The Creation of A Life Issues and Life Skills Class From Preschool, Through the Twelfth Grade: An Antidote to Mass Killings and Sexual Violence Against Women

Our American way of life is being assailed on two fronts, from two different and equally destructive acting out behaviors. The first is the impact of mass killings on the lives, families and friends of those who have been attacked. The second is the abuse of women by predatory men. 

These are two areas of behavior that destroy and wound our society and they both happen on a daily basis. Killing and wounding the body with bullets, in ways, is no more destructive than the killing and wounding of the sense of security and sense of one’s self worth through sexual assault.

The question becomes, what can be done to correct these destructive   behaviors in our society?  How can we remove these cancers from our societal body?

ü  The fact that we know and acknowledge that these destructive forces exist is a beginning. 

ü  Acknowledging the basis for their creation is a second step toward healing.

ü  People sharing their truth about the impact that such hostile acts have had on their lives is the third needed step to take.

ü  To create an educational program that provides support and   educates our children about needs, feelings, how to communicate with others is an essential fourth step to take in this healing process. Such a program will also help to develop our children’s  capacity for empathy that needs to take place to eliminate these violations of bodies and souls in our society.

Today, women are being empowered to speak out about their experiences of being violated by a man’s hostility toward them. These women are openly risking retribution, and are stating the truth of their experiences with men who have abused their power in the work place and in the family.

The question needs to be asked, why do people kill and abuse other people?  We need to accept the fact that individuals, men in particular, who have killed and wounded hundreds of people were angry, acting out individuals. In the same way, we need to acknowledge that men who are sexual predators, are angry acting out individuals who have issues of resentment specifically towards women.  

People become angry because they are feeling emotional pain.  They hurt because some essential need for loving attachment, acknowledgment and security has gone unmet. Their anger is a means of protecting themselves from their hurt.  It is also a way to lash out against and punish those who these individuals feel are responsible for causing their pain. Mass killers, who are predominantly men, and those who force themselves on to women come from this background of the lack of emotional attachment, acknowledgment and security during their formative years.

It has been said that we need a ‘long term’ societal solution to these two ways of violating members of our communities.  There is such a solution.  It is a solution that has the potential to totally transform the culture that has allowed for mass killings and the abuse of women over the course of our history.

What is this solution?  It is the commitment to create, develop, and implement a Life Issues and Life Skills Curriculum in our public schools that begins in preschool and extends through the 12^th grade. It is a program that will be required, its funding will be guaranteed, and it will be on an equal footing with other essential aspects of the school  curriculum such as reading, math, English, history.

A Life Issues and Life Skills Curriculum is one where children learn about their needs and feelings, about how to listen, and to be present with someone else.  It is about how to develop empathy, to be able to non-violently communicate with their classmates.

In this curriculum children learn how to acknowledge themselves and one another and how to cooperate and work with one another. They learn how to consciously problem-solve life issues as well as, internal issues and conflicts. They would learn that there are others that they can turn to in times of difficulty and suffering. How many lives do you suppose would have been saved if such a program were an ongoing part of our public school culture?

This education process will take time, money and planning to accomplish the laying of a societal foundation for our children to learn essential life skills. Skills that will allow them to connect with how they are feeling and provide an option to acting out anger against others.  A supportive aspect to this education experience will require a public health component to be created and implemented utilizing media platforms to reach those who are beyond their school age experience. In addition to funding for the establishment, implementation and maintenance of such a Life Skills Curriculum, funding for mental health support services need to be made a priority. The old notion that mental health services cannot prevent mass shooting, so to cut funding doesn’t matter, is not true and is out of the question.

In the adult world there are immediate steps that we can take to make mass killings and the abuse of women end. We simply need to take those steps, now.

