Monday, November 5, 2018

Hostility in America Part 3


Hostility in America Part 3
Masochism is turning the drive or need for aggression inward towards self. It’s accepting injury, blame, criticism and even punishment. It’s even seeking out and enjoying pain, illness and misfortune. Look at the statistics on obesity, the leading causes of death, alcohol, drug, and opioid abuse and one sees numerous errors in rational judgment, coupled with self-inflicted harm. Violent inward directed behavior and irrational thinking with a faulty belief system are also on the rise.
Aggression, has also been viewed as reactive arising from unfortunate childhood experiences. In fact, Karen Horney, suggested that aggressive behavior was one way in which a person can cope with basic anxiety. Other researchers suggested that aggression was reactive to additional factors of frustration, anxiety or stress. This means that aggression was one of a number of possible responses to frustration. Certainly, in today’s capitalistic world, we have what seems to be an unlimited number of resulting frustrations, ranging from corporations hiring part-timers without benefits; downsizing with jobs going overseas; competition from robots and highly skilled others; tax cuts for the 1%; increasing debt; rising prices or inflation; loss of health benefits, etc.
Other man made frustrations include death or divorce; physical illness or poor health; to name a few. There are many reactions to frustration and anxiety, and not all lead to death and destruction of self or others. However, for those despicable individuals that express inhuman acts toward others, we find inadequate impulse control, fragileness of ego; impaired superego or social conscience; lack of integrity; and being a taker. Also apparent is the narcissist character who lacks the ability for affiliation, the inability to love  and care for others. These Homo sapiens characteristics, along with the many man made stressors are the ingredients and background for crimes against humanity.
To Be Continued

Saturday, November 3, 2018

Hostility in America Part 2


Hostility in America Part 2
 Despite the number of hate crimes on the decrease since  the early 1990’s, hate crimes in the nation’s 10 largest cities increased by 12%, reaching the highest level in more than a decade, reported by the Center for the Study of Hate and Extremism . Brian Levin, the director stated “Crimes motivated by race or ethnicity bias are consistently the most common type of reported hate crime, and African-Americans are the most targeted group, representing 23% of all hate crimes reported in major cities to us in 2017. Jews are consistently the most targeted religious group, and represented 90% of all the crimes reported in major cities in 2017.” He added that “there’s a massive underreporting of crimes in certain communities like transgender, disabled, homeless, immigrant and Muslim groups, who tend to feel maligned by negative public stereotypes, but simultaneously fearful of repercussions from reporting crimes to the police.” Further, “There is also underreporting by law enforcement agencies that choose not to supply data for those FBI statistics, or report, no hate crimes in their jurisdictions.”  This is troubling and unconscionable.
The above indicators are symptoms of widespread irrational, discriminatory, destructive and hateful behavior directed toward self and others. The data demonstrates the severity of the dysfunction in our society.  Why aren’t the politicians or media addressing this epidemic?
Now, let’s take a brief look at two ideas pertaining to the nature or dynamics of Homo sapiens regarding behavior in terms of anger and the expression of aggression. First, is that Homo sapiens have a death instinct which drives destructive, hostile and aggressive impulses. This instinct, or drive is directed mainly towards others.  Aggression has been described as fighting; attacking injuring or killing another; and as revenge or punishing another. This drive coupled with a narcissism character trait can be a deadly combination. With extreme narcissism, it’s a state in which only the person himself, his body, his needs, his feelings, his  thoughts, his property and everybody pertaining to him are experienced as  fully real . On the other hand, everybody and everything that is not part of the person or is not an object of his needs, is not interesting, and not fully real. For the narcissist, only   what pertains to him has significance. Unfortunately, the rest of the world is perceived as warrantless or as weakness. This character style results with severe defects in rational judgment and the impairment of objectivity.  As a consequence, the narcissist has little difficulty exhibiting and directing aggression or sadism towards another. Remember, hate is  an intense or passionate dislike for someone else. Thus, hate along with violent acting out behavior is on the rise. Outrage is where?
To Be Continued

Friday, November 2, 2018

Hostility in America



I’m disgusted with the mental illness and the insanity in our country. We recently witnessed numerous pipe bombs sent in the mail to various individuals in the Democratic Party and the murders of members of a Pittsburgh Tree of Life Synagogue during a religious service. 
These two examples of hateful violence question sanity. Even though we are the most powerful country in the world, we know that we rank poorly compared to other industrial nations as far as happiness [we’re not in the top 10], life expectancy [we’re not in the top 10], and income inequality [we’re number 1]. One way to view our mental health is to take a look at the data regarding suicide, homicide, alcohol, drug use and hate crimes. The following statistics are alarming and point to its threat.
According to information provided by Gun Violence Archive, in 2018, we’ve had 47,220 gun incidents. From this total, there were 11,984 deaths due to guns.  However, that does not include 22,000 suicides. In addition, only 3.1% of the total of incidents involved were for a defensive use of weapons. So much for the rationalization that a gun makes one safer.
For a look at the 10 leading causes of death for Americans ages 15 to 24, three of the 10 include suicide, homicide, drugs and alcohol.  In fact, suicide is one of the top 10 leading causes of death in the United States. Furthermore, two age group populations have the most suicide mortality -those under 25 years of age or 15.8% and those over 65 years of age or 13.3%.
In the medical Journal Lancet, it was reported that drinking alcohol was associated with nearly 1 in 10 deaths of people ages 15 to 49. The researchers reported that in their opinion, there was no amount of alcohol that was healthy. Turning to drug use, there’s an estimated increase in illicit drug use for Americans aged 12 or older, since 2002.Moreover, in 2016, there were 214 million prescriptions written for opiate pain medication. This is a rate of 66.5 prescriptions per 100 people. Further, one in five people receive prescription opiates, long-term for non-cancer pain in primary care settings.
To Be Continued