Again my new insightful friend on the blogospehere, Steve Olson, has posted another thought provoking topic: . While I don t totally agree with Steve s conclusions, I very much appreciate his transparency and his candor on his own experiences with criminality. You should read his post.
He makes some excellent points on the general populous incorrectly assigns blame on music, movies as triggers that push an individual to criminality.
I am posting my comments to his post on my blog. I believe that the lack of validation, whether withheld for reasons of sarcasm, self-protection, cruelty, ignorance or selfishness, is last full step before reaching what is possibly the worst of all things desperation.
Without further ado
Steve - As always, very interesting insights. I have always been the choir boy, so I don’t claim to understand the criminal mindset. However being the choir boy, I can say that I’ve seen my fair share of hurting people.
I’ve also seen hundreds of people who thought that they were helping the hurting by offering dogma or procedure.
If I can be so bold let me offer another reason why people make self-defeating decisions. Without exception, everyone that I have ever known, counseled or conversed with was lacking something so natural, so fundamental that each of them was willing to try anything to fill the void.
You thought I was going to say God! Nope, even though I was the choir boy.
They lacked validation.
Validation is the most basic need that we have once we have met the minima of basic survival needs. Some people confuse acceptance with validation, but acceptance can be little more than begrudging patronization. This basic need is why people search for peers that will validate them -or- their actions.
This is also a key factor to why our youth, generation after generation, is perpetually at risk to make the same mistakes that we made. We know the pain in front of their questionable decisions, but don’t validate the feelings that led to those decisions. You can’t keep yourself from being angry.
You can only choose how you act in accordance with the feeling.
A lack of validation, no matter how mentally tough or introverted the person, leads directly to despair. Desperation always leads to avoiding logic and over-relying on emotion.
Feeling without thought, especially in the case of being invalidated, leads to self-destructive behavior. If you think that other people don’t value you, you’re much less likely to value yourself. So you take risks…with your own life…with other people’s lives…
As a society, our rugged individualism lends itself to marginalizing the desire for validation as something which signifies weakness.
I know that when I fail in my own relationships, which are so white-collar that I’m out of my league when discussing the criminal mind, it is because I fail to validate someone in a manner that they so desperately desire.
Movies, music and videos don’t cause the behaviors. However, I believe that they those media do reinforce those behaviors.
Every message we reinforce repeatedly, like music, does have a subconscious effect on us no matter how much we choose to believe otherwise.
Listening to “heavy metal” and watching Die Hard doesn’t make someone a derelict, regardless of what the Moral Majority may say. Even so I can say that, personally, when I pull out my Soundgarden CD or catch one of those shows late at night on Showtime that has _all_ of the content warnings I know that afterward that I am going to feel more intense, more violent and more judgmental.
Why do I watch those movies when I know that they will effect me so?
Perhaps that’s a topic for another day.
You shouldn t be surprised, but I m back at it again with a line from a movie.
In Batman Begins, Liam Neeson s character offers the following thought
Batman Begins has quickly become one of my favorite movies. I ve always wanted to be the swashbuckler-Jedi-rescue-hero, so I think that there is appeal for me in the many ways that I could relate to this version of Bruce Wayne s character. Despite my desire to be the defender of all noble, I find myself drawn into this movie due to its brutal honesty.
As Wayne searches for his own identity through his alter-ego, there are many nuggets of wisdom sprinkled in. My chosen quote is one of many, but it is the quote that struck a chord on my search for grace.
When I first heard this quote in the movie, it resonated within me deeply.
I had never considered the notion in quite those terms. Despite my first reactions, and after careful consideration, I disagree. Criminals thrive through perceived power generated from their own fear, anger, lust or dementia.
So if the quote is wrong, then why did it seem to ring so true the first time I heard it? I think that the answer is buried in our own fears, romanticism, desire to improve on those who have failed us or our hidden desire to think of society s progression toward enlightenment.
Most of us fear that when we are accused of something that we will receive redemption or absolution as appropriate.
We search for understanding, but for selfish reasons as if the tables were turned. Often we are not as sorry for the wrong as we are sorry that we have to face the consequences of the wrong. In the moment of someone else s crisis we reflect back on the understanding extended to us and want to extend that understanding to others, often even when we know mentally that we are about to be let down.
We give understanding to those in need, those who cannot receive understanding for themselves.
We also give understanding as a reaction to the times where we were not extended understanding. Our own petty feelings for superposition over those who we resent for not being understanding at times brings us to give our understanding but only for selfish reasons.
Our motives taint the gift, making it little more than words.
We extend our understanding often because we want to believe in the best version of all of the people we meet. When we are comfortable in our lives, we subconsciously want society to improve, both universally and individually.
To that end, we often give our understanding for a wrong simply because we need to believe that society is evolving.
Understanding fits neatly into my evolving definition of grace. Understanding can be given as a gift, though it can never be taken forcibly.
However I think that understanding is only a component of grace, not enough to fill the enormity of grace. Understanding can be mentally acknowledged by the onlooker but not extended to the watched. Grace must be given or it is nothing more than self-satisfying magnanimity.
I am one of those types who tends to find inner meaning and life principles from songs, television shows and movies. I ve just finished watching Remember the Titans on TBS. 
( Thank goodness for TiVo and 30 Second Skip ) I have to admit that it s one of my favorite movies of all time.
Unlike most of my other favorite movies, I don t know that by the time that I watched this movie for the first time that any of the lessons contained within were new to me. Still most of its lessons inspire me to work harder to be a better version of myself. I could watch the movie four times in a row and want to run through a wall every time.
The most compelling inspiration from this movie is that pride is the antithesis of grace. Though the movie is intended to be an inspirational story about the conversion of a Virginia town from bigotry to unity, I see through that overtone to the undertone of faith and trust between the key protagonists: Denzel Washington and Will Patton.
These two men, coaches with a pedigree of success, are forced to work together to coach their newly integrated football team.
Their solution for working together is for one to coach the offense and the other to coach the defense. Fortunately, the team is successful despite the fact that these two football masters choose not to collaborate. However, when they reach the state finals, the opposing coach is too crafty and at halftime the team is losing with little chance for recovery.
Ethnicity is a barrier between these two coaches, but I believe that this struggle would have still existed if they both were green.
They were both too proud to allow the other an opportunity to build a better team. Who gets the credit?
Whose idea would it have been? If a football is a dictatorship, would having a true peer change its rule to that of an oligarchy? Know any oligarchies that have survived for long?
Grace cannot exist in the face of pride. Grace is the embodiment of being the best version of you . To live the grace that I so desperately seek, one cannot invest energy in defensiveness.
Whether the spark is pride or arrogance or fear, the kindling of defensiveness burns away grace, and we are all the poorer for it.
In this movie, I have found yet another example of one of my driving philisophies towards my prayers for grace
We have not been placed here to compete with one another, but to complete one another.
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