What will End Violence? Boys Need for Positive Influences And The Monterey Park Massacre

If the fallen can’t perceive of anything better, then what will upend violence? The history of violence done to them debilitates their capacity for eureka! (“Eureka comes from the Ancient Greek word εὕρηκα heúrēka, meaning “I have found it,” Eureka (word) – Wikipedia.) For human beings have always broken barriers. There is no challenge we won’t accept and take on for this is who man is and what he does that has led to discoveries, innovations and inventions in Science and Technology. It is therefore a cowardice position and an ambivalent conclusion to discount ideas that considers the end of violence as just another Platonic conception of a utopic world that cannot and will never exist given human nature or humans to accept a defeatist and pessimistic nature about themselves which then leads to the human fate. The discussions on the podcast episode explored some breaking news story relating to wider social issues and challenges in the world. We explored the state of our boys (or young adolescents who seem to be growing up without positive and attractive influence in their lives. That’s an observation from interviews and discussions conducted in Philadelphia, living, studying and working in and among young black and brown peoples in the city. We are losing them to gangs. I’m talking about our boys in Philadelphia who live in vulnerable black and brown communities who have inherited the cycle of operating within the underground economy and all that comes with that. Yet, they are not far from change for they embody “the power of the YET.” I share my passions/personal stories from anthropological experiences while living in and learning about the life cycle of older adolescence transitioning to Adulthood. In the episode I discuss with Donte Nelson, Co-Producer about how we can help.

We also discuss the issue of Violence. The same amount of violence that it takes to control people requires the same amount of force to push back against that violence. This is a law of thermodynamics from Newton’s Second Law, which states, “The acceleration of an object as produced by a net force is directly proportional to the magnitude of the net force, in the same direction as the net force, and inversely proportional to the mass of the object.” Such is the law of thermodynamics and physics. Yet, violence is the opium of the few and the privilege that continues its position. Violence from below is dismantled, taken to mean criminal, for that is what it is, an attack against a status quo.

When is violence acceptable? Is it when violence used to stop oppression and discrimination or the invasion/penetration of the superpowers? But the world has become sophisticated, violence that disrupts leading to uprooting culture, edifices and nature is defeatist for what good is that for the people who must live off that at the end, something must remain. Then we’re left with MLK & his diplomatic endeavors that only ceremonial leads to gifted freedoms and his demise, or Marcus Garvey Back-to-Africa endeavors which devolved into nepotism or the usual counterveillance of the dominant. MLK was assassinated & Garvey was jailed, deported leading to his demise. The Archaean’s had looked to Achilles the Warrior God-Man as the consummate hero through violence would vilify the Archaean’s over the Trojans for their thievery. The Jews would look to the coming of a God in Jesus who will plunder all and restore the glory of Judah, then picked up by the Greeks in their Judeo-Christianity of a Jesus Christ as the ultimate savior but departed from the image of War and violence to one of Sacrifice and Love. Yet the church had their crusades a violent religious war against another religious group for dominance and prominence.

Today, violence has intensified all over the globe so that even the US today, which represented a new free world with democracy and laws, had its US capitol attacked, by the same citizens who were opposing the decision of its brethren. Through violence led by their leaders, elites using strategy and the usual jargon that enticed the base, led a coup which was an American Experiment by Extremists. Russia has invaded Ukraine, wiping out communities and creating chaos in Europe calling it a world saving mission where he is de-nazifying Ukraine and Eastern Europe. He spares no mercy and stands defiant in his violence based in biases about a particular privilege that he must maintains through the value and ideology of “Mother Russia”. We thought that the 1980s sought the destruction of the Berlin Wall and the fall of the Soviet Union and Communism; but that was just a facade to facilitate neoliberal globalization which old mother Russia would use to its advantage to gain a greater hold in the world. 

Violence is a pandemic infecting even the very young and the very old. Recently, a Six-year-old boy in the U.S. shot and killed his elementary school teacher and a 72-year-old man went into a Dance Studio in the Monterey Park Dance Studios in LA during the Asian Lunar New Year Celebration, shot and killed ten people and injured 10. He later took his own life with his gun, when police had engaged him. Follow the story here. Jamaica is still considered a very violent country with one of the highest crime rates and there’s been a spike in violence in Black and Brown communities in the UK and US, stemming from “Relative Deprivation.”