Violence

However the initial praise heaped upon Halloween for It’s portrayal of a previously unheard of strong female character may have been premature due to the almost Insurmountable criticisms heaped upon It by the second wave feminists at the time. Despite attempting otherwise, the film, and the horror genre as a whole, have been misguided In bringing what the audience Is to perceive as strong female character to the screen. Although years have passed since it’s first release in 1978 Halloween can still be viewed by many as misogynistic and over equalized.

Presenting a negative outlook on women, judging them based on gender as well as showing them only as sex objects and devaluing their worth. We are introduced touch Carpenters film ‘Halloween’ through a subjective point of view killing of a young woman, a young woman, who without the directors intended perception of events, has done nothing to deserve such treatment. Throughout the opening scenes of this film we can sense the disapproval and contempt for the sexual actions that both Lane and her boyfriend are partaking in, and while they are both equal participating parties.

We watch as Michael allows the male to leave down the stairs and out of the house unscathed before continuing upstairs to murder his male of course to is be applauded for exercising his sexuality but the female who should pride herself up her purity deserves to be punished for it. This gender inequality is only further enforced when we follow Michael upstairs to his sisters bedroom with a knife, we see him turn his head towards to bed as if to verify that she has in fact ‘defiled’ herself before turning back and stabbing her multiple times.

This behavior of Judging women much more harshly is prevalent throughout history, where the actions of a man would be taken much more lightly then if the same action had been undertaken by their female counter part, even in young children we are taught to view assertive women as bossy and assertive men as confident. Watching the rest of the movie we are shown several scenes where the mans behavior is over looked in favor of inflicting violence being upon women. Pulling up to the mental institution Dry. Loomis is allowed to exit the car unharmed by Michael, even though

Michael would have had 15 years worth of reasons to use the opportunity to attack him, while the young nurse is subject to his terrifying harassment before she manages to escape the car herself. Another such scene occurs after Michael has taken his first victim. In this scene he does kill Bob but does so quickly and only his association with Lynda, we are made well aware of the fact that upstairs Lynda is his primary target and this is proven by the lengths he goes to to torment her before slowly killing her.

What we are left to gather from these scenes of violence being inflicted upon women is that the inequality between genders is prevalent enough to influence a 7 year old boys decision to murder his older sister and develop his view of women in the future. It seems to be a common theme in slashes films to depict women in compromising or sexual positions near or during their time of death, this over equalization of women and their bodies portray them as objects to be view, coveted, desired, or in the case of ‘Halloween’, murdered.

With Michael Myers being 7 at the time of his first murder it would be hard to attach any sort of sexual impulse to his desire to murder is sister, but we are clearly shown a connection throughout the film between the nakedness of women and his desire to murder them. His sister, being the first was completely naked in front of a mirror at the time of her death, Annie and Lynda, while not naked during their deaths, had both been depicted in various states of undress in the sequences leading up to them.

While of course up until the climax of the film it would seem that both Annie and Lynda had avoided being completely nude on screen however we are then shown that both of the girls had been stripped down stormed and left for Laurie to find. In Linda Williams essay When the Woman Looks,’ she writes that ‘there is not that much difference between an object of desire and an object of horror as far as the male look is concerned’ (Williams).

It seems that in slashes films it is not enough to simply show women being murdered on screen, they must sexuality the act by having the women be naked at the time or be stripped down after the fact and displayed for the audience under the guise of Michael Myers perverse pleasures. Of course the act of equalizing the deaths of these women is not solely because halls symbol of the knife, as wielded by Michael, could be used as a means to expend his own sexual frustration upon these women, by means of the thrusting of the knife and the subsequent penetrating of their flesh.

Although this point is disputed specifically in Carol Clover’s Men, Women, and Chainsaws where in John Carpenter is quoted saying, “They [the critics] completely missed the boat there, I think. Because if you turn it around, the one girl who is the most sexually uptight Just keeps stabbing the guy with a long knife, she’s the most sexually frustrated. She’s the nee who killed him. Not because she’s a virgin, but because all that repressed energy starts coming out. She uses all those phallic symbols on the guy… “(Clover).

