This was initially posted on September 17, 2012
Why is it that some who expertise violence as kids repeat the sample whereas others think about a world with out violence? I’ve been pondering this query in current weeks.
Yesterday whereas visiting a neighborhood grandmother who’s recovering from surgical procedure, I witnessed a really horrifying scene. The grandmother’s son, who is aware of I ran for workplace on the Inexperienced Occasion ticket within the current elections, stormed onto the terrace, pointed his finger at me, and mentioned with a vengeance, “You must know that everybody goes to be voting for the Golden Daybreak any more.” The Golden Daybreak is the fascist neo-Nazi get together that gained 18 seats within the Greek Parliament and now claims the loyalty of almost 10% of the Greek folks. Golden Daybreak members and supporters have (allegedly) been concerned in a whole lot of violent assaults on unlawful and authorized immigrants because the June elections. The police have executed little to date to cease these assaults, maybe as a result of a lot of them help the Golden Daybreak.
“We will’t go on like this,” my neighbor continued, “we should do one thing.” When his sister-in-law and I responded, “Violence shouldn’t be the reply,” he acquired simply acquired angrier. “Youngsters right this moment don’t have any respect for his or her elders,” he continued. “We have to return to the 1950’s when kids had been disciplined by being hit,” he shouted, swinging his arm in direction of us to reveal. “Are you aware what occurred yesterday,” he screamed, “Three boys got here into my store and solely one among them ordered a sandwich. I introduced him a glass of water. One of many different boys insisted that I used to be required by legislation to deliver him water too.” “I agree with you that many kids on this village don’t respect others,” his sister-in-law enjoined, “however hitting them is not going to clear up the issue.”
At this level, the person stretched his left hand out and began to mime hitting it along with his different hand. “Are you aware how we realized at school,” he screamed, “the lecturers hit us with a stick on our knuckles if we didn’t concentrate.” “That’s proper,” the grandmother chimed in, stretching out her hand and almost placing herself with the opposite, “that’s how we realized.” By this time my coronary heart was pounding. Just like the grandmother and her son, I used to be remembering in my physique the violence that had been inflicted on me as a toddler. “Don’t you are feeling sorry for the kid that you just had been?” I interjected feebly. “Completely not,” the grandmother and her son replied in a single voice, “we deserved it.” As the 2 of them acquired increasingly more labored up, the quiet protestations the sister-in-law and I tried to interject had been completely ignored. Rolling our eyes, we acquired up from the desk the place we had been sitting. The grandmother’s youngest son was hiding within the kitchen. As I left by a aspect door, I mentioned to him, “How did you develop up in that household and prove so otherwise?” He had no thought.
One of many rules of the Inexperienced Occasion is “nonviolence” or as it’s translated into Greek, “no violence.” The encounter described above redoubled my conviction that we should deal with and luxury the cowering little one inside ourselves and our neighbors, if we’re to have any hope of fixing the world. Violence in opposition to kids begetting violence in public and political life shouldn’t be a “Greek” drawback. It underlies politics in virtually each nation on the earth.
