I was reading an article from Australia stating that some children are becoming more violent during lockdowns, and it is affecting all ages. There was nothing concrete in the article, but it doesn't surprise me that behavioral changes are starting to be noticed and I think it is going to increase, as I have said before.
While humans are built to adapt to changing conditions, the disruption that even this short period in history can have is immense, and people are going to be affected in many ways, depending on the conditions applied. None of us have an identical experience to anyone else, because even if what we go through is similar, the way we filter it through who we are is always different. This means that while reactions can be predictable, there is still variation.
Constant change is the way life goes and our ability to adapt to it, depends largely on our choice to change ourselves for it. Much of our life is not experienced by choice, yet we can affect how we react to it immediately and deal with it as time progresses.
For example, I know people who have experienced some kinds of childhood trauma, ranging from bullying at school to being physically abused by a members of their family. Each sees themselves as living a negative childhood, but the way they use the experience differs, with some being victims of the world, using the past as an excuse as to why they are unable to do this or that. Others use the past to empower them, making it an excuse as to why they can. Some are weakened, some are strengthened, but why is there a difference in the first place?
Perhaps it is innate, perhaps some people are just luckier than others in the way they have been born and the way their brain and emotions function - however, does that mean that who we are and how we behave, can't be affected?
I don't think so, otherwise all of the people blaming advertising and fastfood chains on the obesity epidemic are completely wrong - if we can't affect our own behavior, then others can't affect our behavior either - which is obviously not the case.
Also, if it was the case, every time someone says "you made me feel" they are also very much wrong, because the way we feel affects the way we act, which is why I believe we need to be very careful with our emotions.
I do not mean protect ourselves from negative emotions, as that is ridiculous. What I am talking about is understanding them and thereby, making them ours. A lot of people say "my emotions" without having the ability to control them in any way, especially when they are upset. Just like crypto, if you do not control the movement, it is not yours.
People get upset at this or that and believe they are entitled to show their emotions unrestrained, dumping them on those around them, regardless of the harm they may cause. Not only this, the entitlement extends to doing it "freely", where not only can they vent, but there can be no consequences to how they act - their emotions give them rights to harm and shield them from response. Nonsense.
Too often these days and for the last decades, we have been encouraged to feel our emotions, but not control them. What this means is that as a society, we have become thoughtlessly reactive, without the training to have control through reflection first applied before the reaction is released. Not only this, society through the internet encourages unrestrained emotional response, because drama and the transactions it creates can be monetized.
The more we are thoughtlessly reactive, the more we are controlled by outside influences and our inability to think and act for ourselves can be directed by those who engineer where and what we experience. This makes us consumers that no longer have choice in what we consume, because we no longer reflect on who we are and what is suitable for us, and instead defer our preferences to what is suggested to us to consume, which ultimately triggers our narrow emotional responses and doubles-down on directing our behavior.
For a long time, I think things have been assumed as getting better in the world, yet as we can see in the last couple years, things can change rapidly. Just a year ago, so many of the things that are happening around the world today were deemed impossible with people I know saying, "it will never happen here" under the assumption that people had control. Yet, here it is happening.
Violence comes in many forms, yet we do not see the violence that we inflict upon others because we make a choice at some point not to take control of ourselves and instead, choose to be thoughtlessly reactive. When it comes to our immediate emotional responses throughout the day, we might feel okay with this, but what it means is that as a group, we can be shifted, applying our inability to control our emotions at a mass scale, fracturing groups and enacting violence - and feeling entitled to do so.
Taraz
[ Gen1: Hive ]