A fair point to be sure but calling Laurie out on her own repressed sexual urges in no way diminishes the perversity of the acts of violence undertaken by Michael in the first four murders in this film, but actually Just verifies the fact that Michael does indeed express his own sexual frustration through these over murders. Further more, by looking at this film we see violence being inflicted upon women… ND only women, we must draw the conclusion that simply being feminine is enough to warrant your death in a slashes film. Feminine’ in these movies often being synonymous with weak. It is a tried and true formula of horror film to present women in a negative light, as the victim, simply a plot device used when seeking to reach as large a body count as possible. However it has been argued in recent literature that ‘Halloween’ presents the audience with a female victim that forces the audiences identification to shift to that of the female victim and begin relating to Laurie as a throng feminine character.

Once again referencing the works of Carol Clover, she writes that Halloween, in line with the second wave feminist movement, marks the beginning of a more positive portrayal of women in horror films. “Given the drift between Texas chain Saw and Halloween – from passive to active defensive – it is no surprise that films following Halloween present Final Girls who not only fight back but do so with ferocity. “(Clover).

We are being told that the final girl presents the audience with an empowered female figure, but we must now take a look at the scenes which present Laurie as the final girl who ferociously fights back, or perhaps more importantly the scenes leading up to them, for it isn’t until Laurie exchanges her feminine attributes for masculine ones, by arming herself and actively seeking to fight back, that she manages to gain the upper hand and become a serious threat herself.

Through the film we are shown woman after woman being senselessly slaughtered simply for the ‘crime’ of being women and it isn’t until the audience no longer views the final girl as feminine do they find themselves able to relate her and goes she earn the right to survive the horrors being inflicted upon her. ” … The slashes film resolves it either through eliminating the woman (earlier victims) or reconstituting her as masculine(fall girl). (Clover) We are not given a final ‘girl’ we are told from the beginning that the weak female deserves what is being done to her and the only one worthy of avoiding causality is the female who is the embodiment of masculine traits. Halloween fails to depict women any better then its predecessors in the western point in women in horror cinema, perhaps it planted the seeds of thought in the erectors which followed John Carpenter that women could be more then what they have been for the past decades.

Fortunately we mostly tend to see the poor portrayal of women in most of the western horror film and do have many European films to look to which often have women shown as the killer and predominant threat which is refreshing to see. We must hope to see the trend continue in future slashes film where we see women continuing to fight back against the years of mistreatment and misrepresentation. —Bibliography— Clover, Carol J. Men, Women, and Chain Saws: Gender in the Modern Horror Film.

An example of violence against women Imagine the horror of being forcefully tied down, drenching In kerosene oil and being set on fire alive. It would not be a surprise If the mere thought of It Is already disturbing to you. How much more so would it be that this bitter fate is truly faced by many married women in India not at the hands of some psychos or strangers, but by their own so-called beloved husbands and or in-laws?

A young woman is either being burnt alive, beaten to death or being forced to commit suicide at someplace in India, almost every four hours for not being able to provide the demand of dowries. Stone) The word dowry In the ordinary sense means properties or resources that are given to the bridegroom and his family at the time of marriage from the bride’s family for accepting her to their home permanently. Dowry is, therefore, a compensatory payment to the family which agrees to shelter her hypothetically for the rest of her life. (Madam). “The nature of property may be movable or immovable.

Movable property generally consists of cash, clothes, furniture, ornaments, cycle or car and many other articles and Immovable property Includes land, house and shop or actors, etc. “(Hookah, 3) Historically, the dowry was referred as gift given voluntarily and it was restricted only to the Brahmins as the symbol of the highest caste. Today the dowry often refers to expensive material objects demand by the bridegroom’s family as opposed to voluntarily given and it is unfortunately becoming customary across many deferent castes and social groups. Stone) Although dowry is possibly the single largest cause of bride burning as well as other forms of domestic violence against women; the Inequality between genders, an Increase In consumerism and he growing greed of balancing the social status with material objects also serves to be the motivations in committing the crime of bride burning. Oil) In India, a daughter is often neither valued nor welcomed by her biological family due to the severe financial weight of the dowry expectation. In fact, girls are rejected prior to their birth.

Pillar, indicates that detection of a fetus using amniocentesis test have escalated throughout the country and the fetus carrying XX chromosomes are often aborted because the ultimate financial burden of a woman makes a female infant highly unwanted. Rude) The male preference over female Is also due to the custom of husband’s family taking in the bride and thus daughters are taken as temporary visitors in their own home. Even in the matter of upbringing, son’s happiness and success are considered more important because in return sons bear the responsibility of supporting their parents at the time of old age.