An Adult Solution To Prevent Mass Killings - An Update

 It is time for adults to step up and put aside the notion that nothing can be done to prevent such mass shooting tragedies as happen in Sandy Hook, Las Vegas, and Sutherland Springs. In Sandy Hook 20 children and 6 adults were killed in a span of eleven minutes.  In Las Vegas there were 58 deaths, not counting the shooter, and 527 wounded in a fifteen-minute span of time.  In Sutherland Springs there were 26 killed, including 14 children and 20 wounded. In each of these three incidents it was a single angry man who pulled the trigger and caused such carnage.

We need to accept the fact that the three individuals who killed and wounded hundreds of people were angry, acting out individuals. People become angry because they are hurting, feeling emotional pain.  They hurt because some essential need for loving attachment, acknowledgment and security has gone unmet. Their anger is a means of protecting themselves from their hurt.  It is also a way to lash out against and punish those who these individuals feel are responsible for causing their pain. Theirs is specifically an anger management issue where they are unable to prevent themselves from acting out against others. This is an anger issue that is different from someone who is demonstrating irritability, annoyance, or frustration that is within the bounds of normal control for the individual who is having such feelings. 

The important thing is, that identifying someone as having an anger management problem does not characterize all mental illness with a large brush stroke as being the cause of such acts of violence. Those, who have anger management issues, are the specific group we can identify as having a documented police record of expressing such angry acting out behavior. Or, these are individuals who have, in retrospect, indicated unresolved anger issues that are the cause of their acting out behavior.

There are three things that we can do that would have prevented these situations: 

1.  The creation and implementation of a required and uniform background check that is standard throughout the United States that will identify whether or not someone should be prevented from purchasing a gun or owning one.  Federal Law under the Gun Control Act of 1988 is such a requirement. The Gun Control Act of 1988 clearly stipulates that individuals in the following categories are prohibited from buying or owning firearms:

*   Individuals who have been convicted have, or are under indictment
    for, a crime punishable by imprisonment for more than one year.

*   Is a fugitive from justice.

*   Is an unlawful user of or addicted to a controlled substance.

*   Is underage.

*   Has been adjudicated as mental defective or committed to a mental 
     institution.                            

*   Is unlawfully in the United States or has been admitted to the U.S. 
     under a nonimmagrant status.

*   Has been dishonorably discharged from the military.

*   Has renounced his or her U.S. citizenship.

*   Is subject to a court order retraining him or her from harassing, 

     stalking or threatening an intimate partner, his or her child, 

     or a child of a partner, or engaging in other conduct that would 

     place an intimate partner in reasonable fear of bodily injury to

     partner or child.

*  A person has been convicted of a misdemeanor offense of domestic 
    violence.

                      

 In point of truth, many states cherry pick which of these categories they will address in their version of implementing these directives. The fact that the Air Force did not inform the F.B.I. data bank about the Texas shooter’s background is an example of what happens when reporting agencies fail to report those who are not to purchase firearms. Over the years, in cases where reporting has taken place, over three million individuals have been denied the ability to purchase a firearm.

2.  Firearms with large capacity and potential for firing numerous rounds in a short period of time should be ban from public ownership.

Our Second Amendment Right to own firearms for protection, hunting and recreational shooting is not under attack. It is large capacity killing machines that should be banned from their random availability to the public. These are the types of firearms or firearm components that have allowed one person to kill fifty-eight and wound five hundred and twenty-seven people in fifteen minutes. The average citizen does not need such weaponry.   

3. In addition, a Life Issues and Skills Curriculum needs to be created and implemented in all public schools beginning in preschool and continuing through high school. Children learn about their needs and feelings, about how to listen, be present with, and compassionately communicate with their classmates. In this curriculum children learn how to acknowledge one another and how to cooperate and work with one another. They learn how to consciously problem-solve life issues as well as, internal and external conflicts. They would learn that there are others that they can turn to in times of difficulty and suffering. How many lives do you suppose would have been saved if such a program were an ongoing part of our public school culture?

This education process will take several generations to accomplish the laying of a societal foundation for such an approach to learning necessary life skills for our children.  A supportive aspect to this education experience will require a public health component to be created and implemented utilizing media platforms to reach those who are beyond their school age experience. Funding of mental health support services need to be implemented, as well, and made a priority. The old notion that mental health services cannot prevent mass shooting, so to cut funding doesn’t matter, is not true and is out of the question.

