Aggression

Is aggression nature or nurture?

This seems to be the hot topic that is going round these days. A few days ago, a couple of us happened to catch a glimpse of 'crime watch' during our lunch break and we broke into a whole debate over exposure or plain exposure to violence leading to aggressive behaviour.

I wouldnt say that crime watch is necessarily violent. I do however, feel that it teaches you the secrets of the trade into the criminality. I've heard comments coming from my colleagues that their children make comments such as "If i were him, i would have done this (insert modified action) instead, and i wouldn't have got caught". This simply goes to show that there is deep processing of what they see and from there they choose to improve on the existing behaviour, which they might not even thought about, should they not have seen the video clip to begin with. So if anyone is to carry out this 'improved' technique in real life, are they then totally responsible for their behaviour? Afterall, it was planned by someone else and it was merely improved on. I would think it is just the lack of consequential thinking.

Moving on to technology. The root of all evil, or most rather. PSP games are beginning to produce games that cause more harm than any good at all. A sudden increase in theft, snatch theft and robbery in society at present, especially those committed by youths, i start to ponder why oh why this is happening. Does incessant usage of these games result in an adoption of identity of what they can relate to in the game? Do they take on the role of the mafia/gangster/robber in the game and apply it to the real world, turning their fantasy into reality? What in the world happened to cartoons like Care bears and captain planet? Why is there a need to only use violence to fight evil- like in power rangers and whatever other rangers there are these days.

Whatever it is, i think this is where pro-social support is very important. As much as we look at these youths as kids and allow them to do whatever they want to entertain themselves in their free time, its time to take a step back and evaluate the harms of it. Would you rather strike when the iron is hot or after there is too much damage done? Think about it.

Anti-social behaviour just doesn’t make life unpleasant. Anti-social behaviour includes a variety of behaviour covering a whole complex of selfish and unacceptable activity that can blight the quality of community life. Such examples seen on the streets of singapore include, unlawful assembly, rioting, glue sniffing, drug taking, theft, rowdy and nuisance
behaviour.

A recent rise in the number of articles addressing the problems of youth, the very future leaders of tomorrow, is alarming. I refer to the article on the 11th of April speaking of glue-sniffing being the ‘in’thing, comparing itself to inhalant abuse in the 1970s. If this isn’t a social issue, I don’t know what else is. The preference to sniff glue(of all things) to attain an intoxicating state is way beyond my comprehension.

I quote the article “Last year, 442 glue sniffers - or 69 per cent - arrested were below 20 and 64 per cent of them were students, including for polytechnics and ITE.” Having a significant majority of them (in the criminal justice system) under the age of 20 is not something that we would want to be proud of. Who do we have to blame for this sudden shift? - Parents? Peers? The media?

Honestly, I think the solution begins at home. Ultimately, parents have a major role to play. Given today's time and space, parents these days tend spend more time in front of their laptops than they do stare at their own children’s faces. They don’t even have time to address their marital discord, let alone address the onset of anti-social behaviour of their children. They think that emphasizing on their children’s education by engaging them in ridiculous amounts of tuition and supplementary classes would make their child a better person. What they do not realize is that these children feel neglect more than anything else. Parents fail to realize that giving their child everything he/she needs to become the next promising leader/entrepreneur of the country is not enough. What they are providing does NOT entail love, care and proper guidance- the very foundation needed for their kid to even exist as a decent member in society. Permissive parenting is not the way to go, at least not these days where children are more naïve and truly experimental. Allowing children to explore on their own is mainly paving their way to their own graves.

Ok, then maybe parents are not the only ones to blame. Definitely not. Some children are just beyond parental control. Others, have the worst of friends. Their peers are their flesh, blood and to some, the air that they breathe. Foul air, that is. Modeling after the worst models (who mainly come from gangs with branding), teens these days experiment with anything and everything out of curiousity or stupidity. Its no wonder that they say ‘Curiousity kills the poor, bored cat’.

Gone are the days when virginity is pure.

Teenagers these days scare me. Yes, they do. For a whole variety of reasons. I work a whole lot with kids, teenagers and young adults. The number of youths engaging in pre-marital sex seems to be sky rocketing, let alone the number of teen sex infections. Whats more, its totally fine by them. Its normal, cool, necessary and there is no remorse or regret.

I've been reading reports and articles of recent times of cases of teenage pregnancies/abortions/teen sex infections, where the girls have been found to have been sexually active from the age of as young as 12. This is where i get traumatised. I'm not saying that pre-marital sex is wrong. I mean, come on, to each his own. If you think you want to have sex before marriage, by all means, thats your call. However, i would expect that sort of behaviour from matured young adults, ranging from an age group of about 21 and above. Why? I dont mean to be a conservative trash-talker but at least at that age, you are pretty much a responsible adult and would be liable for your own actions. When you're under 16 yrs of age, you need parental consent to pretty much do ANYTHING in Singapore. Having the right frame of mind to bear the consequences, should you get pregnant, is not one that is present in adolescents. Think about it. The age requirement to watch a RA movie is 21, for heaven's sakes. How does it then make sense for it to be OK for one to have sex at a age under 21 but meet the requirement to watch a MOVIE that has explicit sexual contents. Thats not it. Not only do they have sex at a ridiculously early age, they have unprotected sex. There is going to be no time for long pity-parties if this goes on.