Over time, this unequal treatment and abandonment faced by many women from a very young age forces them to view themselves as a minority which then ultimately shatters their confidence and self-worthiness into pieces. This explains why many newly-wed women prefer to stay mute even when they experience brutality or dowry -related violence since they fear or lack the confidence to gear up enough courage in an alien house hold to fight back or report the violence when the dowry obligations are unmet.

According to Rude, some even choose suicide as an escape from the brutality of their situation and to spare their parents the humiliation of not being able to India, a total of 2. 276 female suicides due to dowry disputes were reported in 2006 that is six a day on an average, while the figure was 2,305 in 2005. On an average India loses one India woman every four hours over a dowry dispute, as per official data, despite a series of laws to empower them. (Dowry) The ongoing reality of dowry- related violence is an example of what can happen when women are treated as property.

Hookah points out homicidal burning to be a common method used to murder a wife by the husband and in-law in order to bring forth excuses to explain the incident. The husband or in-law often reports the incident to the police as “a stove burst”, an accidental burn that took place while the woman was cooking on a rimes stove. Or the report may state that my wife’s dress usually it’s a traditionally dress called “share” caught on fire while she was cooking on a wood burning stove.

In case, if the husband or in-law fails to prove the event based upon the evidence, they simply report the death as being one of the suicides. A familiar claim is that the victim burnt herself to death by pouring paraffin oil on her clothes and body and setting herself alight. ” (Dowry) Due to lack of evidence, the guilty husband and in-law often escapes even after committing atrocious crimes and they are soon in the arraign business again looking for a new bride with perhaps an even handsomer dowry. Stone) These shocking made-up incidents are linked to the custom of the dowry system that has turned the very concept of marriage–a pure attachment between a husband and a wife–into a transaction, with no value placed whatsoever on the bride or the relationship of the husband and wife. “For this man or his family woman becomes the ticket to his shortcut richness through the system of dowry. ” The groom side of the family often uses the prospect of a son’s marriage to full fill all the series in terms of articles that they cannot afford on their own.

Women are increasingly seen as commodities and are vulnerable to being treated as replaceable objects because when the flow of dowry ends, they are in a shaky position that can lead to disapproval, cruelty, and finally, dowry-murder. “The driving force behind this process is the growth of the cash-based economy, which has commercialese dowry and further lowered the status of women despite new laws and educational opportunities designed to assist them. Although a dowry system is illegal in India, it entities to flourish putting lives of many women in danger simply because there is no limitation to human greed. Nowadays dowry is regarded, by those who demand it, as reflection of the social status of the bridegroom’s family.. Thus, the more eligible the bridegroom is in terms of social standing, the wealth, the educational and career- related achievements, and so forth the larger the dowry that his family has the right to demand and receive.

These marriages built upon greed–and not upon love, as it should be–brings only disaster in which only women face. The desire for more never ends once the person has been bitten by dowry bite and as a result when the bride’s family cannot pay the amount commanded by the in-laws, the bride is often then burned alive as a consequence. Furthermore, the emergence of consumerism has made it attractive for prospective bridegrooms and their families to use the dowry as a means of enriching themselves at the time of marriage by demanding expensive presents from the parents of the prospective bride.

The desire for continuing to benefit materially from the parents of the bride can take the form of pressuring the parents of young women do not hesitate to the evil custom of dowry. Since it has become very problematic for family with a daughter who is highly educated to find an eligible educated groom due to the pressure that a girl is required to marry a husband above her in terms of education. And it is considered a shameful act to marry a man with a less education.

Thus, the daughters’ parents are ready to pay a handsome amount of dowry. Geraldine Forbes, and other scholars also point out that, in relatively recent times, rising consumerism and the increasing trend to equate social status with material objects has made it attractive for prospective bridegrooms ND their families to use the dowry as a means of enriching themselves at the time of marriage by demanding expensive presents from the parents of the prospective bride.

The desire for continuing to benefit materially from the parents of the bride can take the form of pressuring the bride and her family for more dowries even after marriage. (G. Forbes) To halt the practice of bride burning, a change in the perception of women’s status is essential. It can be brought about by increase in the education and the equal opportunities for women. The hard earned money saved up or dowries should rather be invested in the betterment of their daughters’ future so that they can become and remain economically independent from their husbands or their natal families.

