[Advice] Why Go to College: For the Rest of Us

Since the economic collapse of 2008, there have been many articles and blogs written about the importance (or lack of importance) of attending higher education for young people.

This talk has taken place amid a backdrop of ever rising tuition costs, zero wage increases, artificially suppressed inflation, a boatload of student loan debt burdening the 18-22 year old cohort and the dim post-graduation employment prospects where an average job search takes 6-9 months.

Hope and change indeed.

All of these writers, bloggers and opinionaters on both sides of the debate have one thing in common: They all hail from middle to upper middle class households and backgrounds, where at least one parent (and in many cases both parents) have already attended college.

In particular, they hail from backgrounds where they grew up with the suburban (and in some cases ex-burban) comfort that at least if they graduated from an overpriced college with an undervalued education and an economically meaningless degree, that somehow, someway, it would all work out in the end.

Now, in principle, we here at HSCT have no problem with people carrying such assumptions and even acting on them in the real world.

We have no problem with people writing long, effusive, opinion pieces on the lack of efficacy of a college education and worrying about the debt attached to obtaining it, in the context of a world where student loan debt cannot be disgorged through a bankruptcy process.

We also have no problem with questioning why it is important for people to have college degrees and even the tenuous link between a college degree and economic success based in secure post-graduate employment.

Make no mistake, yes our background is in higher education, but we would be blind and foolish if we did not admit that there are real structural problems and cracks in the mighty edifice constructed since post-World War II.

We get off the train though, when we think about the “please take the college years and go off to ‘find yourself’” type advice, being given to minority high school students.

We have a problem when very well meaning, successful, wealthy people, who did not attain degrees, but attained a measure of success, stand in front of diverse audiences and make the audacious claim that can be summed up as “we didn’t go so you don’t have to either.”

We’re sorry, but too many folks in those diverse audiences come with backgrounds from racial minority groups in this country that have experienced systemic, institutionalized, historical racism. And some of those students’ backgrounds are from communities still experiencing the results of such racism, racialism and racial prejudice. Thus, some of the worst advice that they–as well as their younger brothers, sisters, nieces and nephews–can possibly hear is “don’t attend college, because it’s too expensive, too much student loan burden will be upon you at graduation, etc., etc.”

This is not a statement based in social justice, social re-engineering or any desire for any form of social gerrymandering.

This statement comes out of a recognition that more African-American males are in jail in this country than even have completed high school.

This statement comes out of a recognition that Hispanic, Asian and Eastern European populations have traditionally valued education as the only way to advance in America.

This statement comes out of the recognition that the only way to open the doors and unlock opportunities if you are not from an upper class or even a middle class structure, is through the hard work of education, monetary sacrifice, and doing the right thing for the most people possible.

Of course, when there have been three to four generations of racial, ethnic and class minorities that have attained college education in America, we will be the first to write all about how going to college is a fool’s bargain.

We promise.

-Peace Be With You All-

Jesan Sorrells, MA
Principal Conflict Engagement Consultant
Human Services Consulting and Training (HSCT)
Email HSCT: jsorrells@hsconsultingandtraining.com
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/HSConsultingandTraining
Twitter: www.twitter.com/Sorrells79
LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/in/jesansorrells/

Acts 4:13

“Space: the final frontier. These are the voyages of the star ship Enterprise. Its five-year mission: to explore strange new worlds, to seek out new life and new civilizations, to boldly go where no man has gone before.”–William Shatner

How many times in your life does exhortation come to “go boldly,” into anywhere?

Wait.

Here’s a better question: When was the last time anyone encouraged you to act boldly?

Well, split infinitives aside, we’d like to assert, here on the HSCT blog, that boldness is the only way to go in a world defined by timidity, false pride, arrogance, irrationality and impulsive behaviors. And the conflicts that go along with all of those afflictions.

However, don’t believe us. Take a look at the definition of the word, “bold.”

Bold (adj)

fearless and adventurous: willing and eager to face danger or adventure with a sense of confidence and fearlessness
requiring or showing daring: requiring or showing fearlessness, daring, and often originality
impudent or presumptuous: lacking in modesty or impolitely assertive.

All of those definitions are excellent, but the one for the purposes of our assertion in this blog post is the one most defined by the Old Russian proverb to “pray to God, but row for the shore.”

Acting boldly is something that requires a certain amount of fearlessness, courage and tenacity. All traits that we talked about last week in this space.

But we wonder, what are the gifts of boldness? What are those virtues that we attain from jumping headlong into a situation and facing a difficulty head on?