In the adult world there are immediate steps that we can take to make mass killings more difficult. We simply need to take them, now.

Is It Fantasy, Fake News Or Fact? Our Survival As A Society Depends On Knowing The Difference

Daniel Patrick Moynihan, the former United States Senator from New York, United States Ambassador and Harvard academic has said: “Everyone is entitled to his own opinion, but not to his own facts.”

Everyone can believe what they want to believe in life. You can believe that America is always right, that God literally created the world in six days, that whites are superior to people of color, that we can say anything we want because we are protected by the First Amendment. Trump has unabashedly asserted, “I know more than the generals, I am the only one who can fix the economy, that I have the world’s greatest memory, that nobody respects women more than I do, that climate change is a hoax that was created by China and, that I speak the truth and everybody else speaks fake news.” Such utterances by Trump are cut from the fabric of his fantasy world.

The world we live in, today, is either governed by such fantasy, fake news or fact.  Literally, this is the political world we face on a daily basis and with each Trump tweet.

Today we seemingly have more people living in their own world of opinions and conspiracy theories than ever before. Facts are equated with opinions as carrying the same weight of reality.  With today’s Internet, a particular position can be trumpeted over and over by a single person or one group or another.

Russia successfully used fake news to influence American voters through the use of various media platforms during the 2016 Presidential Election. Some would claim that such behavior, on the part of Russia, was a declaration of cyber war on the United States.  There are those who would assert that the results of that election were compromised and should not be considered valid.  Some would say, as a result, that Trump is an illegitimate office holder. So here we are.

People often times have a need for things to be a certain way in order for them to feel secure. These folks adopt dogmatic positions to protect themselves from things that cause them to feel afraid. Eckhart Tolle has written “Dogmas…religious, political, scientific…arise out of the erroneous belief that thoughts can encapsulate reality or the truth.  Dogmas are collective conceptual prisons.  And the strange thing is that people love their prison cells because they give them a sense of security and a false sense of ‘I know.’

Nothing has inflicted more suffering on humanity than its dogmas.  It is true that every dogma crumbles sooner or later, because reality will disclose its falseness, unless the basic delusion of it is seen for what it is, it will be replaced by others.”

The problem becomes, as we evolve into a more interdependent American society and members of the world community, we require facts, the truth and the security that comes from living in the real world. Without such a basis in reality, everything becomes a play on the unreal. What can we believe, what can we plan for, what can we anticipate will be the consequences for our actions? Our very survival as a society depends on our ability to make such distinctions.

The G.O.P. A Failed Relic From The Past Unable to Move Beyond “Alternative Facts” and False Perceptions

The mantra of the GOP is that we should have small government, few taxes, support and trust in the free enterprise, insist upon free markets policing of themselves, “trickle down” economics, support gun rights and fight any effort to socialize (people working together for the good of all) our way of life.

Small government has been confused with efficient and effective government.  Their efforts to shut down the legislative seasons of the Obama Presidency proved their point. Government will be inefficient if those in government fail to do their jobs.  All that they proved was that if you don’t earn your paycheck, nothing happens.  They were the architects of this inane desert of a legislative season.  Many of those who supported these folks are now the most vocal in criticizing government’s failures. The rank and file of the G.O.P. fails to realize that they are reaping what they have sown.

The price of living in a democracy is that you pay taxes for services that the maintenance of a democracy requires. Highways, the military, health care systems that protect the health of citizens, money for natural disasters, education, social security, Medicare, support for those in poverty.  We are the Land of the Free and the Home of the Brave, who are guaranteed Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Wholeness. Anyone who thinks that there isn’t a price tag on such a commitment to our citizens is living in a delusional world. The sad thing is that many who support such a view of the world do live in a delusional world.

And, then we have how the tax structure favors the wealthy with loopholes, while those who are middle and working class have to pay a higher percentage of taxes given their income. When there is a discussion of changes in the tax structure, those in power who are supported by special interest groups, favor those in power and special interest groups. That leaves the likes of many of us without representation. 

