Letters to the Editor
Retired Military Patriot
Published Letters: 2275 Editor's Choice: 11
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Thoughts from a Glenn blog infant for L.W.M and Mona
[Read the article: Various items]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]“Nobody really knows anyone. Few people even know themselves and most people are more likely to know others better than they know themselves.”
In my own case, the more I know about myself, the more understanding I have of others and their world. When I had to hospitalize two of my teenage sons for drug and behavior problems, the doctors helped me realize that my sons only had a chance to change, if I changed. Once that realization hit me, I stopped trying to control and make them into who I thought they should become and started letting them take responsibility for the consequences of their decisions. It worked. Not rapidly, slowly over time as I started a new relationship with them.
Having learned to survive in a family with a bi-polar mother, I had to wrestle with the question of whom to blame. At the age of 12, I decided that neither my mother, father or sister wanted to behave the way they did and that to survive I had to disable the negative, dysfunctional messages I heard at home and make my own decision about who I was and wanted to be. I concluded that I should blame myself when things went wrong because I knew myself far better than anyone else ever could and what they said or did was coming from their own demons and situation. I had the power of my own independent thinking and nobody could take that away from me unless I let them.
Even with that insight, when I became a parent, I reverted to some of the same mistakes that my parents made until the doctors helped me refocus on myself and how I had gone astray.
After I left the Air Force, I spent 14 years working in the inner city with immigrant children and their parents through our child care program and parenting workshops. The key to helping them was to understand the enormous challenges they faced daily and help them to not repeat all the mistakes I made as a parent. Raising children, as you know, is immensely challenging. I have concluded the key to doing it successfully is not that complex. Help your children to learn to think for themselves by letting them experience real life and learn the importance of taking full responsibility for the consequences of their decisions and when others don’t know how to do that, honor the differences without giving them any power over your own thinking and decisions.
Those individuals who we rightfully condemn daily for the suffering and havoc their inner demons produce, have probably never tried to understand themselves and are buried in blaming everything and everybody else when they can’t control their world and inner demons. It is our fault when we give those in the media, government or politics the power to ruin our lives and the values of our nation. That is why I admire so many on this blog who understand this and want to do something concrete about it, especially Glenn who uses facts and sound logic as very effective weapons.
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czrpb00
[Read the article: Various items]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]“What if we placed more value on lives and hence less "tolerant" of the number of deaths by car accident? How would things change? Safer cars? Fewer large cars? Separate highway system for trailer trucks? Lower speed limits? Harsher fines/penalties? This is why I think things ultimately boil-down to morality/ethics.”
That would definitely cut down the 50,000 deaths a year. It gets me to wonder why we haven’t tried more effective measures. Speed limits of 55-65mph and traffic that averages 75-80mph tells drivers that we aren’t even serious about speed limits. I have driven for 50 years without ever receiving a moving violation. I think it is my fear and ethics that make me give total concentration every time I get behind the wheel. Getting a ticket is only a small part of why I want to be safe for myself, my loved ones and anyone else on the road.
There is something else at play besides ethics and compassion or lack thereof. People feel very independent behind the wheel of a speeding monster that they completely control. Road rage happens when someone feels their control threatened. Rationalization to cut corners or ride someone’s bumper at 80mph comes into play because we want to believe that we are confident, superior beings and that something always happens to the other gal. It becomes really frightening when teenagers, whose brains and emotional selves are far from developed and who may be under even less control due to drugs or alcohol, get behind the control of this deadly monster.
So values and ethics and taking responsibility may be more of a key than societal controls. It’s best to work on the primary problems than the symptoms.
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Risk tolerance
[Read the article: Various items]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]We might also want to keep in mind that there is some brain science that indicates that some brains may be wired to take more risks than others. There is some nature and not all nurture involved.
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bucky 1 Risk tolerance (and practicing medicine without a license)
[Read the article: Various items]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]A good example of how our out of kilter justice system often doesn’t seek justice or do community good. Once again, politicians in their zeal to enact laws that were promised in a campaign to garner votes, mess up the people and systems they have pledged to serve. They meddle with symptoms that have nothing to do with the real problem by taking common sense and judgment away from members of the community or they pander to small, ignorant segments that can be easily manipulated. We could all site so many examples like the 17-year old who had teenage sex with a 14 year old and even when the system says he should be released from his ten-year sentence, he still is in confinement. Now we are back to czrpb00 and my point that the solution boils down to the better teaching of morals, ethics and values.