Cruelty, Violence and the Most Common Human Emotions

A few months ago, I reached out to a high school acquaintance.  This was an out-of-the-blue kind of contact with a high awkwardness risk.  I remember this person receiving a diversity of insults which continued throughout middle school and high school.  Indeed, she had been at the receiving end of some of the worst of teenage cruelty.  I watched this stuff happen with my own eyes and heard it with my own ears.  I did nothing to stop it.

I did not offer any comfort, no empathy, and I did not spend what influence I had to put put any kind of brakes on the torment.  To do so would have meant taking a social risk.  I was unwilling.  I was chicken.

I contacted this woman to ask forgiveness for my inaction.  In our own recent exchange, she asked me what goes through the heads of people doing this stuff.  It is a question which deserves an answer.  I'm going to take a shot at answering part of that question here.  To me, it seems that understanding the emotions behind the spectrum of cruel behavior are within the grasp of regular people.

Too often, it seems, people want to dehumanize others who act in a cruel manner.  They say things like:

• "I'll never understand why someone would..." 
• "What kind of person is capable of..."
• "You'd have to be insane to ..."

 Hogwash.

Understanding people and their emotions is within our grasp.  I'm not going to cite any psychological research.  I'm just going to share some stories.  Some are mine, and some are from others.  Some names have been changed to protect the guilty.

"I know why some mothers kill their children"

In June of 2001 Andrea Yates drowned her children in her bathtub.  There were five of them.

Earlier this year, Ebony Wilkerson drove her minivan with three children inside into the Atlantic Surf.  She was 32 years old and pregnant.

I'm going to let those who don't have children in on a little secret.  Kids are cute little bundles of self interest.  They can machine gun out demands faster than a New York air traffic controller.  To compound the problem, the kid has often not reached a cognitive level where they would realize that Mom is already servicing one of their requests, and to interrupt her with a request to help find their stuffed bunny will delay delivery of the toast and jam they asked for thirty-five seconds ago.  Now take that pace of demands multiply by any number of children.  A mother of  small children, while surrounded by small people, can feel terribly lonely.

I believe isolation is deadly.  Andrea Yates was in the bouts of postpartum depression.  She was also alone.  I do not know all the facts of the case.  I suspect there are material points of interest that have been left out of the public story.  I was discussing one of these cases with a mother I know personally.  She told me, "I know why some moms kill their children."  It seemed clear to me that this understanding was personal, rather than academic in nature.  As this story is rehashed, commentators have called it a senseless crime.  It is apparently not senseless to everyone.

Guys, if you are married to a full time mother, make sure your wife has some time to herself on a regular and reliable basis.  I recommend a weekly three hour block.  Your experiences in solo parenting will make you grow in appreciation for your wife. Knowing that time is coming may well be the link to sanity for the mother of your children.

Cody and Me, Me and Cody

There was a kid a year behind me in school.  He was a little taller than other kids our age, and thinking back, he was kind of handsome.  He was also a real jerk.  For the purposes of this discussion I'm calling him Cody.  I'm fairly certain I did nothing to provoke this guy.  Cody hung around with his buddy, with whom I don't recall any special difficultly.  Cody would not say much, but he would punch you in the arm or take something of yours and throw it on the ground. 

On one winter day, Cody was at the sledding hill at the end of the street.  I don't remember if there was any dialogue that led up to him stomping on my plastic sled, shattering out the bottom of it.  I have to admit that this is a guess.  I suspect Cody's cruelty was borne simply out of a need to establish a pecking order.  Perhaps this was an echo of how things worked at home.  Maybe I should find him and ask him what this was all about.

Fast-forward a couple years to Junior High.  I was in eighth grade, Cody was in seventh.  At this point in my life, I had just begun to have friends at school.  As it was, the group of "friends" I chose were good at doling out approval in response to boldness.  Taking up a dare scored well, but perhaps better was a spontaneous, daring act.   Some of these acts were simply stupid acts of physical daring, like jumping a bike off a wall.  Other acts involved a victim.   

Everett Middle School had buses arriving before the beginning bell which would signal the opening of the main doors.   As the buses arrived, more and more students would crowd the walkway in a dense mass of adolescence.  I found an apple that must have dropped from a backpack.  I looked at the apple,  into the mob gathered by the door and I looked at my friends.  Here was an opportunity for one of those spontaneous acts of idiocy.  I gave the apple a chuck toward the door, underhanded in a way that would obscure who did it from anyone more than eight feet away from us.    Cody's head materialized a little higher than the others, right in front of the apple.  It hit him square on the back of the head, a piece chipping off as it it ricocheted off his parietal noggin to the ground.  My friends could hardly contain their glee, giggling and whispering verbal high-fives over such a beautiful, serendipitously placed shot.  I had done something cool.  I was being a jerk.

