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Sunday, July 6, 2025

MINDLESSLY SEARCHING FOR A BATTLE

by

20170131

It is com­mend­able that the Prime Min­ster, dur­ing his state­ment on the re­cent mur­ders, adopt­ed a hu­man­is­tic ap­proach ap­peal­ing to "all those young per­sons who are at­tract­ed to vi­o­lent ac­tiv­i­ty to re­flect on al­ter­na­tives which would pro­vide more ac­cept­able out­comes to their valu­able lives."

In re­sponse to vi­o­lent crimes, politi­cians tend to re­act by mak­ing state­ments which are them­selves vi­o­lent. State­ments such as "de­clar­ing war," "re­leas­ing the dogs of war" "hang them high" all cap­ture the ethos of a so­ci­ety cre­at­ed, en­gaged in and de­ter­mined to con­tin­ue the cy­cle of in­flict­ing pain on each oth­er.

Un­til that state­ment, I have nev­er heard a Prime Min­is­ter de­liv­er such a sin­cere plea to "crim­i­nals" urg­ing them to re­flect on the fate of their own lives.

Not to fear the law, nor guilt from the in­flic­tion of pain on vic­tims lives, but to con­tem­plate the grief and ef­fect it will have on their own lives.

So­ci­ety, movies, mu­sic and en­ter­tain­ment have al­ways glo­ri­fied a young man's com­bat­ive­ness. Young men's strength nev­er seems to be praised for act­ing peace­ful­ly or obey­ing the rules. We are of­ten in­cul­cat­ed to be­lieve that re­spect is on­ly gained by con­quest, and we are on­ly em­pow­ered by mon­ey, women or our su­pe­ri­or­i­ty over an­oth­er per­son.

We are of­ten stripped of any emo­tion from a very young age by the sim­ple and dead­ly phrase of "man up." Cer­tain­ly mur­der is the ex­treme ex­pres­sion of this vi­o­lent na­ture, it is still a re­flec­tion of these qual­i­ties.

While the Prime Min­ster's state­ment may have no tan­gi­ble re­sult, at least it opens a di­a­logue as to why we young men are so very vi­o­lent and how we can chal­lenge that en­er­gy con­struc­tive­ly. Un­til we find such a av­enue, we will be noth­ing more than a so­ci­ety of vikings search­ing for a bat­tle in the scorch­ing heat.

Daniel Khan


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