Anecdotally, I grew up an environment with good parents and siblings with different genetic parents. One of us had been in jail and juvy several times by age 18 due in part to impulse-control related problems.
Today a diagnosis of significant ADHD might have been given. Then it was not as well understood.
The hyperactivity component of ADHD is often expressed as impulsivity, so that fits.
Since nobody mentioned it, I’ll add that toxoplasmosis seems to reduce the ability to control impulses in humans.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5579228/
Patients with latent toxoplasma have a higher chance to get involved in car accidents.
This can be due to an old head injury. Head injury syndrome is a thing and one study found that upwards of 90 percent of people on Death Row had a history of head injury so severe that you could find evidence of it with an x-ray machine if there were no medical records.
In other words the skull still bore the scars. So it went well beyond just a concussion.
Edit: And of course there will always be the assholes with an excuse for their intentionally malicious behavior, which complicates the hell out of finding good solutions.
"The most important lesson from 83,000 brain scans | Daniel Amen | TEDxOrangeCoast" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=esPRsT-lmw8
My summary of the thesis of the talk: Brain injury is far more common than is generally realised, contributes to many kinds of behavioural issues far more than is realised, is visible on scans, and is to some extent treatable, but it's usually not considered or examined.
I don't have any other sources at my fingertips that wouldn't involve just doing a search myself.
I imagine that poverty and poor diet do all kinds of bad things to the populations that tend to be most at risk of ending up in jail in the US. I have at times fantasized about trying to do something about nutrition in the US prison system as a means of trying to break the cycle, but I'm probably never going to be in a position to do that.
Even the Bible posits that feeding people is the way to promote the peace, basically. Psychological research and firsthand experience suggest that's pretty sound as an approach.
Edit: See discussion here:
...and make things worse for the rest of us; but god forbid the state do anything about it with proactive evidence-based early-interventions or treat the perpetrators of crime with compassion and understanding too - otherwise it's called being soft-on-crime or worse: "liberal".
Also to mention... to challenge preconceptions about who's behind this stuff, the current US president (who many would consider "liberal" or "leftist") made great efforts and progress toward locking up lots of people ("tough on crime"), especially minorities, in the past. The last president (who many would consider more to the right of the political spectrum) actually did a lot to reform and fix that, especially for minorities.
Later, after being elected president, that president (who most would consider pretty politically incoherent on traditional ideological divides, and animated almost entirely on the single issue of defending the American ethnic against "others" without and within, and who spent most of his presidency calling for the broader use of violence against perceived criminals, oversaw a record return to federal capital punishment, expanded the use of paramilitary law enforcement, and directly assumed control of law enforcement using loopholes in the executive branch's authority to do so) signed a bipartisan crime reform bill he had nothing to do with at the urging of a reality tv star who is pretending to become a lawyer and who was briefly married to a mentally ill rapper who for some reason endorsed the president.
If we're looking to ascribe an ideological dimension to crime politics in the US, it would be easy: during the entire modern party system, Republicans have consistently been to the right of Democrats on crime (even in periods where Democrats have been, in a global sense, to the right of the median). The bulk of major crime bills have been nearly unanimous consent, including both the 1994 Crime bill and the First Step Act, but the contents of those bills have compromises where the right seeks "tougher" provisions and the left seeks more conciliatory provisions.
Court politics has been even more obviously partisan. Of the current Supreme Court justices, Thomas and Alito favour obviously expanding the use of capital punishment and view most litigation related to it a liberal plot to undermine the justice system; Breyer and Sotomayor have signalled they believe the constitution more or less mandates abolition. It's a clear as day divide. Most other criminal justice issues have the same dimensions in the courts, and even lower in the circuit courts as well.
Have they talked/written about it being a "liberal plot" or is that just a (quite possibly entirely accurate) description of a belief that would explain their actions without their having come out and said that?
I'd be interested to learn more if you have any suggested reading on the current members of the SC (not an area I know a huge amount about).
> “Those who oppose the death penalty are free to try to persuade legislatures to abolish the death penalty. Some of those efforts have been successful. They’re free to ask this court to overrule the death penalty. But until that occurs, is it appropriate for the judiciary to countenance what amounts to a guerrilla war against the death penalty, which consists of efforts to make it impossible for the states to obtain drugs that could be used to carry out capital punishment with little, if any, pain?” Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito [1]
[1] https://www.huffpost.com/entry/alito-death-penalty-guerrilla...