Some of them include:

Meekness
Humility
Courage
Curiosity
Healing
Patience
Resolution
Perseverance
Faith
Mercy
Grace

All of these are critical to have in the pursuit of peace, but the most critical one is the fact that boldness takes us across oceans of fear, blackness and self-doubt.

Boldness took human beings across the ocean and all the way to the Moon and back.

Timidity and fear keep us huddled at home, behind the skirts of Mother Earth, wondering who will save us from ourselves, constantly looking up for a savior instead of doing the hard work to bring out the Savior already in us.

Acting, responding and living with boldness is the opposite of living with fear.

And it gets us as far as Gene Roddenberry could have ever imagined–and then catapults us even further.

Live boldly.

-Peace Be With You All-

Jesan Sorrells, MA
Principal Conflict Engagement Consultant
Human Services Consulting and Training (HSCT)
Email HSCT: hsconsultingandtraining@gmail.com
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/HSConsultingandTraining
Twitter: www.twitter.com/Sorrells79
LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/in/jesansorrells/

Big Data, or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Federal Data Gathering Centers

“Ain’t gonna need to tell the truth. Tell no lie. Everything you think, do and say is in the pill you took today.”–Zager and Evans

There is a direct line between the rise of GMO’s, the enthusiasm with which “Big Data” is being adopted, the coming of Google glasses and other wearables, the prevalence of Federal Government “data centers” (7,000 at last count) and the ubiquitousness of cameras on stoplights, street corners, and in city parks.

This line overlaps with mobile device tracking, police and the NSA monitoring your cell phone calls and Internet searches, and the coming of “the Internet of Everything.”

This line is followed ever so casually, by the prevalence of laws and policies designed to provide a benefit (i.e. the Affordable Health Care Act, among others), but that tangentially allow larger and larger private and public bureaucracies to burrow deeper and deeper into personal behavior choices that we make on an individual and societal basis.

The intersections all meet at a point of behavior monitoring, or “nudging,” of private individuals into buying acceptable products, acting in acceptable ways and making sure that everybody else does the same.

In the arena of conflict resolution and peace building, we here at HSCT find the idea of behavior management or behavior monitoring by large, faceless, entities to be–well, “creepy” (as the kids are wont to say as they Tweet out every instance of their lives looking for connections)–and authoritarian.

Dare we say, all of this progress smacks of Orwellianism.

Now, before we are accused of wearing tinfoil hats and searching the skies for black helicopters, we have an “early adopter” curve for you to make our next point.

Now, early adopters are the people who will buy the I-phone when it’s brand new and will probably buy the first pair of Google glasses at $200 a piece.Your folks in the middle–the early and late majority– are most of us. They will buy a smart phone from Wal-mart two years from now and only because their friends all have one, so “why not?”

Your third group is at the end of the curve. The laggards are the people we all know who still have VCR’s and will never buy Google Glasses because they’re either paranoid about Big Brother, or they just don’t care.

The anti-GMO people…

The anti-CCTV camera people…

The ACLU…

The guy who drives around town distributing a mimeographed, weekly paper, out of the back of his car which is full of garbage and may or may not have an animal in the back.

These are your laggards.

Moreover, it is the behavior, choices and conflicts that this group of people present, that confounds, distorts and affects bureaucratic “thinking” and policymaking, and leads to more and more talk of “the Internet of Everything.”

Now, mugging people of their autonomy, independence and free will and limiting choices, stands in opposition to peace, in our opinion.

The right NOT to participate is the most sacred right in the Constitution.

This sacred right, to go off on one’s own, creates conflicts with other individuals and societies.

However, peace is NOT the absence of conflict.

The false promise of all of these technologies is that by everyone, everywhere, at all time, having their behavior, choices, ideas, attitudes, conversations and thoughts, confirmed, conformed, reformed, and reconstituted, for the benefit of the lowest bidder; that somehow, that act of “tamping down” the unruly nails, will ultimately lead to some sort of man made Utopia.

That is NOT peace.

That is TYRANNY.

Let us all become vigilant watchmen on the walls for peace.

-Peace Be With You All-

[Advice] On Grit

“I hear that he is a man with true GRIT.” – Mattie Ross, True Grit, 1969

Grit doesn’t get talked a lot about in a society that prizes the easy and the compromising.

It is tough to be uncompromising in such a societal structure.

However, to paraphrase from the film Braveheart, it is easy to admire uncompromising men, without actually doing the hard work of joining them in their pursuit of doing the hard thing.