In addition shelter homes should be constructed for victims of dowry-related violence since many women are dependent to their husbands and have no place to go. Further more, the media should use it’ power to publicize the problems caused by dowry and dowry-related crimes. I. E. Asia & Intel L. 277 (2008) Dowry Deaths (bride burning) in India and Abutment of Suicide: A Socio-Legal Appraisal; Madman, Unaligned

Personal identity of individual includes many feature of the individual such as race, religion, profession, personal interests, ethnicity, and language among other attributes. Yet all over the world we see individuals and groups defining themselves in narrow and exclusive terms.

We take the view that, in day to day life, the different aspects of personality remain latent. Social and economic context present a background against which individuals choose to retain these different possibilities or to commit to one of these possibilities and to renounce the others.

Religious Indentity and violence

There are few topics that challenge the capabilities of historians more than religion and violence. When the two subjects are combined, the challenge is only increased. How do historians, discuss the often extreme, or alien manifestations of religious belief?And how should we explain religiously motivated violence—or violence that seems to be inspired by religious beliefs or authorities?

Religious and violence opens up a very territories for our consideration. This is the assumption that religious violence is really not fundamentally about religion that other interests, claims, or identities of an economic, ethnic, political, or even psychological nature are at stake.

With this assumption it seems to imply that religion can be reduced to something else.I certainly endorse the idea that in most situations in medieval and early modern ages, religious violence is “really” about religion. This may be less true of more recent times.

I wonder, however, how consistently useful it is to think of religion as a social identity in medieval and early modern ages. Situations certainly existed in which people assigned religious labels to one another and/or thought of themselves as part of a religious group, most obviously in religious borderlands or in regions where multiple religious groups lived alongside one another.

But the insight first provided by Wilfred Cantwell Smith and subsequently refined by a number of historians, namely that it was only over the course of the late Middle Ages, and especially in the wake of the Reformation, that the concept of “religion” took on something approaching its modern sense of an organized set of beliefs and practices about the divine rather than an attitude of piety toward the gods, is an important one to keep in mind.

And while it is certainly true that many forms of religious violence in late medieval or early modern Europe were directed against neighbors assigned some fixed label such as “Jews,” “Dalits,” incidents of religious violence may have been especially likely to occur at moments when new beliefs were spreading into an area and the religious situation was far too fluid to be neatly defined.

So when public scenes of disrespect to the consecrated host sparked violent Catholic retaliation in France around 1560, the violence was motivated by outrage against those so depraved as to attack God’s body, but the clash cannot be usefully analyzed as one between two groups with fixed social identities.

The violence was all about rival beliefs and their public manifestation and defense—a clear matter of “religion” as a symbolic system. To go from there to speaking of religion as an irreducible identity is a linguistic step it probably isn’t useful to take.

What is the purpose of the daily news? Many will answer and say that the news is there to inform the public, but is that really their purpose. Most of the news that is shown on television is shown in less than two to three-minute segments; a person cannot become informed on certain topics in that little amount of time.

The three-minute segments of news that are displayed on television only give the viewer a watered down version of information from a biased point of view. When a person watches the news one can see that many of images shown are negative towards a certain subject.

The viewer may not see it but the shocking or exciting images being displayed constantly on the daily news must have some greater purpose than to inform the viewer. The greater purpose is to provoke public interest and excitement; this provocation of public interest and excitement through the use of exciting or shocking images, stories, and language is called news sensationalism.

Many people think they are being informed by the news but what they do not realize is that it is not always enlightening, as it should be, but it is instead very captivating. Through the use of sensationalism the news that is displayed on television everyday impacts and influences a person by showing them negative images, using “buzz” words, providing one-sided information, and by restricting boundaries of information.

What types of images are displayed daily on the news? Tune into the news and the first image that are shown are images on something negative like murder, war, violence, and death. News stations display these types of negative images in order to acquire your attention. Negative images on the news grab people’s attention because they rarely happen in a person’s life. People are attracted to negative images of violence and death because they find them fascinating.

These negative images are fascinating because many people have not experienced them first hand; there exists less violence and death now than in any other time in human history. Humans are creatures who have evolved over time from a civilization of violence and death to one that has become more sophisticated and educated.

Therefore, when images of violence and death are displayed on television they show people a part of the human past that was more violent. This shows that humans have some type wickedness inside them because if they did not humans would not sit in front of their television watching news on people’s death.

