Zero Tolerance vs Sane Society.

POSTED BY: Fremdfirma
UPDATED: Thursday, October 9, 2025 16:37
VIEWED: 4170
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FREMDFIRMA

Friday, October 16, 2009 3:57 PM

Re: Attachment Disorder.

You know, while this is a dark picture, there ARE folk who overcome or even help such as they can within these systems.

I don't "connect" with other humans so well, never have, but one teacher I had, Ms Chaffinch, deserves special mention for a unique but effective mitigation and partial solution to those issues.

She knew I did not connect to other humans, but also somehow noticed my ability to attach and bond with animals was still present and in fact much stronger than normal - so she got a class pet, a rather enormous lop-eared bunny, and put me in charge of it's care, hoping my attachment to the critter would "bleed over" on my classmates and resolve some of the problems.

She was absolutely right - and I've used that method a time or two myself working with badly damaged and traumatized individuals.

Also learned that lop-ear bunnys are pretty smart, by the end of semester that critter would do all the usual doggy tricks, sit up, beg, roll over, play dead, etc - as well as use a litterbox instead of messy newspaper (that being my idea, since Fluffybunny was obviously smart enough).

I still don't much care for humans, but I got a way with animals that often borders on downright eerie.

Were it not for the decent folk I met within the system, like Ms. Chaffinch, Ms. Dorsey (who used to call me "Doctor" cause she caught me out hiding a brilliant mind under that hoodlum facade) and a couple of others - I'd not think it possible to redeem the system, but so long as there's even a handful of teachers who do what they do for the same reasons I do what I do - that possibility exists, and we'd be remiss in our duty as human beings to not explore it.

-Frem

It cannot be said enough, those who do not learn from history, are doomed to endlessly repeat it

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WULFENSTAR

Friday, October 16, 2009 4:54 PM

Ok, Dexter.

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RUE

Friday, October 16, 2009 6:19 PM

"He proposes that modern workplace and school violence emerged soon after Reaganomics began in the 1980s when the wealth divide widened, and Reagan did everything in his power to support his friends, the CEOs of corporations, while screwing the workers. The result is a corporate culture where Americans work harder for longer hours for less. They have no job security, are buried in debt, and occasionally one of them snaps and shoots their co-workers."

I think that's a fair assessment. The link between economic insecurity and violence is strong. Though my sense is that it's not about the select individual who snaps, it's endemic to a system which treats people as raw material. Sooner or later that becomes the mass ethic.

Look at the neighbor to the north. Its economy and population are a shadow of the US's, but the murder rate is far lower, despite an adequate supply of guns. The reason is that people feel secure and to a large extent in control of their society. And that is due to the government looking out for the people who vote for them. And a people who vote for a government that produces measurable good rather than slogans like freedom ! and capitalism ! like in the constitution !

Then look at the neighbor to the south, where poverty and violence as well as other crimes are prevalent. That country has been traditionally ruled by the oligarchy FOR the oligarchy, and people are mere fodder for the machine. And they know it.

Then there's the middle neighbor. It has a system where people are put in an arena where there is not quite enough to go around - and then forced to compete. The ruling structure is not quite so obvious as the neighbor to the south - it is after all a system of the hidden wealthy and not a historical nobility, and with the ameliorating effects of having been the number one economy for a few decades (about to end soon - welcome to the third world, folks !). But despite the slogans - number one country in the world ! - more people are feeling the threat to their survival as they lose their health and insurance, and their jobs and homes, and often, eventually, their families.

In a mirror version of the old saying: what comes around - goes around. And that's what we're seeing going around.


***************************************************************

Silence is consent.

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NIKI2

Friday, October 16, 2009 9:11 PM

Didn't read all the posts, but here's my take: I saw the story, too, and was as disgusted as I always am at these over-reactive idiocies.

But I don't put it on "society" per se. I put it more on the litigiousness of our current society. If the school didn't do anything, and the kid somehow stabbed another kid, don'tcha think the parents of the stabbed kid would be out for blood (and bucks)?

Schools are over-paranoid about such things these days and ever since Columbine and some other examples, have become extremely paranoid, far beyond logic or common sense. It needs to be dealt with; there needs to be some middle ground between fearing a kid will come in with an AK-47 and suspending kids for a Boy Scout tool.

Add those to the nationwide paranoia and fear ever since 9/11 (and beyond), and it's ripe for over-reaction.

We're pretty pathetic these days; but the reasons are easy to see, just the lack of common sense is ridiculous to observe.

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Together we are greater than the sum of our parts