We all know there is horrendous problem
with youth gangs in this country. There are reported to be as many as 100,000
gang members in Los Angeles alone. Children by the thousands are being sucked
into neighborhood gangs, recruited into selling narcotics, killing people and
being killed themselves.
Why? What is the root cause of gangs? It is
strange how few people ever ask that question. The symptom, gangs (or crime in
general) is viewed as the entire problem, while the cause is ignored.
Unfortunately whenever we are foolish
enough to deal with symptoms causes, one of two things occurs:
1) We violently attack the symptom but all
that does is give it power to evolve bigger than us, resulting in tougher, more
determined and more ruthless criminal adversaries. In medicine, we cause more
virulent diseases.
2) Our efforts backfire, since we have
attacked the problem with no understanding of the real causes and perhaps
evolved our own brutality in the process. We may then evolve to the other
extreme and take the "nice guy" approach: We try what we believe to
be understanding and love. But all that does is to nurture the violence. The
gang member has only contempt for our mothering display of hypocritical
"love” and so society fluctuates wildly between being mean and nice. Both
tactics only feed the problem and make matters worse.
The trouble is that the collective ego of
society exists in a state of denial. We do not like to see our personal failure
as parents. So we project our problems into our children. We are unable or unwilling
to look at true causes because those true causes are ourselves. Every parent
ought to look at their part in their offspring's rebellion. Rebellion cannot
exist without a cause and that cause is parental willfulness and pride
projecting its own internal, personal failing into its offspring, thus making
the child guilty and the parent by comparison "innocent”.
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