Now when horrible events occur in this world people can see it on the news, therefore, one can say that human beings have become desensitized to negative images because they are being shown constantly in a continual loop. Consequently, the negative images of violence and death may be showed on the news in order to remind humans of their violent past and to show that these events do occur in real life.

In addition, the negative images help people manage with their current situations by showing them that their lives are not so bad and could be much worse. The continual loop of negative images reflects that society likes the negative because it reminds humans of their fascination for violence and helps people cope with their current situations.

The news media use “buzz” words constantly in their news and headlines to capture a viewer’s attention in order to instill fear and make profit. “Buzz” words, according to the American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language, are type of words or phrases that usually sound important or technical and are used primarily to impress people without knowledge in a particular subject (“buzzword”).

First off when a news station tries to grab the viewers attention they usually use the headline “We just got breaking news,” this phrase immediately captures a person’s attention because one does not know what to expect. After that phrase is said some type of “buzz” word usually follows it immediately because people will not know about the subject since it is breaking news.

For example, when 9/11 occurred it was breaking news and president Bush followed right after the attack with a small speech. In that speech president Bush used the “buzz” words terrorism, bombing, and extremism because they sounded technical to the situation. President Bush’s words captured the people’s attention and impressed them so much that they were instilled with fear and eventually lead to the war in Iraq.

Moreover, by obtaining people’s attention through the use of “buzz” words news stations draw more views, which in turn allows them to get higher ratings and make profit. News stations make profit by selling airtime to commercials, so a news station with a lot of viewers will make a great quantity of money.

Therefore, “buzz” words are used more now than ever before because using them allows news stations to instill fear and gather more viewers which amounts to more profit. When people watch the news they tend to trust the information they are getting because many people are lazy to go searching for information on their own, as a result the news seems real and authentic but in reality the news merely provides biased information.

The news provides one-sided information because it is in the news stations best interest to do so; being biased allows news stations to attract specific types of viewers. By attracting a specific type of viewer it allows news stations to push a distinct viewpoint. For example, Fox news is a conservative media outlet that attracts conservatives, while MSNBC is liberal media outlet that attracts liberals. They each have their different point of view but they cater to people who have the same view as them.

Therefore, when people watch the news on one of these networks they shall only be informed on one side of the argument. This also shows something about the viewers; it shows that the viewers only watch specific news networks in order to reinforce their side of the argument.

Every human has their own one-sided view when it comes to specific subjects, so in order to prove that their view is right to individuals they have to reinforce their biased view in some way and that way is through the news (Eveland). For example, when a person thinks of a Muslim they usually think of a person who is a terrorist and from the Middle East.

Their belief on what a Muslim person is was reinforced by the news coverage on 9/11. This gave many people biased views on what type of people are terrorists; the news coverage gave Americans the false perception that all Muslim people must be terrorists that hail from the Middle East.

Therefore, most of the biased views that come from the news can be attributed to the viewer’s self-centered ideology that they have to be right because the news intention is only to give viewers what they want to hear. In essence, the daily news that is shown is always biased because different media outlets want to attract and give specific viewers what they want. News stations have created restricted boundaries so that people don’t searching for information outside of them.

One must first ask what are those restricted boundaries? These restricted boundaries are the information that is not shown to the public. National governments hold many secrets and if they were to be exposed by the news to the citizens many of them would feel betrayed. If people could not trust their government they would most likely rebel so in order to keep their trust the government works behind the scenes controlling what is shown on the news.

Many governments do this by regulating the media through the use of money by either fining the news companies or allowing them to be tax exempt. Therefore the news can be used to keep people under control and manipulate them.

For example, the media coverage on the 9/11 terrorist attacks was used to manipulate American citizens to go to war with Iraq even though Iraq had nothing do with it. President Bush’s administration manipulated “evidence” on the news so that he could get Americans citizens to agree with him to invade Iraq (Hutchinson).

Everyone in America at that time was so focused on revenge that no one dared question the information that was provided on the news. At that time it was a restricted boundary to question whether the war in Iraq was just; everyone just assumed it was justifiable after what had happened.

It was not until many years later that Americans went outside the restricted boundary to uncover the truth about why they had invaded Iraq. The news was and continues to be manipulated so that people never search for information outside of restricted boundaries because what they might find may not be what they were shown.

The news original intention was to inform the public and provide accurate information. It has changed drastically through the use of news sensationalism. Negative images are now shown so constantly in a continual loop that humans have become attracted to them, which in turn, has helped people cope with their current living situations.

