“Tough love needed for kids, says mother of violent teen”, Herald-Sun, 19/7. Wise words of an exasperated and despairing mother of a teenager who has been jailed for assaults. Every week there are media reports of vicious assaults (usually between young males) that leave the victims badly (and sometimes permanently) injured. Alcohol is a major factor in this violence.
She says society needs to get tough with violent youths; and respect, discipline and personal responsibility need to be instilled into children from an early age. She says Aaron, who has been in trouble since he was 16, would have benefited from this approach. Ms. Foster says boot camp-style diversion programs, forced army service, and tougher discipline in schools should be considered as part of a bid to stamp out rising levels of violence. She says violent thugs also should be forced to “look their victims in the face”.
“I think these are great ideas. I’m in favour of anything that will make a difference because I’ve seen and felt the heartache that these violent acts bring,” she said. “There’s a lack of discipline in schools and obviously parents need to take some of the blame. But political correctness seems to have taken away old-fashioned ideas of respect and responsibility. Kids these days know more about their legal rights than they do about personal responsibility and decency. Discipline has gone out the window. The idea that there are consequences for what you do needs to be re-instilled into teenagers. We have become this soft, touchy-feely society where everyone’s a victim and it’s got us into a whole lot of trouble.”
The abuse of alcohol is a curse in Australia (and many other countries, like the U.K. and Russia). In my view it should be regulated strictly like smoking is in Australia – advertising banned, places in which alcohol is consumed to be limited.
In the words of another article from the H-S, “hedonism, materialism and individualism” are the root causes of much dysfunction besetting modern Western society. Traditional-style cultures who get “infected” by Western culture (mainly popular culture) also develop the same ills (evident in the increasingly bad behavior of their children). First it seduces, then it destroys. The social experiment of liberalism (not in the political sense, but more “do whatever you want without consequences”) is a massive failure.
Also, as mentioned in my 11/7/2009 entry, boys need fathers, or at least older father-figures, to properly socialize and discipline them. I would surmise that many of these violent youths come from dysfunctional families.
Traditional cultures (hunter-gatherer and the like) had initiation rituals for their young people so they could earn their place in their society. Such rituals are sorely lacking in modern industrialized culture (getting one’s driving licence and being able to legally drink alcohol are poor substitutes). The society in which I live, though technologically-advanced, is severely dysfunctional and alienated. A phrase I thought of (or heard somewhere) that seems appropriate: “Your cleverness has outpaced your wisdom”.
