Successful people don’t operate alone

America's Insensitive Children?
Perhaps unlike their U.S. peers, kids in Denmark—where happiness levels are the highest on Earth—are taught in school to care for one another from a young age.

Contrary to popular belief, most people do care about the welfare of others.

From an evolutionary standpoint, empathy is a valuable impulse that helps humans survive in groups. In American schools, this impulse has been lying dormant from a lack of focus. But in Denmark, a nation that has consistently been voted the happiest place in the world since Richard Nixon was president, children are taught about empathy from a young age both inside and outside of school.

[...]

Another, less obvious example of empathy training in Danish schools is in how they subtly and gradually mix children of different strengths and weaknesses together. Students who are stronger academically are taught alongside those who are less strong; shier kids with more gregarious ones; and so on. The goal is for the students to see that everyone has positive qualities and to support each other in their efforts reach the next level. The math whiz may be terrible at soccer, and vice versa. This system fosters collaboration, teamwork, and respect.

Studies show that this system of interactive teaching involves a steep learning curve. Students who teach others work harder to understand the material, recall it more precisely, and use it more effectively. But they also have to try to understand the perspective of other students so they can help them where they are having trouble. The ability to explain complicated subject matter to another student is not an easy task, but it is an invaluable life skill. Research demonstrates that this type of collaboration and empathy also delivers a deep level of satisfaction and happiness to kids; interestingly, people’s brains actually register more satisfaction from cooperating than from winning alone.

Perhaps, then, it is no surprise that empathy is one of the single most important factors in fostering successful leaders, entrepreneurs, managers, and businesses. It reduces bullying, increases one’s capacity to forgive, and greatly improves relationships and social connectedness. Empathy enhances the quality of meaningful relationships, which research suggests is one of the most important factors in a person’s sense of well being. Research also suggests that empathetic teenagers tend to be more successful because they are more purpose-driven than their more narcissistic counterparts. And if you think about it, it all makes sense. Successful people don’t operate alone; every human needs the support of others to achieve positive results in his or her life. [...]

When I was younger I might have dismissed this as new age twaddle. But I'm older now, and I've learned to appreciate that people are, to varying degrees, interdependent on one another. No one lives in a vacuum, and certainly "successful" people have good relationships with other people.

Empathy does matter. I think we are sometimes resistant to it because our empathy can be manipulated for political or commercial purposes. But regardless of attempts to misuse it, it still has a place in human society. There is a lot of alienation in American culture. You have to wonder, if children were taught to recognize and understand empathy and human emotions, their own and others, at an early age, if there would be less school shootings and bullying?

As a landlord, I've also seen a lot of people, many young people, who seem to have no control over their emotions, and they often end up being evicted, because they lack self control and seem not to understand basic human interactions. They seen not to understand their own emotions, and unable to empathize with other peoples emotions. In frustration, they become angry and lash out, which only makes their problems worse. It does not bode well for our culture or our country.

I'm amazed at how many young people I see, who have everything going for them, who have much more help and resources available to them than I did at their age, repeatedly fail and sabotage themselves. They are angry all the time, and seem to lack basic social skills to succeed in life. Even if one does not agree with everything in this article, I would still say there is definitely room for improvement in this area.

     

Why violent psychotics are not locked up

When I lived in San Francisco, I worked in the security business for 12 years. I remember having to deal with a lot of mentally disturbed people, many of them homeless.

Most of them were harmless to others, but clearly not able to take care of themselves properly or make good decisions without help. A few were obviously dangerous, to themselves and others.

Many on the left gleefully called it the Reagan legacy. And it's true, he did indeed play his part; yet Reagan was just one component. There was a coalition of liberal groups forming a "liberation movement" that had been pushing for release of mental patients from hospitals for many years. In the 1970's, this movement joined forces with fiscal conservatives to empty state run mental hospitals. This movement succeeded in other states as well.

Outpatient centers were supposed to replace the hospitals, at reduced cost. The left said this was more humane; the right said it would save money. When the outpatient centers failed miserably, funding for them was cut. The result is what we have today; chaos.

There is an excellent article by Dr. Jonathan Kellerman in the Opinion Journal that goes into this and much more:

Bedlam Revisited:
Why the Virginia Tech shooter was not committed.

An excerpt about the V-Tech shooting:

[...] Diagnosis from afar is the purview of talk-shows hosts and other charlatans, and I will not attempt to detail the psyche of the Virginia Tech slaughterer. But I will hazard that much of what has been reported about his pre-massacre behavior--prolonged periods of asocial mutism and withdrawal, irrational anger and hatred, bizarre writing and speech--is not at odds with the picture of a fulminating, serious mental disease. And his age falls squarely within the most common period when psychosis blossoms.

No one who knew him seems surprised by what he did. On the contrary, dorm chatter characterized him explicitly as a future school-shooter. One of his professors, the poet Nikki Giovanni, saw him as a disruptive bully and kicked him out of her class. Other teachers viewed him as disturbed and referred him for the ubiquitous "counseling"--an outcome that is ambiguous to the point of meaninglessness and akin to "treatment" for a patient with metastasized cancer.

