A day ago, there was a stabbing murder at our local supermarket. Perhaps in some places this isn't news, but in Finland and especially at 5pm on a weekday, it is rare. Yet, this kind of violence seems to be increasing. This wasn't a random act of violence in the sense that they were strangers, as they knew each other, but it is still quite random, as they arrived in the same car together. Apparently, an argument broke out and someone or both (it hasn't been mentioned but the suspect is injured in hospital too) pulled knives, resulting in the death.
I feel that we are living in an increasingly violent time, where "petty violence" has increased.
There is nothing petty about murder, however this kind of violence seems to be more about a lack of emotional control, than a real need for any kind of physical altercation. And, there seems to be an increasing trend around the world, where especially young people are becoming more unstable and increasingly violent toward others. This is likely becoming more visible in the media too, setting up opportunity for confirmation bias, but the trends do seem to be heading that way, even in places where this kind of thing barely happened earlier.
I believe this has been happening for a long time already, where the trend has been leading this way, as there has been an encouragement to not control emotions and instead, react without filter. This has been further exacerbated by the reliance for social connection and information through social platforms, where polarization and outrage is encouraged to increase clicks, as well as siloing of information buckets and views of topics through curated feeds. And then of course, the influencers on the platforms who court controversy for market differentiation to garner attention.
It is a ramping up of increasingly extreme views and behaviors in a demographic that has low life experience and perspective, and poor emotional management skills. It is a recipe for the results we are seeing now, and will increasingly see globally - not "only in America". Combine this with the "normal" pressures a person faces with economic hardship, social pressures and the challenges faced in finding a place in an increasingly volatile and hostile environment, and it is going to stir the pot and bring it to the boil even faster.
In many ways, I feel myself an alarmist mentioning these kinds of things, because for most people, they seem like isolated incidences that are relatively rare. Yet, I also think that if we don't address the trend lines quickly enough, it starts to gain momentum and velocity, moving very fast, making it difficult to pull back.
Social trends and changes in culture are constant and there is no "staying the same" or "going back to the past" possible; only forwards. Yet, this doesn't mean that moving forward has to be a degrading process where values are lost, it could be a process of improvement where values are increased and what is harmful or redundant is replaced with better cultural behaviors. I might sound very old, but I don't think the current direction is heading us toward some kind of global enlightenment and it feels more like a shift toward the dark ages.
This is definitely an area where I would be happy to be wrong, but at least from the reports of the various levels of teachers I know, the children they teach are more disruptive, not on average getting more skilled at handling their emotions, nor are their skills in other areas increasing, so at least anecdotally (skills based on reports), it seems the trends are moving as at least I have expected they would.
Even in Smallsteps' preschool age classes, they have some trouble with the violence exhibited by six year olds, as well as the way they speak to each other. Thinking that I am an older parent in comparison to most, the age group of the parents of these kids is usually millennial generation, which was definitely part of the "express your emotions" era, which got translated into, do not learn to control your emotions. Have they led by example?
Somehow I feel like our own isolation from each other is leading to increased violence toward one another, as we are polarized and living in fear of one another and no longer capable of being able to understand nuance or handle disagreements civilly. It is like the outrage behaviors of the internet are now spilling out into the streets to create a hostile environment. While the internet knows no chill, the physical world is heading in the same direction.
At the meta scale of culture, I am not sure what can be done, but at the individual level, I take the approach that emotional awareness and self-control that enables reflection before reaction is the way to go. As a parent, I try to instill this practice into my daughter also, so that her emotional understanding and ability to control herself is on point, so that even if she can't control the reactions of others, she can recognize a bad situation and extricate herself early, or make good decisions under difficult conditions. The challenge with educating in this is, there are more forces in culture, educating against it.
The consumer world loves hype and drama and drives for it, as if encouraging consumer mindset behavior and polarized views on topics is not going to affect people's walking world activity. We are not good at compartmentalizing and when we spend so more time isolated in front of screens than connecting and interacting with humans, it is natural that our habits and behaviors are going to be influenced to act more like the outraged feeds, than the relative civility of face to face conversation.
We are what we eat.
Taraz
[ Gen1: Hive ]
