metonymy4u

It seems to me that our community spends a great deal of time trying to modify the habits of others, and relatively little time reflecting on our own behaviors. And we seem to teach our young people all about this as a routine part of growing up. But what if, instead of trying to tell everyone else what to do, we spent a little more time and energy on our own habits and biases? We seem to take it for granted that all “well adjusted” individuals should know how to “control themselves.” But where do we learn how to care for ourselves and, by extension, how to care for others? And if some miss out on the opportunity to learn, what then is the solution? All too often the response consists of incarcerations, bombings or other punishments for those “mal-adjusted” to “civil society.” Which seems strange to me. It seems to me in fact that it is just as much the community that failed to teach that should be held accountable. Perhaps even more so than the student who supposedly failed to learn. And so I wonder how we can be so surprised at a world gone astray, when we refuse to spend even the smallest fraction of our military industrial budget on the effort, to teach to learn?