But even that minimal care wasn't given. The shooter didn't want it and no one tried to force him to get it. While it's been reported that he was involuntarily committed to a "Behavioral Health Center" in December 2005, those reports also say he was released the very next morning. Even if the will to segregate an obvious menace had been in place, the legal mechanisms to provide even temporary "warehousing" were absent. The rest is terrible history.

That is not to say that anyone who pens violence-laden poetry or lets slip the occasional hostile remark should be protectively incarcerated. But when the level of threat rises to college freshmen and faculty prophesying accurately, perhaps we should err on the side of public safety rather than protect individual liberty at all costs.

If the Virginia Tech shooter had been locked up for careful observation in a humane mental hospital, the worst-case scenario would've been a minor league civil liberties goof: an unpleasant semester break for an odd and hostile young misanthrope who might've even have learned to be more polite. Yes, it's possible confinement would've been futile or even stoked his rage. But a third outcome is also possible: Simply getting a patient through a crisis point can prevent disaster, as happens with suicidal people restrained from self-destruction who lose their enthusiasm for repeat performances.

At the very least, in a better world, time spent on psychiatric watch could've been used to justify placing the Virginia killer on a no-buy gun list. I'm not naïve enough to believe that illegal firearms aren't within reach for anyone who really wants them, but just as loud dogs deter burglars and crime rates drop during harsh weather, sometimes making life difficult for a would-be criminal is enough. [...]

(bold emphasis mine) He goes on to explain why it has become impossible to intervene in cases such as this, and how we can expect more of the same, unless we become willing to deal with the facts that face us. This is a must-read for anyone who wants to understand how we have ended up with things the way they are, and what we might now consider doing about it.
     

Gun Control & antidepressant drugs = Massacres

Of course the V-Tech shootings are the main news topic today. And with this tragic story are more calls for gun control.

Neal Boortz has a post on Virginia Tech and Gun Control today that fills in some important gaps left out by the MSM:

This is undoubtedly the worst school shooting, high school, college or otherwise, in the history of our country. There are some facts, however, about some of these school shootings of which you probably are not aware. Do you know, for instance, that at least three shootings in high schools were stopped by civilians with guns? Civilians, not law enforcement. In one case a civilian was traveling past a school when he saw children running from the building. One told him that there was a student inside shooting people. The civilian pulled his gun, ran in side, and confronted the student. The student put down the gun and surrendered. In another case a high school vice-principal heard that there was a student in the hallways with a gun. He sprinted a half-mile to his car. He had a gun in his car so he had to park off campus. He then sprinted back with the gun to confront the student. Lives saved.

There have been many other cases where civilians with guns have prevented further carnage at the hands of killers. The media isn't fond of reporting these episodes because they don't contribute to the cause of gun control.

The point here is that you are never ever going to get the guns out of the hands of those who want to use them for carnage. Never. In all the years of press releases and statements from the Brady anti-gun organization there has never been one single gun control plan presented that would take the guns out of the hands of criminals. This is the oddity of gun control. Only law abiding people are going to abide by gun control laws. Criminals are not. The anti-gun lobby, and that includes much of the media, will never give any fair coverage at all to the people who use guns to save their own lives, or the lives of others.

(bold emphasis mine) When the MSM reports stories about citizens stopping criminals with guns, they often report that the gunman was "overpowered" or "restrained" by citizens - without mentioning those citizens had used guns.

People want more gun control laws thinking it's going to make them safe. But such laws can't and don't keep guns out of the hands of CRIMINALS.



Tammy Bruce, in chapter 5 of her book "The New American Revolution", examines gun control arguments in depth. Many of the arguments for gun control claim to be based on increasing the law-abiding publics survival odds against a maniac. Tammy said about that:

[...] This in and of itself acknowledges that not only do gun laws not keep the innocent safe, they do not keep guns out of the hands of criminals.

Let's get real here - the only thing that would increase the survival odds for the law-abiding public is if they were able to shoot back at any maniac shooting at them. [...]

(bold emphasis mine) We saw a demonstration of that principle in action yesterday. If even only one of those citizens had been armed, dozens of people might still be alive today.

Murdering maniacs aren't exactly interested in being law-abiding, any more than criminals are. Removing OUR ability to protect ourselves does not make US safer.

Pat and I were talking about this at breakfast this morning, you can read more about his thoughts on the matter, which are much like my own, here: The massacre

Was shooter Cho Seung Hui pushed over
the edge by powerful antidepressant drugs?

Also not being mentioned enough by the media, is that in all the school shootings we hear about, the shooters had been on anti-depressant drugs, including the shooter yesterday. Our citizens have had guns for the past 200 years. It's only in more modern times that school shootings have become increasingly common. And a common factor in those shootings and other other mass shootings is antidepressant drugs. Does anyone think that is a mere coincidence? Instead of banning guns from the hands of law abiding citizens, shouldn't we be looking at the rampant prescribing of dangerous psychiatric drugs?


Related Links:

Breaking News updates at Hot Air

Why You Should Own a Gun

Prescription drugs are connected to school shootings and other violence, yet more drugs are touted as the solution