The Root Cause of Our Current Epidemic of Violence

A few days ago, we learned the name Tyre Nichols, for unfortunate reasons. This was the 29-year-old black man brutally beaten and killed by five black police officers in Memphis, Tennessee. While most police altercations are nuanced and not clear cut, this was pretty obviously unjustified. Less than a week before that, there was a mass shooting carried out in Monterey Park, California by an elderly Asian-American man at a festival. These are just two of the most recent examples of horrific violence taking place in our country and our world on a regular basis.

While these sort of things used to be more of a rare exception to the rules of human civility, that sadly have been changing rapidly to become more and more commonplace.

We hear about riots in the streets started by groups like Antifa, people being beaten up in subways, and so much more. I even heard of a case in Detroit in which an elementary school student broke another student’s nose and more over a pencil!

It’s easy to talk about the fact that we need to fix this problem but few people have offered any real solutions. Usually the ones who do offer solutions seem to get shut down for political correctness concerns or other social agendas. While I’m just a regular guy, in my opinion it seems pretty obvious what is behind these issues.

The fact is, we as a country and as a world, have lost the notion of respect.

There is no respect anymore for authority. This can mean positions like law enforcement, teachers, job supervisors or even parents. There is no respect for human life when people kill at the drop of a hat or terminate the lives of unborn babies. There is no respect for tradition. We call out our religions as archaic and long-standing value systems as silly.

While I was never one to blame television or movies and video games for violence, that landscape has changed somewhat as well. Back in the day, when we watched a movie or show, anyone in their right mind realized it was fiction. In video games we played solo or with a small group of friends (in the same room) and the bad guys on the screen where the only enemy. Instead of the fiction in moves, today we often get live footage or real violent events on outlets like YouTube and Instagram, desensitizing us to real and not fictional violence. And we play video games with groups of people across the globe yelling the most horrific phases at them and telling them how we are going to kill them.

No, this epidemic of violence is not about racism or bigotry, it is not about inequity, it is not about any of those excuses often citied by the culture of victimization. It is about respect.

While I can only hope that this problem can be rectified, my humble suggestions to try are quite simple.

Maybe we need to work to get back to having two-parent homes instead of a single parent trying to fill both roles. Sure, there are circumstances when this is unavoidable but that is the exception and not the norm. Maybe we need to allow our teachers to actually have some level of real control over what goes on in the classroom as opposed to having to simply stand by if children misbehave or disrespect them. In the modern classroom, they have little recourse but to let the kids run rampant if they decide to do so. Maybe we need to rediscover the value of church and a sense of values and community. Having lesson and bonds like that can be a major influence. And finally, maybe we need to stop blaming everyone else for our actions and stand up and take responsibility for our own behavior.