reports about the war effort and imagine a life more exciting. We must also face the fact that, to most Americans, violence is fun. We watch in on television and in the movies regularly. The bar-room fight in Little Boy Blue, starring Ryan Phillippe, is a matter of comedy or semicomedy to many. Football players are armored and padded like medieval knights so that they can provide violence with the least damage to themselves. Wrestling, the acting out of violence, commands a wide audience. The roller derbies attract fanatic followers who look on, not to watch expert roller skating, but to exult in the fights and near-fights, the elbowing and the falls. Ice hockey is a game in which we simply concede that fights are a part of the sport. 

Violence is actually a problem that faces not only psychologist, but every human being everywhere. It is one thing to proclaim, as psychologist do, that violence is not instinctive in human nature. It is another to demonstrate ways in which aggression can be controlled and eliminated, and replaced by cooperation. We are firmly committed to the idea that human nature is not instinctively violent—that we all start out neutral in this regard. It is in the learning that occurs in the house, the neighborhood, the classroom, the playground, the streets, shops, offices, military, institutions, and other places that we acquire the skills and attitudes needed to do violence. Cooperation, respect, appreciation, mutual interaction, and selflessness are often taught ineffectively, irrelevantly, or too late. It is organized violence on top which creates individual violence at the bottom. It is the accumulated indignation against organized wrong, organized crime, organized injustice, which drives the political offender to act.  Talking peace is not enough Much violence is spawned by frustration. Frustration will always be found where people’s basic needs go unsatisfied. Where poverty is the frustrator, it is up to not only the government, but also to individual citizens and groups to pressure for the eradication of poverty, and treat mental illness. Individual responsibility is the key. If I get a head at the expense of another individual—or of whole groups of people—that inequality pollutes the society of which both he and I are a part of, and I cannot be surprised at the violence that result.

There are people who work in mental hospitals and admit to beating patients up for fun, and say “No one will believe them anyway because they are crazy. I mean, look where they are.” Some violence is created by mental and emotional disorders, for which successful treatment is sometimes available. However, society needs to create an improved climate of acceptance for these programs of help and therapy that are available. The stigma attached to mental illness must be eradicated, and so must the feeling of shame or weakness that keeps many people from seeking available professional help when they require it. The problem of wars between nations is similar to but similar from that of person fighting person. It seems perfectly clear to me that we can never make any real progress towards permanent peace so long as we recognize the institution of war as legitimate and clothe it with glory. I still believe that people are really good at heart. I simply cannot build up my hopes on a foundation consisting of confusion, misery, and death. I see the World gradually being turned into wilderness. I think that it will come right, that this cruelty too will end, and that peace and tranquility will return. Political corruption sometimes seems too big a problem for any individual or group to tackle. Fear of using our rights, as well as ignorance of the channels open to us, still keeps most ordinary citizens from acting to solve such problems. The better human qualities are: wisdom, and knowledge, courage, humanity, justice, temperance, and transcendence. So please do the right thing.