Free enterprise and free markets are another delusion that is perpetuated on the average citizen.  Greed is a force in our economy.  Citizens need to be protected from the greedy. The free market is not free; we have special interest groups, the Federal Reserve that can set interest rates, print its own money.

The notion of free enterprise has become abusive over the years. The notion that you can have an idea and develop and market that idea and make a living with your creation is fine.  If free enterprise were left on that level things would be great.  When Bernie Madoff or the predatory lenders that created the 2008 recession or the pharmaceutical industries’ working with Congressional support to flood the market with opioids, we have another set of circumstances that are self serving and damaging to our very way of life. Free markets and free enterprise that support the greedy needs to be guarded against for the welfare of all.

The notion of “trickle down economics” has been disproven over and again.  By giving the wealthy the first cuts and what is left over trickling down to the masses and “all will benefit” is a canard of the first order.  And yet, the G.O.P. continues to rehash this myth over an over again as “the truth.” We have Paul Ryan of the G.O.P. who is heralded as the G.O.P.s fiscal genius regurgitating this same old party line. Any mention of support of citizens is seen by the G.O.P. as an a form of socialism and unbecoming of those who have the initiative to work.   

The G.O.P. since the election of Obama has been a case study in how ignorant, intellectually lazy American political leadership can be when it holds onto their dogmatic ways. Their chant was repeal and replace Obama’s ACA for seven years and then, when given the chance to repeal and replace, had no clue how to implement such a change.  This, alone, is a testimonial to how depleted the G.O.P. is on its thinking inside or outside of any box. Their answer to repeal and replace echoes the reoccurring “thinking” of Trump:  “I don’t care what you pass, or who it hurts, I want something that says we have done something, so I can continue to be viewed as a winner.” The party of Lincoln has become mired in the mud of failed political principals and lazy, incompetent political leadership.

The current tax overhaul is the same song different verse of the A.C.A. brain fog that is typical of G.O.P. “thinking.”  The idea that we have the most heavily taxed corporations among the G-7 is a lie. When you take into account all of the ways that corporate taxes can be loophold away, corporate taxes average 24 percent, which is totally competitive with other industrialized nations in the G-7. 

Then we have how good it is to cut taxes for the upper one percent to stimulate job creation.  This is another myth. The working and middle class wage earners are often working at near poverty level wages, with spotty fringe packages, irregular schedules and with little or no retirement plan. The idea of cutting tax credits on state and local taxes, or the interest deduction on mortgages will certainly not help the working and middle class. The problem now seems to be how to offset the tax breaks for the wealthiest among?  Unless there are such cuts, the debt will soar by 1.5 trillion dollars over the next decade. There is talk of cutting safety net provisions like Medicare and Medicate to offset the anticipated debt increase.  The word hypocrite comes to mind when recalling the G.O.P. mantra of the need for “fiscal responsibility.”

The gun rights posse of the G.O.P. responds to the nearly 30,000 gun related deaths each year, the same way that they dismiss the wounding of nearly 500 and the deaths of 40 in a fifteen minute span of time by the actions of one man and the killing of 20 first graders along with 6 adults at Sandy Hook.  Their answer is that nothing can be done. For them, the Second Amendment supersedes our right to Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Wholeness. These folks have sold their soul to the gun lobbies.

Another inherent problem that the G.O.P. faces is, who is their right mind would believe anything that they might say. Who can We, 'the People' trust?  Trump routinely lies.  The party he “leads” lies.  Neither the G.O.P. nor Trump can come up with legislative solutions that will not hurt the average American and yet, they trumpet how great their ideas are before they are blown out of the water by facts.

Governing is not about “alternative truths” or false perceptions.  Governing is about honest, well thought out, reflective practices that benefit all people.  As our world community becomes more interdependent, such leadership is becoming more and more essential.  This seems to be something that the G.O.P. and certainly Trump, know nothing about, or worse yet, even care about.