“Buzz” words have also gone on the rise because they have enticed more viewers, which have helped news stations instill fear into people and make more profit. Information on the news has now become biased in order to cater to certain types of people because viewers now only want to reinforce that they are right and justified in their opinions.

Restricted boundaries have also been created by the news so that viewers do not go searching for information outside of them because many people may find out that they have been manipulated in some way by the news that was presented to them. To sum it up, the daily news that is presented now is not what it used to be; it is now a tool used by media outlets to distort the truth.

Video games do not cause violence BY jur525 Video Games: Beneficial or Cause Violence Do modern video games contribute to the increasing level of Violence that is all around us? Can we really attribute the shootings and bombings we see on the news to the increased violence and realism in video games ? These are the questions reporters should be asking. Instead the first question out of their mouths If the suspect Is an adolescent will most certainly be ‘ Was he addicted to playing violent video games ? ‘ If the answer is yes, they look no farther.

They should Investigate the suspect’s background to see If he was violent before he started playing games. Then look at the studies done on violent video games and they will find that 98. 7% of all teens regardless of gender have played violent games(Klrsh, Steven J. ). What Is truly remarkable is that less than one percent of all teens go out and commit a violent act. Therefore this will prove that it is the violence in the suspect not the violence in the game that has led to so many deaths. The findings of many studies prove it is society not video games who has let the gamer down.

It is society who has given them a ‘bad wrap’. The media and most continued to drop as the sales of violent video games has climbed dramatically. Researchers have considered role playing games a double edge sword. They say they are excellent teaching tools but the violent ones teach violent conditioning. This is NOT so! According to Christopher Ferguson of Setson University and the independent researcher Cheryl Olson in her study published in Springer’s Journal of Youth and Adolescences it is exactly the opposite.

Their research found that playing games actually had a very calming effect on the outh’s with attention deficit symptoms and helped to reduce their aggressive and bullying behavior. They also stated that video games could be helpful when used to distract and relax children and adolescence during painful medical procedures. If you decide to do research on your own be careful. Some studies have carefully rigged the results to only give the answers they want to prove correct.

They recorded only the data the showed they were right, that the games can and often does lead to aggressive and violent behavior. If their findings did not show the prime reason being aggressive onditioning and that being exposed to this violence in the games was the prominent reason for the increase it was left out. You also need to check the background of the adolescents they Did they carefully choose only those adolescents that already had a tendency told behavior even before they played the games.

Both these facts could greatly change the outcome of the study. When you are listening to the media take into account they are giving attention grabbing headlines and if portraying video games in a bad light gets them the audience hey crave they will say or do anything to achieve their goal. The media loves to make outrageous claims that video games either “inspired” or “trained” the suspect to commit these violent acts.

They use the rigged studies as their backup even calling them in to act as experts on the subject. For instance Guy Porter and Vladan Starcevic who claim that “while playing video games outwardly appears to be an innocuous activity, the limited data available suggest playing video games may be related to aggressive and/or antisocial behavior. So next time you hear about a video game “causing” an adolescent to “commit” violence remember look up your facts yourself.

You may see that while some psychologists want to include video game addiction in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual for mental disorders most doctors do not agree. Most can see that video games do have considerable potential to enhance the lives of all adolescents. I believe that violent video games directly cause aggression. I also believe gaming is a very social activity which when given the chance can greatly improve adolescent’s lives. Gaming is becoming a common way for the adolescent to communicate with the outside world.

The gamer could very well have friends all over the world as I do. Society and the Media need to deal with the violent aggression in the adolescents that have shown a predisposition for such violence. That until this is done the real cause of all the shootings won’t be addressed and handled accordingly.

Those of you who have read my articles before can probably envision me embroiled in numerous conflicts. To keep from being killed or killing someone, I have acquired fairly effective survival skills. I’m not a pacifist; in fact, people who say “fighting never solves anything” make me think they have been on the losing end of every fight they’ve been in. Or, it makes me think they have probably spent their lives running from fights.

In my experience, fighting solves a lot, but let me be clear here, when I say “fighting,” I am not talking about slapping around Kenny in accounting because he shorted you $2.36! When I say fighting, I am talking about conflict. Conflict is neither good nor bad; it can be handled functionally or dysfunctionally.

You can’t say that!