"I knew that it was time to drop out"

Gavin DeBecker is a widely recognized expert in anticipating and protecting against violent behavior.  DeBecker and Associates provide what is widely regarded as the very best in personal protection and threat evaluation services.  He is the author of several books on the subjects of personal safety.  The Gift of Fear deals with how individuals can protect themselves with the help of their own intuition.  Protecting the Gift is written for parents who want to keep their children safe. 

In this video lecture, Mr. DeBecker shares his story of violence at school.  The story starts at 17:56 and ends around 22:50.  You can fast forward to that point or follow the link below.  The video in it's entirety is recommended, but I want to focus on this story in particular.

Watch on YouTube, Start at Story

In the aftermath of the story of Cliff, I suppose Cliff may have been institutionalized as criminally insane.  I don't know.  What does seem clear is that this guy was living in his own personal hell.  This violent act, even with its attendant consequences, may well have represented a step up.  It seems likely to me that he may have ended up with a better place to live, better people around him, and he got knock the teeth out of his nemesis.  When I hear this story, I can remember the rage I felt toward the kids who picked on me.  I can picture myself standing above my tormentor ready to bash him in the face.  Not only do I understand Cliff's frame of mind, I can sympathize with it.

 

Now What?

I've gotten more confident as I've continued to grow up.  I have many friends who love and support me.  I don't contemplate perpetrating violence in my home, work or social environments.  Do I wish I had done better when I was a teenager?  Absolutely.

Here is a story that inspires me.  It shows me what I wish I had been.  It is the story of Chy Johnson and Carson Jones.  Chy was the girl who was being picked on.  Chy's mom turned to Carson to ask for help in identifying the bullies.  Carson upped the ante and did something better.  He invited Chy to sit with him.

This is what I want my kids to be.  I want them to be more confident than I was.  I want them to be able to take the social risks.  I wish I had been more like Carson.  Sometimes it seems easy to make excuses, saying perhaps Carson was in a unique position since he was the starting quarterback.  The truth is that it probably helps to be one of the popular kids, but you don't have to be the starting quarterback to make a difference. 

There was one guy in my school who did it better than I did.  He is still out there and I have not gotten permission for public flattery.  At fist, all I could see was that this was just another popular guy.  His cheery disposition would therefore be natural.  As my observation and casual acquaintance continued, it became clear that this guy was kind to everyone.  He was friends with the most popular at school, and he had the confidence of the lowliest pariah.  I never saw him say an unkind word to anyone or about anyone.  He was Tall and handsome, but he was not on the football team.  He was a better Christian than I was.



Understanding people, all kinds of people, is within our grasp.   I seems to me that understanding others is going to become more important as time goes on.  At this time, people are calling for more government dollars to be spent on mental health services.  Such was the chorus in the wake of the shootings by Jared Loughner and James Holmes.  I don't have a great deal of confidence in such a government solution.  It seems to me that instead of everyone giving a few more tax dollars, we take a few more personal risks and show a little more kindness.  I'd be willing to bet that someone considering a cruel act will be able to tell the difference between someone asking them if they can sit down next to them at lunch, and social worker inviting them to an evaluation.

For Carson, Chy and company, it was not a top down solution that had any effect.  Contacting school administrators did little.  It was the action of a peer that made the difference.  In the same vein, I don't thing a new law or program is going to solve the problems we have among us now.  It is not going to stop mothers from coming unglued.  I don't think mandated mental health screenings are going to be effective with the kids who are seething because they are mired in their own private hell. 

Often when we look at people who have come unhinged, and we want quickly contrast ourselves with them.  It seems as though we want to show everyone else how normal we are because we are not like that crazy person.  Why are we afraid to admit that it could have been us?  When someone’s "crazy" deed puts them on the news, why should we resist the idea that we share the same weaknesses and frustrations.  Maybe we have felt the temptation to drive a minivan full of kids into the rolling surf.

I'm afraid the solutions lie with us.  It is you and I that need to risk being friendly to someone who we find prickly.  It is up to us to take someone and their feelings seriously when by all appearances they must be some kind of weirdo.  Perhaps we will get lucky and restore each-other’s faith in humanity.

Here's one more video, continuing on with the high school theme.  This one hits close to home for me because it deals with guys who need to do a better job living their convictions.  I think I can empathize with those kind of guys too.

https://www.lds.org/youth/video/bullying-stop-it?lang=eng