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Violence Against Children: UN Gets It Wrong

By Robert J. Burrowes

29 October, 2014
Countercurrents.org

The United Nations has just issued a report, 'Why Children's Protection
from Violence should be at the Heart of the Post-2015 Development
Agenda'
http://srsg.violenceagainstchildren.org/sites/default/files/
publications_final/why_childrens_protection_from_violence_
should_be_at_the_heart_of_%20the_post_2015_development_agenda.pdf

This is a worthy ideal.

Unfortunately, the UN Report does not identify the fundamental cause of
violence. Hence, its recommendations, which obviously cannot and do not
include addressing this cause, are effectively useless and this report
will have as much impact as previous official attempts to reduce
violence in our world. Given that human violence now has us on the brink
of precipitating our own extinction, it is time we faced the truth and
responded meaningfully to it.

While the report, issued by Marta Santos Pais, Special Representative of
the UN Secretary-General on Violence against Children, did some
apparently good things (such as consulting children) and made some
superficially attractive (if obvious) recommendations, apart from
failing to identify the cause of violence and offering a strategy to
address this, the report was also directed at the wrong audience:
'national governments and the international community'. This is the
wrong audience because killing children is an intended outcome of the
global elite's military and economic policies which are designed to
consolidate elite power and corporate profit at the expense of the rest
of us and the Earth itself. Why does the global elite do this? Because
they are insane. If you think this claim is overstated, see 'The Global
Elite is Insane' http://www.countercurrents.org/burrowes050214.htm

The report also put too much emphasis on tools such as schooling and
'the rule of law' without critiquing these. See 'Do We Want School or
Education?' http://www.countercurrents.org/burrowes310713.htm and 'The
Rule of Law: Unjust and Violent'
http://www.countercurrents.org/burrowes130813.htm

Rather than waste any more time on this UN report, let me briefly
explain the cause of violence in our world and invite you to do
something very personal and effective about it.

Perpetrators of violence learn their craft in childhood. If you inflict
violence on a child, it learns to inflict violence on others. The
terrorist suffered violence as a child. The political leader who wages
war suffered violence as a child. The man who inflicts violence on women
suffered violence as a child. The corporate executive who exploits
working class people or those who live in Africa, Asia or Central/South
America suffered violence as a child. The individual who perpetrates
violence in the home, in the schoolyard or on the street suffered
violence as a child.

If we want to end violence, war and exploitation then we must finally
end our longest and greatest war: the adult war on children. And here's
an incentive: if we do not tackle the fundamental cause of violence,
then our combined and unrelenting efforts to tackle all of its other
symptoms must ultimately fail. And extinction at our own hand is
inevitable.

How can I claim that violence against children is the fundamental cause
of all other violence? Consider this. There is universal acceptance that
behaviour is shaped by childhood experience. If it was not, we would not
put such effort into education and other efforts to socialize children
to fit into society. And this is why many psychologists have argued that
exposure to war toys and violent video games shapes attitudes and
behaviours in relation to violence.

But it is far more complex than this and, strange though it may seem, it
is not just the 'visible' violence (such as hitting, screaming at and
sexually abusing) that we normally label 'violence' that causes the main
damage, although this is extremely damaging. The largest component of
damage arises from the 'invisible' and 'utterly invisible' violence that
we adults unconsciously inflict on children during the ordinary course
of the day. Tragically, the bulk of this violence occurs in the family
home and at school. See 'Why Violence?' http://tinyurl.com/whyviolence
and 'Fearless Psychology and Fearful Psychology: Principles and
Practice'
http://anitamckone.wordpress.com/articles-2/fearless-and-fearful-psychology/

So what is 'invisible' violence? It is the 'little things' we do every
day, partly because we are just 'too busy'. For example, when we do not
allow time to listen to, and value, a child's thoughts and feelings, the
child learns to not listen to themSelf thus destroying their internal
communication system. When we do not let a child say what they want (or
ignore them when they do), the child develops communication and
behavioral dysfunctionalities as they keep trying to meet their own
needs (which, as a basic survival strategy, they are genetically
programmed to do).

When we blame, condemn, insult, mock, embarrass, shame, humiliate,
taunt, goad, guilt-trip, deceive, lie to, bribe, blackmail, moralize
with and/or judge a child, we both undermine their sense of Self-worth
and teach them to blame, condemn, insult, mock, embarrass, shame,
humiliate, taunt, goad, guilt-trip, deceive, lie, bribe, blackmail,
moralize and/or judge.

The fundamental outcome of being bombarded throughout their childhood by
this 'invisible' violence is that the child is utterly overwhelmed by
feelings of fear, pain, anger and sadness (among many others). However,
parents, teachers and other adults also actively interfere with the
expression of these feelings and the behavioral responses that are
naturally generated by them and it is this 'utterly invisible' violence
that explains why the dysfunctional behavioral outcomes actually occur.