We’re not on the playground anymore, and in a post-Columbine, post-going postal world, even joking about workplace violence can be a serious offense. I have worked at several companies that had incidents of workplace violence that ended in death; so I don’t want anyone thinking that I am making light of the very real threat of workplace violence. But there is a right way and a wrong way of addressing it, and in my opinion, the best way to avoid workplace violence, even mere workplace unpleasantness, is by de-escalating dysfunctional conflict before it becomes a problem.

Related: 

De-escalation of conflict isn’t the same as conflict avoidance. De-escalation of conflict is the act of removing heightened emotion the antagonists are feeling about their disagreement. Disagreement is healthy in an organization; moreover, squelching it leads to dysfunction, from simmering frustration to malicious obedience. Malicious obedience is one of those terms I learned when I was working for a man I still affectionately refer to as “the Devil.”

You told me to!

Tired of having him second guess my every decision and then ordering me to do something that I knew would be a disaster, I would do exactly what he told me to, knowing full well that it would create chaos. Doing so made him incredibly angry and frustrated because I had in fact done exactly what he told me to do. I fully admit to doing in those days what I expect now of a benighted employee, escalating our dysfunctional dynamic.

Related: 

I would sit smugly in his office watching the veins in his temples bulge and throb, in hopes of seeing one burst, while he frothed at the mouth and sputtered his disappointment with my performance. I can see now I could have (should have?) handled things better. Mea culpa. But when dealing with a dysfunctional environment, it is hard to behave like an adult. Or, maybe I’m making excuses, but I know better now.

You talking to me?

It may seem silly, but de-escalation of conflict begins with the language we use. I used to work for an organization where so much as joking about violence was an offense for which one could be fired. For my money, the organization took extreme and ridiculous efforts to avoid any implication of aggression. There was an Alice Down the Rabbit Hole absurdity to its efforts.

We couldn’t use the term bullet point because bullet, it was believed, denotes violence. No, actually. In this case, the term bullet is derived from the word bulletin (a bulletin being a series of bullets), a usage that predates the invention of the gun. We had to call them dot lists. Predictably, this devolved into a bizarre workplace lexicon that would have made Aldous Huxley proud. We could say positive, but negatives became deltas. Ironically, we could say head shot; something I never understood because it seemed not only violent but graphically violent.

You can’t say that, either!

The thing is, mincing words and weaseling around the point is not really helpful when trying to de-escalate conflict. Quite the opposite, I find it tends to infuriate an already aggravated and aggressive dynamic between the parties. Clarity, understanding and resolution become impossible. And business people want clarity, and seek it intuitively. They coin graphic terms like “one throat to choke” (look it up) to express a common business concept, even as it may create the subtle impression that workplace violence is acceptable — or perhaps only upon outside vendors.

Related: 

So these things don’t work, what does? I found a simple formula work of the de-escalation:

1. Begin by a acknowledging each other’s frustration.

Conflict tends to build-up and as it builds so does frustration. The primate inside us wants to either fight or flee; neither are options that de-escalate the conflict. Vocalizing the knowledge that both parties are frustrated and potentially angry allows them to stop focusing on communicating how they feel and to start focusing on what they can do to move forward.

2. Assume goodness of intention.

When we assume that the other party is perfidious, escalation results. When I think they have the best intentions we can discuss our positions dispassionately and assertively. I admit it can be very difficult to give someone the benefit of the doubt, especially if they have screwed us over the past, but you really have to get beyond that if you’re going to achieve any mastery of conflict de-escalation.

3. Make sure all parties have expressed how they feel.

This may sound soft-headed, but it’s really important. Unless we talk about the emotions we’re feeling, they will always get in the way of trying to solve a problem. Maybe you have experienced, as I have, an exchange where the other person keeps deflecting or trying to change the subject, to rationalize their own dysfunctional behavior. As goofy as it may sound, too many people get so wrapped up in winning that they cannot see a compromise is anything but a defeat.

4. Apologize.

An apology can go a long way in mending a relationship, even when you’re too pig-headed to admit you’re wrong. You may actually feel as if you have done nothing wrong, and maybe you haven’t, but the fact remains that your actions created the perception of an attack or insult, and I think we can all agree that we want to prevent kind of this perception.

5. Fess up when you mess up.

Sometimes our egos prevent us from doing what’s right — in this case, admitting when we screwed up. Something this simple can greatly reduce the heightened emotional state. You gotta give a little. De-escalation relies on both parties being able to see another person’s point of view. They must be willing to give a little bit. By becoming able to compromise, they free themselves and each other to work toward the win/win.

