Yesterday, I saw an image put up in the comments of one of the articles here on joomla.vps101246.mylogin.co that offended, shocked and reviled one of my fellow bloggers. It was of a young man, barely in his twenties. He was heavily tattooed and full of body piercings and the mutilation of the body that God gave him. The poster felt that this image was so offensive, it should have been removed.
I disagree. In my work, many years ago admittedly, I worked " with " people like this and I have my own theories as to why they do what they do. It is simple really. They hate themselves.
Rather than be offended at a visual reminder that our young people are self mutilating, I think this is a very important thing to discuss and understand. Self hatred begins on the inside and seeps out like an open wound and manifests as this sort of horror that most of us cannot ( and most importantly ) do not wish to understand.
After all, why should we?
We are by and large very happy in our lives. We have sufficient to eat, somewhere to live and a sense of purpose. We pay our bills and no, we are not rich by any stretch of the imagination, but we still have that " muck on and carry on " ethic that was passed on to us by our now aging parents.
We were not brought up in an era of ' if I want it, I get it " and we never expected to receive a benefit without earning it. I call it the Protestant tradition. It might be because my old Sunday School teacher always told me that nothing comes without hard work.
Unfortunately, the modern generations have never known hardship. They have never seen schoolyard boils or ears full of pus or a kid in class with half an ear lobe because the other half was gnawed off by a rat while he or she was sleeping in their cot. ( Crib for my American readers)
They have never seen children turning up for school who, at 10 years old, are still incontinent or pooing in their pants because their lives were so awful that they did not develop what we call and called " normal " habits.
As you may know, I worked in a men's Maximum Security prison for a time as a guard. A foolish notion I had when I thought that I could change the world by giving kindness and love and showing encouragement to those that I felt, in those days, could benefit from my " Nurse Nightingale " ideal of love and kindness conquers all.
It obviously turned about to be a monumental failure and I left after a prisoner warned me that I was about to have my archilles tendons severed and raped. Needless to say, I never went back to work and that part of my life was over.
But while I was there, I learned a lot about what makes people tick.
I saw men bonking other men and then greeting their wives in visits the next day. When I asked about how they could do that - bonk another bloke and then kiss their wives and babies one man said " just cause I like a drink doesn't mean I'm an alcoholic.
There was a guy there who looked very much like the fellow in the image. He had a tattooed " personal appendage ": and would masturbate in front of me. I asked him to stop and then said " why did you tattoo that particular part of your body? ( Not those words but you get my meaning)
He said " that's the bit that got me into trouble." He was serving time for rape.
Another guy had a facial tattoo. He said that if he didn't look the way he used to, he wouldn't be who he was. He was serving time for beating his parents to death.
Now, I am no psychologist, but my experience with these tattooed " freaks " was that they didn't like who they were.
Was it self-expression? Or was it and is it a need to stop being who they see in the mirror?
Self hatred? Self-loathing? Or self-expression?
When our young people hate who they are, is it because they are self-expressing or simply bad bastards? Or victims of a society that has let them and itself down by being weak, ineffectual and useless?
I believe the problem started when mothers stopped caring for children in the home and the abdication of responsibility to daycare was made.
It all comes down to mothers.
I know, that is going to upset a lot of people.
But, for me, who worked with people like this, there was one thing that each and everyone spoke about: their mother.
Believe it or not, it was always her fault.
She didn't protect me. She didn't care. She wasn't there.
I will put money on it that the young man in that photo had a shit mother or no mother at all.
BLOG COMMENTS POWERED BY DISQUS