For example, by ignoring a child when they express their feelings, by
comforting, reassuring or distracting a child when they express their
feelings, by laughing at or ridiculing their feelings, by terrorizing a
child into not expressing their feelings (e.g. by screaming at them when
they cry or get angry), and/or by violently controlling a behavior that
is generated by their feelings (e.g. by hitting them, restraining them
or locking them into a room), the child has no choice but to
unconsciously suppress their awareness of these feelings.

However, once a child has been terrorized into suppressing their
awareness of their feelings (rather than being allowed to have their
feelings and to act on them) the child has also unconsciously suppressed
their awareness of the reality that caused these feelings. This has many
outcomes that are disastrous for the individual, for society and for
nature because the individual will now easily suppress their awareness
of the feelings that would tell them how to act most functionally in any
given circumstance and they will progressively acquire a phenomenal
variety of dysfunctional behaviors, including some that are violent
towards themself, others and/or the Earth.

  From the above, it should also now be apparent that punishment should
never be used. 'Punishment', of course, is one of the words we use to
obscure our awareness of the fact that we are using violence. Violence,
even when we label it 'punishment', scares children and adults alike and
cannot elicit a functional behavioural response. If someone behaves
dysfunctionally, they need to be listened to, deeply, so that they can
start to become consciously aware of the feelings (which will always
include fear and, often, terror) that drove the dysfunctional behaviour
in the first place. They then need to feel and express these feelings
(including any anger) in a safe way. Only then will behavioural change
in the direction of functionality be possible.

'But these adult behaviors you have described don't seem that bad. Can
the outcome be as disastrous as you claim?' you might ask. The problem
is that there are hundreds of these 'ordinary', everyday behaviors that
destroy the Selfhood of the child. It is 'death by a thousand cuts' and
most children simply do not survive as Self-aware individuals. And why
do we do this? We do it so that each child will fit into our model of
'the perfect citizen': that is, obedient and hardworking student,
reliable and pliant employee/soldier, and submissive law-abiding
citizen.

Moreover, once we destroy the Selfhood of a child, it has many flow-on
effects. For example, once you terrorise a child into accepting certain
information about themself, other people or the state of the world, the
child becomes unconsciously fearful of dealing with new information,
especially if this information is contradictory to what they have been
terrorised into believing. As a result, the child will unconsciously
dismiss new information out of hand. In short, the child has been
terrorised in such a way that they are no longer capable of learning (or
their learning capacity is seriously diminished by excluding any
information that is not a simple extension of what they already 'know').
If you imagine any of the bigots you know, you are imagining someone who
is utterly terrified. But it's not just the bigots; virtually all people
are affected in this manner making them incapable of responding
adequately to new information. This is one explanation why some people
are 'climate deniers'.

So if we want to end human violence, we must tackle all of its symptoms
simultaneously but, as part of our strategy, we must also tackle the
cause. Primarily, this means giving everyone, child and adult alike, all
of the space they need to feel, deeply, what they want to do, and to
then let them do it (or to have the feelings they naturally have if they
are prevented from doing so). In the short term, this will have some
dysfunctional outcomes. But it will lead to an infinitely better overall
outcome than the system of emotional suppression, control and punishment
which has generated the incredibly violent world in which we now find
ourselves.

This all sounds pretty unpalatable doesn't it? So each of us has a
choice. We can suppress our awareness of what is unpalatable, as we have
been terrorised into doing as a child, or we can feel the various
feelings that we have in response to this information and then ponder
ways forward. If feelings are felt and expressed then our responses can
be shaped by the conscious and integrated functioning of thoughts and
feelings, as evolution intended, and we can plan intelligently. The
alternative is to have our unconscious fear controlling our thinking and
deluding us that we are acting rationally.

It is time to end the adult war on children so that all of the other
violence that emerges from this cause can end too. So what do we do?

Well, if you are willing, you can make the commitment outlined in 'My
Promise to Children' http://www.countercurrents.org/burrowes061113.htm .
You can also consider participating in 'The Flame Tree Project to Save
Life on Earth' http://tinyurl.com/flametree which maps out a
fifteen-year strategy for creating a peaceful, just and sustainable
world community so that all children have an ecologically viable planet
on which to live. And, if you like, you can join the worldwide movement
to end all violence by signing online 'The People's Charter to Create a
Nonviolent World' http://thepeoplesnonviolencecharter.wordpress.com

Human beings have a simple choice. We can acknowledge the painful truth
that we inflict enormous violence on our children and respond powerfully
to that truth. Or we can keep deluding ourselves and, very soon now,
walk powerlessly off the cliff edge to extinction. What is your choice?

Robert J. Burrowes has a lifetime commitment to understanding
and ending human violence. He has done extensive research since 1966 in
an effort to understand why human beings are violent and has been a
nonviolent activist since 1981. He is the author of 'Why Violence?'
http://tinyurl.com/whyviolence His email address is [email protected]
and his website is at http://robertjburrowes.wordpress.com

 




 

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