Can schools really be 100% safe for students? I have heard a lot about violent activities that have been happening in schools not only colleges, but elementary schools as well. People are shooting and killing innocent people. “The National Safety Center believes that schools have the choice to create and maintain safe schools or return to their institutions to safe, secure and effective places of learning”. So, why are we letting this happen? We need to make some changes to make our schools a safer place for students.

There is no reason students should be endangered while in school. I honestly believe that you cannot make every school 100% safe for its students because, schools don’t have enough security and precautions, people are not aware, and students don’t have enough support, or people to talk to one on one. Schools cannot be 100% safe for their students without enough security and precautions. Almost all schools have security such as, locked doors, cameras, and alarms, but that didn’t stop all of the violence that has happened.

For example, “A shooting rampage in this small Connecticut town left 28 people dead, including 20 children killed inside their elementary school, authorities said” known as Sandy Hook. Now obviously, schools were not taking precautions at all. This person went in an Elementary School and killed all those innocent children. I think that if there was security that would of never happened. Maybe if they try new safety tricks, things like this would not happen. What if you had to swipe a student card to get in the premises?

Another thought, metal detector would come in handy so that people could not get away with bringing weapons through the doors. There should be no reason why people are being able to get away with killing innocent people in schools without any warning. Yeah, it may cost a little more money to put more security in schools, but its well worth our safety. These people are getting away with killing those innocent students and I think it’s sad to think this person was in that school and no one even noticed him. Another reason why schools cannot be 100% safe is because people aren’t aware as they should be.

Half the time people don’t pay that much attention to all the people they see. They wouldn’t know if they go to the school or not. At a lot of schools, the doors are always open. The schools are pretty much welcoming anyone to come in. Especially in colleges, students are allowed to come and go as they please so, how would anyone know who’s coming in or who’s gone all the time. Schools need to have a check and go system or something of the sort. You should always be aware of your surroundings. Also, people talk a lot and we never know if there being serious or not.

When someone were to talk about shooting up the school or bombing, most people would probably laugh and think it’s a Joke because, most teenagers especially are caught up more in themselves then other people. People fail to realize the seriousness of violence. We think it would never happen to our school, but we wonder why it is happening to so many. This trend seems to be continuous. I believe schools are targeted a lot because, there is a large amount of people in one place. It is easy for the person committing the crime to take out a bunch of people at once when all in the same area.

I think the criminals commit these violent acts in schools because, of personal interest. I believe that they are driven to act out on innocent people by violent video games or following violent acts such as, Hitler. Some people don’t know how to separate what is real and aka in the world. So when playing violent video games all the time could trigger violence in their head, making them want to act out. As for the Hitler act, some people look up to him as an idol and want to follow his footsteps. They feel by harming others, they are honoring him.

Or, maybe some people do these violent acts to make an impact. What if they want to be remembered for something and hurting people is the only thing they know in their head what to do that will make them noticed. It’s a cry out for attention. (CNN) “Twenty-three year old Sung-Huh Choc killed 32 people on he Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University campus in Blackburn, Virginia, before taking his own life”. It makes me wonder why not only did this boy kill all those people, but he killed himself after.

What was he thinking? This brings me to another point in which schools need more people available to talk to one on one with students? Now, I know every school has counselors for students to talk to but, some of the counselors don’t have experience that these students need. It’s easier to talk with someone when you can relate to that person. I feel that if students could feel unforgettable talking with a counselor, they could most definitely let out a lot of thoughts in their head, and get more things off their shoulders.

I feel that most people don’t feel comfortable talking to a counselor, so maybe if they tried to understand and relate, these students would be more open. Most people act out because, they have know where for these emotions to go, so they Just let them all out in the wrong way related to violence. People think that letting aggression out on others will solve their problems but, it doesn’t. Counselors could really be helping dents with all this to make it a safer place for everyone. I personally think that schools cannot be 100% safe when students are crying out for help and don’t know what direction to go.

Everyone needs some type of support in their lives. When you have no one to talk to, you bottle everything up and eventually it’s all going to come out. I really believe that being able to set your mind free of worry or negative thoughts, can and will make a better and safer person. All of these things are ways we can make schools a safer place for students, but it will never be a 100% safe place until these things start to happen. Until we get all this new security and take more precautions were Just opening the doors for more unwelcome visitors.