> During his 15-year career on the U.S. 3rd Circuit Court of Appeals, Alito participated in 10 capital cases. Five were decided unanimously by three-judge panels and involved fairly straightforward issues. The other five provoked strong differences of opinion between Alito and his colleagues. In every one of the five contested cases, Alito voted against the inmate and issued an opinion. Individually and especially as a whole, these opinions show a troubling tendency to tolerate serious errors in capital proceedings.
> Although O’Connor’s approach to capital punishment has been solidly conservative, she has at times supplied a crucial vote in contentious cases in favor of greater care and fairness in the application of the death penalty. Yet it is precisely in the most contentious cases that Alito has shown an unbroken pattern of excusing errors in capital proceedings and eroding norms of basic fairness. [2]
[2] https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-2005-nov-27-oe-liu27...
> In Murphy’s case, Justice Alito, joined by Thomas and Gorsuch, accused defense lawyers of “inexcusably dilatory litigation tactics” and complained that “the great majority” of applications for stays of execution “are almost all filed on or shortly before the scheduled execution date … [with] no good reason for the late filing.” Staying Murphy’s execution, Alito wrote, “countenance[es] the dilatory litigation [and], I fear, will encourage this damaging practice.” While acknowledging that “[t]he claims raised by Murphy and Ray are important and may ultimately be held to have merit,” Alito said that “[p]risoners should bring such claims well before their scheduled executions so that the courts can adjudicate them in the way that the claims require and deserve and so that States are afforded sufficient time to make any necessary modifications to their execution protocols.” [3]
[3] https://deathpenaltyinfo.org/news/death-penalty-opinions-exp...
[4] https://www.ontheissues.org/Court/Samuel_Alito_Crime.htm
[5] https://www.ontheissues.org/Court/Clarence_Thomas_Crime.htm
It's hard to take Trump seriously in the realm of criminal justice reform when considering -- for example -- his reaction to the aftermath of the murder of George Floyd. And that's just one example among many. I won't claim that Biden is a saint here, but painting Trump as a criminal justice reformer is a bit absurd.
Regardless, incarceration isn't really something that changes a lot based on federal-level action, as federal prisoners account for less than 10% of the prison population (the rest are incarcerated at the state level).
https://www.bop.gov/inmates/fsa/overview.jsp
(I'm not taking a position on which president was better or worse on this issue.)
Biden has never been a leftist (not even in the extremely loose sense that the progressive wing of the Democratic Party might be considered “leftist”), he’s always been associated with the centrist/conservative wing of the Party, and that was even more true in the 1990s (when he was involved in the crime legislation you are talking about) then in his post-Senate career (where he has been involved in national campaigns where the centrist faction is weaker within the party than it was in the mid-late 1990s, which were pretty much the peak of its dominance.)
> The last president (who many would consider more to the right of the political spectrum)
I think “corrupt authoritarian opportunist who seized on a perceived opportunity in the more right-leaning party, and particularly with mobilizing its extremist fringes” than describing Trump actually being ideologically to the right in some kind of coherent way that motivates policy over more immediate calculations of personal gain and opportunism.
I think it's worse than that: they get too much shock and awe beatings/ unpredictable rage from parents who were raised the same. It's a cycle/ disease. "My parents hit me and I turned out fine" is often a revealing statement. And a defense of parents who may not deserve it but coping with that is harder.
It is only recently that we’ve (in the West) had a generation or two of the majority of us being raised without suffering direct experience of war.
Just as children who are abused often go on to be abusers in adulthood, I suspect societies that suffer war often become abusive post-war.
Maybe it's not a cycle, but genetic instead. It would appear like a cycle because the children will end up doing what the parents did, but they might simply be predisposed to it.
They did their best with the tools and knowledge they had available to them.
Would I hit my kids? Probably not, I can see some value in it, but I think ultimately your parenting style shouldn't deviate too much from their own surroundings - that is what causes more harm IMO.
YMMV
So what does this statement reveal about me?
The other is softer - I am curious how normalising pain may positively benefit a developing child. Could it build toughness? Might my child be more likely to stand up to a bully?
From a self defence perspective, a big part of personal development is overcoming aversion to pain - eg not flinching in boxing/mma.
In any case I think there are alternatives to learning these lessons and disciplining your children and I think in our environment it would do a lot of emotional damage that isn't worth the benefits - hence why I probably won't hit my children.
That said, I find it curious that only one to two generations ago it was fully the norm.
Aren't you worried this de-stigmatizes violence, and could lead either to adoption of violence as a problem-solving tool, or in general a society that accepts everyday violence?