The definition of grit is clear:

Sand, gravel
A hard sharp granule (as of sand); also :material (as many abrasives) composed of such granules
Any of several sandstones the structure of a stone that adapts it to grinding
The size of abrasive particles usually expressed as their mesh
Firmness of mind or spirit: unyielding courage in the face of hardship or danger
Capitalized: a Liberal in Canadian politics

The fourth definition is the clearest one for our purposes here.

Grit has come to the forefront in the last few years as the idea of inherent talent has begun to take a beating from the likes of evolutionary biologists and post-post-modern philosophers.

In its clearest form, grit becomes a holdover from a simpler time, when talent was not as valued in the Western world. Instead, traits such as perseverance, persistence, courage and spirit were once lauded as virtues.

As the 20th century rolled on by, and as we entered the vaunted “Atomic Age,” grit became valued less and less.

And, with the rise in the latter part of the 20th century, of computing, analytics, the Internet, and other faster and faster methods of accomplishing what used to be slow, and grinding (like an abrasive piece of…well…gravel) grit was less and less talked considered as an important character trait.

But, my how the worm turns: As the holes in our education system have become more and more exposed in the opening years of the new Millennium, grit has made a comeback–becoming a touchstone for encouraging children to develop perseverance, resilience, persistence and to avoid quitting early.

But grit is still scary. Deep in our heart of hearts, we would rather succeed through ease of talent versus the scary, hard thing of work, taking hits and developing a thick skin.

The story we consistently tell ourselves about resiliency, persistence and grit is one of no fun, delayed glory and little riches.

In a world of instant connections and instant gratification, who wouldn’t quit and avoid conflicts in their lives if that were the alternative?

But maybe, that’s the only alternative that matters. Maybe the only alternative is to pick a position, be uncompromising, and grind it out.

Maybe the only alternative is to be a person with true grit.

-Peace Be With You All-

Jesan Sorrells, MA
Principal Conflict Engagement Consultant
Human Services Consulting and Training (HSCT)
Email HSCT: jsorrells@hsconsultingandtraining.com
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/HSConsultingandTraining
Twitter: https://www.twitter.com/Sorrells79
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jesansorrells/

On Quitting

What makes people quit?

Now, this question comes directly out of several experiences that we have had over the last few months and weeks that have lead us to question the need for our business, the efficacy of our business model and what it all means.

However, every time we have discussed these thoughts, feelings, and emotions with others, the admonition of “Just don’t quit,” keeps coming back to us over and over again.

The majority of this support and tacit encouragement comes from close friends, some family members and people in the overall community who recognize the value of what we do.

But that leads us back to the question: What makes people quit?

Here are some statistics:

In the United States alone, the divorce rate among first marriages is 3.6 per 1,000 and among second marriages it is even higher.
A 1998 study by the Bureau of Labor Statistics also makes the pessimistic case – that 80% of small businesses survive their first year, 65% survive their second year and 55% survive their third year.
According to the BBC, US researchers found people typically lose between 5% and 10% of their weight during the first six months of a diet. But the review of 31 previous studies, by the University of California, said up to two-thirds put more weight on than they had lost within five years.

So in some of the most important areas of our lives (health status, relationships, financial decisions), where we make momentous decisions, upend everything sometimes, we then turn around and we quit continuously and neverendingly.

But WHY?

Is the commitment to hard?
Is the time to put in too great?
Is the social approbation to heavy?

Or, are we all just lazy?

Is there a time to quit? Probably not the time that Byrds were talking about in their apocryphal song, but nevertheless, is there?

In the military, there is an idea known as a “strategic retreat,” which is a euphemism for what civilians would call a retreat, a failure or just quitting.

And yet, we abhor cowardice, we hate “quitters” and we encourage people to persist, have grit, “grind it out,” and all the other things that we say, while we simultaneously think: “Boy, I would’ve quit THAT long ago.”

Maybe the question isn’t why do we quit relationships, military strategies, business efforts, ideas, or each other; but, maybe the question is instead:

Why do we persist?

Guest Blogger Diane Lange: Which Comes First: A Crisis of Trust or a Crisis of Leadership?

The Human Services Consulting and Training (HSCT) guest blogger for this week is Diane Lange.

Diane is the president and owner of Proclivity, LLC(www.proclivityllc.com).

Proclivity, LLC., based in Binghamton, NY is a business leadership consulting firm, dedicated to the principle that “every person and every organization has a natural inclination to be the very best.”

Ms. Lange has over 20 years of experience in organizational development, consulting, addressing quality-of-life issues in the workplace, and assisting in the design and development of change initiatives in organizations.

Ms. Lange is a member of the Society of Human Resource Management Professionals (SHRM) and the American Society for Training and Development (ASTD).

