The tragedy that struck a school in Zamboanga where a school shooting left at least four students dead was another mar on Philippine society. Many Filipinos are now asking what’s happening with the series of tragedies that have struck our schools all over the country. Many are pointing fingers. The best way forward is to really look at this as a systemic problem.
Children by nature are like sponges that absorb the knowledge and culture around them. If violence has become part of their culture it is because they are surrounded by a violent culture. Such influence could come from their family life and their care providers, from their immediate neighborhood, from the media and information they consume online and offline, and the lifestyle that they are exposed to in the human village they live in.
One cannot isolate violence and totally remove from a human society. Just as goodness is in our nature, so is violence as our capacity for evil towards one another. This tells us that the way to curb violence is constant vigilance and building a counter-culture to it. Let’s begin with the second one.
Lessening violence means building a culture of peace and harmony. This entails being kind and teaching kindness to one another beginning with the family. Spouses who are non-violent with one another rear kind and peaceable children, thus, builds peaceful homes and families. Parents must take care that their children are minimally exposed to violence offline and online.
If there is a need to teach self-defense let it be the responsible use of force to defend life and the weak, and never aggression and power-play. I believe in the regulation of media consumption and of accompaniment of youth as they face the reality of the world’s violence in films, games, and pop culture. Weapons should never be taught to children and those that have not reached moral and psychological adulthood.
The most subtle fight against violence is in the culture of language and expression. It’s good to remember that the worst psychological damage to children that predisposes them towards violence is in psychological and verbal abuse. Even if their bodies are not bruised nor wounded, a child’s bruised mind and identity leads to a fractured sense of self and unstable relationship with others and the world.
Violence is not something that we can cordon off our relationships. It is a broken and irrational part of us that we need to keep watch over. Vigilance against violence then is learning emotional self-regulation, listening, and validating feelings. It is only when a creature is cornered that they turn into animals; so does man become more of an irrational animal when that sense of self is cornered, unheard, and invalidated.
We are all capable of violence that’s why we need to keep working for peace and harmony. Violence begets violence. Jesus taught us that the true path to peace is love, kindness and forgiveness.