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wrong. This can be as complex as an international terrorist
act, or as simple as a schoolboy who bullies his fellow
students - but the reaction needs to be basically the same: If
you truly want to eradicate some form of destructive human
behavior, the first thing you have to do is the hard work to
understand it.
Yes, I know and agree that we need to physically defend
ourselves and incarcerate people who are socially
destructive, but if the reaction simply dead-ends there, you
never get to the root of the problem and thus, you cannot
eradicate it and it will simply repeat again and again ad
nauseam.
But Alan, you might say, do you mean that we have to
actually spend our precious time and money and resources
and our caring on people who did these horrible acts? Yes, I
do! It is the only way we can truly discover what actually
caused the problem in the first place and give us a real plan
to make sure things can somehow improve. C'mon, you and
everyone else in the world has screwed up at one time or
another, would you really want everyone to completely
condemn you and give up on you or would you rather they
try to find out what is causing your pain?
Because it is exactly that — pain — which causes most of
these problems. And making the effort to find the root of
the pain will reveal any possible solution. Of course, there
are some out there who seem to be truly, deeply evil and a
reason for their pain simply cannot be found, but they are
the vast minority and not what I am talking about here.
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