She is thoroughly committed to developing excellence in others and in their organizations.

Ms. Lange can be reached via email to answer inquiries or to make and appointment at diane@proclivityllc.com.

We here at Human Services Consulting and Training (HSCT) admire her work and believe that cross-over from what we specialize in (conflict engagement consulting with small businesses, churches and higher education organizations) with what Ms. Lange and Proclivity, LLC., specializes in, can spur growth, attract new customers and clients and lead to a better, more collaborative future for everyone.

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Listen up bosses; according to a study published by the Harvard Business Review in 2009, a majority of people reported that they trust a stranger more than they trust their boss. If you’re like me, you had to read that twice. Worse yet, Michelle McQuaid, a world leader in positive psychology conducted a survey of 1000 American executives and found that a staggering 35 percent of Americans are happy at their job while the other 65 percent said they would rather have a better boss than a pay raise. And you thought the almighty dollar ruled.

Given these statistics, it is no wonder that people leave their jobs. As the old adage says, “people leave managers, not organizations” and according to Gallup the number one reason people leave organizations is because of bad managers and leaders. Managers may be bad for a variety of reasons and one of the reasons is failing to establish a trusting relationship with their staff. Essential work relationships can be marred or destroyed by a leader’s actions that cross boundaries, break rules, or demonstrate arrogant attitudes that reflect a belief that the rules don’t apply to them. Unfortunately, every time we hear news stories that leaders do something illegal, immoral, or unethical it further erodes what little trust we have left.

But the actions that ruin trust don’t need to be as big as all that; they can be as subtle as ‘little white lies’. I worked for a boss who told me and my team an explanation that we all knew to be untrue. Though we liked the boss, once the lie was said we were very disappointed; we felt betrayed, we kept our distance and we thought twice about what information we would share. Once the distrust was established something intangible yet very important was lost – respect. Communication would never be the same and we would never again feel safe.

My example isn’t unique. Forbes reports that 82% of those surveyed didn’t think their bosses tell them truth. Sadly, now I join that 82%. And there is more disturbing information. Edelman’s Trust Barometer for 2013 – one of the largest surveys of its kind to date – recently released results from 31,000 international participants and reported that only 18% of the respondents trust that business leaders tell the truth.

All of this has an obvious effect on our businesses and organizations; employees are stressed and disengaged and Gallup polls tell us that poorly managed teams are, on average, 50% less productive and 44% less profitable than well-managed teams. The negative impact of distrust, poor relationships and poor management in the workplace has ripple effects that go wide and deep. Good leaders understand that positive relationships and trust are not just HR ‘niceties’, but are essentials for improved moral, better team work, fewer sick days, superior performance, decreased turnover and increased profitability.

Many have said this situation points to a crisis in leadership, and if leadership is in crisis then so too are their followers. The truth is that leadership implies followers, and without followers, we are fooling ourselves if we think we’re a leader. If we do have followers, are they staying because they want to be or because they have to be? In some arenas followers are there by choice, but in most organizations, staff has little choice about following a leader unless they vote with their feet and leave the organization in favor of another leader.

But, if our followers stay and are stressed, disengaged, distrustful and miserable how effective is our leadership? Chris Hitch, Program Director at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill’s Kenan-Flagler Business School deftly summarizes it when he said, “Unfortunately, many senior leaders cannot seem to shake the top-down model of management that adheres to the notion that authority creates trust. In reality, trust creates authority.”

Can a person be a leader if he or she is not trustworthy? Our experiences tell us ‘no’ and so too do the surveys that abound. Anyone can have a leadership title, but that doesn’t make one an effective, trust-worthy leader. Trust is a by-product of one’s actions and behaviors in the relationships they have with those around them, especially with their direct reports. Trust cannot be mandated or bought; it can only be earned one interaction, one word, and one day at a time.

So how does one go about building trust? The answer is simple, but not necessarily easy. Look inside; who do you trust? What do they do? Who don’t you trust? What do they do?

Probably the people who earn your trust are good communicators who tell the truth, follow through on promises, act with a high degree of integrity, and value positive relationships with whom they live and work. Those who practice these actions will not only be trusted but will also be looked upon as leaders, because people will voluntarily follow them. If one hasn’t built and earned trust, people will never voluntarily follow and that is a crisis in both trust and leadership.