I'm living in a place where I never have felt physically threatened, not at dark streets or drunk alone or whatever. I do recognize large part of this is privilege of being a male, but I've always felt my physical well-being isn't threatened. I'd never try to fight back unless that's the last option, rather de-escalate, run away, call police.
>I am curious how normalising pain may positively benefit a developing child
I feel like this is a story we were handed in prior generations (for context, I am 45) where people (specifically men) need to be "tough" but I don't think anyone really defined what that meant or why.
Maybe tough is a dirty word. Not tough in the toxic masculine sense but tough as in resilient.
Being physically tough can often build a self confidence and mental strength that many people underestimate.
You'll never get me to agree that people don't need to be tough. Just as you should wear a seatbelt even if you're the safest driver in the world, you should be tough because you never know when adversity may come. Just like how you can't control for drivers around you. Maybe in a world only operating self driving cars can we stop wearing seat belts - and yet random failure will still happen. Bad weather, network failure, cosmic ray bitflips take your pick.
Given you are 45, people of your parents' generations came from truly tough times. Plenty of people I know from my parents' generation remember what was like to be truly hungry.
I've seen the UK slowly become more violent and dangerous in my own lifetime.
We're facing increasingly unequal times, geopolitical tensions are high as world powers go for hegemon. We have a displaced workforce - much like the run up to WW1. Climate change may well bring even greater hardship.
Summer lasted all of about 1.5 generations, I hope my children will be tough so that they have the resilience to face whatever the world throws at them and pick themselves up and always move forwards when they navigate the world we leave behind for them.
By the time I was 18 I had that reckless abandon and confidence that only an 18 year old can have - that feeling of invincibility and that belief that anything is possible.
Fast forward 10 years later after years of working super hard and not doing much exercise and accruing postural issues, I went skiing and felt very vulnerable and mortal - a stark shift from the me of 10 years prior!
When I hit my 30s I made reacquiring that fitness again and started exercising super hard. Like 10-15 hours a week of intense physical training. To my surprise, I actually started to feel almost like an 18 year old again. I couldn't believe my subconscious outlook on life could be so malleable.
What does this have to do with hitting kids and toughness? I've digressed a bit - I guess having some of that stoic grit is worth developing in children but I am undecided whether hitting children builds it in them.
I mean, you can let someone touch a hot stove, or not. Is letting them learn for themselves abusive? I believe that was how I learned that specific lesson, not by being hit when I reached.
On the other hand, there are things that you can't let someone learn for themselves because they won't live through it.
And what about hurting other people? Is it possible that there is an empathy circuit that doesn't necessarily get wired properly if early on, pain isn't connected to hurting others?
This doesn't have to be applied by humans in all cases. You bother the cat, it slaps you.
If physical punishment is unacceptable, does that mean the cat should be declawed so it can't do that?
I provided a few things that I thought were in kind of a gray area, in order that you might clarify how you categorize them and how you think such situations could be avoided or handled differently.
It seems to me that my comment was manifestly a combination of factual claims and questions about your beliefs, not justifications of anything.
On the flip side, self-control, impulse control, being able to manage your emotions with a toolbox: these are skills that are learned, honed, and mastered. Sure, many people learn them through other means than from their parents, often as a survival necessity in their environments, but I don't think that e.g. the people who fly off the handle and get into a bar fight when someone's hitting on their girlfriend, are doing so because of heavy metal poisoning or genetics.
I got news for ya bub. They aren't learned. They can be honed to a small degree. They cannot be mastered.
When you have ADHD you realize this.
And to your last thing. Not in all cases but in some.
(I'm not arguing for or against the point that they can be learned, just against the "proof" that someone with ADHD has - and not because of ADHD specifically, but because generally speaking any argument which relies on "my experience proves X about humans" is likely to be short-sighted.)
That's far from obvious. You can't just observe some trait in an organism, and conclude "that must have genetic origins".
Maybe this is Captain Obvious speaking, but poor impulse control seems like the single common denominator among a whole load of social ills that consistently land people in trouble (legal, financial, social, across lots of spectrums). From crimes of opportunity/passion, to short-tempers and "blowing up" on people in public or private, to impulse shopping, to road rage, to everything you see on r/PublicFreakout, and so on. Seems that some people just entirely miss that part of their upbringing, and suffer needlessly for it for the rest of their lives.
EDIT: This thread took a wild turn. I guess I never considered there might be a genetic or environmental explanation. Much food for thought!