Well said. I also knew folks who were in the same mold as this "bad guy", but were fortunate enough to have outlets to deal with their social/family challenges.
But the "anti-hero/rebel" has always been a sublimation/wish-fulfillment persona for social outcasts, yet blowing/shooting up the school wasn't really something we thought about doing no matter our social grievances. I don't know if it is the media or what.
Then again, a friend in college told me about how her dad got in trouble when he was a teen for building a bomb (this would have been in the 50's), but he got a slap on the wrist and went on with his life.
Yep. I had friends, but as a lonely frustrated grade-school kid I still had the occasional very vague fantasy of seeking revenge for the way I was treated and the place I was given in the social order. (As it happens, I was also non-violent to a fault; I might have felt less alienated had I engaged in the occasional fight.) Kids who aren't given some modicum of dignity and respect will find their own unguided, perhaps destructive way of getting such attention.
It may be appropriate to try this 17-year-old as an adult, but the path he followed is familiar to many more kids than it's comfortable to acknowledge. I suspect that's the part that's really hard for people to swallow, leading to a terrorized focus on select kids as "bad elements" rather than on correcting a system that produces this kind of behavior. Ultimately I think that resistance is the main obstacle we face in preventing this kind of thing.
> So handing out hero medals, in a way, only encourages this type of behavior.
I think that such recognition also promotes the *adult's* behavior, which is good. Normal self-preservation says to run away from the dangerous boom, but this adult ran toward it, as a parent should. Recognizing good behavior is important when 24/7 news broadcasts fill the time between newsworth events with limitless examples of "wrong" behavior.
I think more important than recognition is actual training. I am sure that some people are more naturally "heroic" than others, but I think it is mostly just not freezing up or freaking out in a crisis, and remembering/realizing what you are supposed to do. All teachers go through a emergency response training and these teachers fulfilled their duties extremely well.
But I think Martin's point is that focusing on crisis response sometimes detracts from prevention.
> But I think Martin's point is that focusing on crisis response sometimes detracts from prevention.
But the crisis response is so exciting! Oh. Oops. That was the point.
The book The Science of Fear covers something related to this. It seems that we are wired to pay attention to the response because emotions win over logic.
Here's an observation that really frightens me: with 300,000,000 people in the United States, even an occurrence that is as rare as 1 in a million will happen here about every day. And with global communications, several of the nearly 7 billion people in the world will experience a one-in-a-billion event every day! So Fox, MSNBC, and CNN have a perpetual source of extremely rare frightening crises of all kinds. This perpetual barrage of rare, frightening events distorts our judgement and prevents us from allocating resources to help the most people in society. Smoking? Diabetes? Cancer in old people? Not important. Rare Dr. House diseases? Quick! The federal government must fund research! Now
( ... )
I mostly agree - the teachers fully deserved praise and gratitude for bravery and quick action. Such praise and gratitude may encourage such noble and helpful behavior in the future. The trick is to encourage noble behavior in adults / community folk without encouraging destructive behavior in kids or alienated folk. When the reward for noble behavior is an expanded sense of community, all are drawn toward noble behavior, since all immediately benefit. When the reward for noble behavior is an expanded hierarchy of nobility and deprivation, with all the attention going to only a few, then the populace is divided: some seek dignity and respect by building the community, while others seek dignity and respect through attacking the community.
Comments 6
But the "anti-hero/rebel" has always been a sublimation/wish-fulfillment persona for social outcasts, yet blowing/shooting up the school wasn't really something we thought about doing no matter our social grievances. I don't know if it is the media or what.
Then again, a friend in college told me about how her dad got in trouble when he was a teen for building a bomb (this would have been in the 50's), but he got a slap on the wrist and went on with his life.
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It may be appropriate to try this 17-year-old as an adult, but the path he followed is familiar to many more kids than it's comfortable to acknowledge. I suspect that's the part that's really hard for people to swallow, leading to a terrorized focus on select kids as "bad elements" rather than on correcting a system that produces this kind of behavior. Ultimately I think that resistance is the main obstacle we face in preventing this kind of thing.
Reply
I think that such recognition also promotes the *adult's* behavior, which is good. Normal self-preservation says to run away from the dangerous boom, but this adult ran toward it, as a parent should. Recognizing good behavior is important when 24/7 news broadcasts fill the time between newsworth events with limitless examples of "wrong" behavior.
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But I think Martin's point is that focusing on crisis response sometimes detracts from prevention.
Reply
But the crisis response is so exciting! Oh. Oops. That was the point.
The book The Science of Fear covers something related to this. It seems that we are wired to pay attention to the response because emotions win over logic.
Here's an observation that really frightens me: with 300,000,000 people in the United States, even an occurrence that is as rare as 1 in a million will happen here about every day. And with global communications, several of the nearly 7 billion people in the world will experience a one-in-a-billion event every day! So Fox, MSNBC, and CNN have a perpetual source of extremely rare frightening crises of all kinds. This perpetual barrage of rare, frightening events distorts our judgement and prevents us from allocating resources to help the most people in society. Smoking? Diabetes? Cancer in old people? Not important. Rare Dr. House diseases? Quick! The federal government must fund research! Now ( ... )
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