There is a need to address the early experimentation of sex in today's youth. Or rather, the experimentation of any vice. It might be the culture, it might be modernisation, it might be the easy access to sexual/explicit contents and information online. Whatever the case, it is just not healthy.

If you wanna know.
Teen sex infections likely to hit new high


P.S. Our tiny graduates, fresh out of kindy aren't any better. My experience of teaching at xxx Primary School taught me that. 4 letter words of sorts have become part and parcel of their daily vocabulary. These kids are primary 1 and 2 kids, mind you. What has become of nurturing parents? Is bad parenting or negligence the reason for the rise in such early onset of such delinquent behaviour? Beats me.

Skinny is the new healthy.

Or so they say now.

I've been reading a couple of blogs lately and it has hit me on how the want to be skinny seems to be taking over many teenage girls. The want to be skinny hasn't only hit the slightly overweight girls but girls who are already slim.

Anorexia's obviously taking over. For instance, I was reading a blog just a while ago and the girl was ranting on about how she's too fat and she must not eat. And just below that was a picture of her friend and herself. She obviously knew she was nothing more than a bag of bones. She had obvious collar and hip bones. What more was there to lose, I asked myself. It's unbelievable really. Another example would be my very own sister. She used to be a little plump which led to a starve for at least a month. The starving started fading away after slight weight loss but her eating habits have been pretty much disordered and she keeps looking at anorexic pictures. The definition of healthy and slim have been officially warped. Social comparisons indeed have their devastating effects.

However, people have realised that this has become an issue and are trying to rectify this social misconception. An example would be the Dove Campaign for beauty. They have used even plus sized models for the advertisements which not many other companies do. However their attempts seem to be futile because the social misconception has already taken a huge toll on the society. With celebrities like Victoria Beckham and Paris Hilton starving themselves to death (and advertising this), it's not doubt why the campaign has minimum effect on the society.

People will never be satisfied with themselves. It's just human nature. Like from a slide off our lecture notes, "self awareness can be unpleasent. We will be motivated to "escape the self" by engaging in destructive practices or spiritual practices.". How apt.

To forgive but never forget?

So anyway, i was thinking about forgiveness (not in the religious context) and was wondering if any of us are truly capable of forgiving. This picture and several conversations with my girls later, it got me thinking...do we ask for forgiveness from the people we've wronged to make them feel better, or to make ourselves feel better?

Although i know its a little of both, i think it leans more towards making oneself feel better. When you've been wronged, and the person who wronged you says "I'm sorry.", you don't forgive immediately. I don't think anyone is capable of that. Its more of a conscious effort to forget about it, or to not bring it up again, or to pretend it never happened? Denial?

I'm quite confused about the whole thing. When you say you're sorry, and the person you've wronged feels like crap, i think its more aimed at making the person forgive you, so that you can feel better about yourself rather than making the person feel better. One too many times have i heard, "I've already said I'm sorry. What else do you want me to do?". Like AS IF that five-lettered word is going to magically turn everything into rainbows and butterflies. Oh please, for crying out loud, You never bloody know how a person feels until you consider things from his point of view- until you climb into his skin and walk around in it..

Thats the thing...after the damage is done, asking for forgiveness is selfish. At least in my opinion. "I'm sorry" is different from "Please forgive me". "I'm sorry" expresses regret at what the person did. "Please forgive me" just SCREAMS "Please excuse my actions so that i can stop feeling guilty".

So maybe "I'm sorry" is o.k., but i don't think you should take it as a given that if the person you're apologising to says "o.k.", it means that they've forgiven you because it might be FAR from that.

However, does it really work in the long run? You know how sometimes "Sorry" just doesn't cut it. No matter how many times the person begs and pleads. Most of the time you just say "O.K." to put them out of their misery and to ease their guilt a little, but you still end up feeling like crap. The damage has already been done, and sometimes its REALLY a little hard to see how a "sorry" can reverse the misery of it all.

Before our minds start going way off tangent, just to clarify, I'm talking about big major issues like "I'm sorry you caught me in bed with her. Please forgive me!!!!" and not petty things like "I'm sorry i lost your pen/stepped on your toes".

So I'm wondering, how does one go about truly forgiving another person and going back to the way things were? I don't think its anywhere close to possible...because eventually somewhere down the line, its going to come to a point where you point the finger and go " you did xxx, you #%!$%!% ". Human beings are selfish creatures. Period. Yes, we do have our occasional Princess Di and Mother Theresa's but that's besides the point. We all think about ourselves before anyone else. The sun shines out of our own arses (pardon me) as far as we're concerned.

I'm kinda sceptical about this- the whole forgiveness thing. But i suppose there has to be some form of forgiving going around, despite the superficiality, and a conscious effort on the part of the forgiver to push away thoughts of the error, and to consciously not bring it up again. Even if it does help your present case.

Bottom line.. i think people forgive but they never forget. Which eventually boils down to not forgiving. You reckon?