Article Citations

http://www.forbes.com/sites/tykiisel/2013/01/30/82-percent-of-people-dont-trust-the-boss-to-tell-the-truth/

http://allfacebook.com/83-percent-of-employers-dont-trust-employees-use-facebook-for-spying_b1699

http://www.forbes.com/sites/tykiisel/2012/10/16/65-of-americans-choose-a-better-boss-over-a-raise-heres-why/

http://www.brokenmindset.org/top-reasons-why-people-quit-their-jobs/

http://webcenters.netscape.compuserve.com/whatsnew/package.jsp?name=fte/quitjobs/quitjobs

http://www.tlnt.com/2012/06/21/the-top-10-reasons-your-employees-really-quit/

http://business.financialpost.com/2013/02/25/the-trust-crisis-in-the-workplace/

http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/trust-the-new-workplace-currency/201112/7-misunderstood-truths-about-workplace-trust

http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/trust-the-new-workplace-currency/201210/reality-check-do-you-know-the-impact-trust

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-Peace Be With You All-

Jesan Sorrells, MA

Principal Mediator/Consultant

Human Services Consulting and Training (HSCT)

Follow the Human-Services-Consulting-and-Trainingpage on Facebook

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Connect with HSCT on LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/in/jesansorrells/

Email HSCT questions or comments at: hsconsultingandtraining@gmail.com

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Views From About Town

It’s Friday.

It’s hot and sweltering in the Northeast.

Tempers are short.

Here are some views from about town from the week.

-Peace Be With You All-

Jesan Sorrells, MA

Principal Conflict Engagement Consultant

Human Services Consulting and Training (HSCT)

“Like” the https://www.facebook.com/HSConsultingandTraining page on Facebook

Follow our Principle Consultant, Jesan Sorrells, on Twitter: www.twitter.com/Sorrells79

Connect with HSCT on LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/in/jesansorrells/

Email HSCT questions or comments at: hsconsultingandtraining@gmail.com

Check out HSCT’s website: http://hsconsultingandtrain.wix.com/hsct

Blogging for Business Success by Jesan Sorrells and Dara Riegel

Hello!

If you are attending the Binghamton & Southern Tier NY Business Community Meet-Up at Binghamton University right now, Dara and I would love for you to click on the link here
(http://hsconsultingandtrain.wix.com/hsct#!projects/c1vw1) to access all the cool content from our presentation.

And, for your viewing pleasure, we have cross-posted the infographic below from Blogging.org (http://blogging.org/blog/blogging-stats-2012-infographic/)

Please be sure to check them out as you do all of your blogging!

Thanks!

-Peace Be With You All-

Jesan Sorrells, MA

Principal Conflict Engagement Consultant

Human Services Consulting and Training (HSCT)

“Like” the HSCT Facebook Page https://www.facebook.com/HSConsultingandTraining

Follow our Principle Consultant, Jesan Sorrells, on Twitter: www.twitter.com/Sorrells79

Connect with HSCT on LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/in/jesansorrells/

Email HSCT questions or comments at: hsconsultingandtraining@gmail.com

Check out HSCT’s website: http://hsconsultingandtrain.wix.com/hsct

Get The “Duck” Outta Here!

“Rubber Ducky, you’re the one, you make bath time lots of fun. Rubber Ducky, I’m awfully fond of you.”-Ernie (of Bert ‘n’ Ernie)

Here at Human Services Consulting and Training, we have had many adventures in the last 8 months of building a business in the Southern Tier of New York State.

We have had the honor of meeting and talking with local business owners, entrepreneurs, higher education officials, a few civic leaders and even the occasional member of the media.

We have been blogging, Tweeting, Facebook-ing (is that a word) and connecting on LinkedIn in order to spread the word about our mission: To help YOU ethically attain PEACE in YOUR life.

We have also had our trials and tribulations: It’s always called a “lean-start-up” or “bootstrapping” when nothing is working.

When there are days that clients don’t call back, leads don’t pan out, promises aren’t always kept and people sometimes respond to an offering of peace as if the stick of war were coming at them.

We have been called many things by many people, and we have battled pigeonholing ourselves in many ways to appeal to many audiences, all the while maintaining our core focus on our target–YOU.

We’ve blogged some things that were controversial and we’ve said some things that rock the proverbial boat, but we genuinely believe that they only way to attain peace is to first acknowledge some base-level Truth and then go from there.

But, in all of this time, we haven’t had a mascot. A leader if you will. A cheerleader, if you must. We have not had an all-important symbol to recognize the HSCT “brand” by for YOU the customer, reader or vendor.

As you can tell, the décor has changed on the blog, as well as on the Facebook page, the Google + page and, soon, the Twitter background.

We told a group of people one time, that the most important thing to remember in a conversation was to “duck.” That doesn’t mean avoid or accommodate. Instead, it means to look out for yourself, your head, your emotions, your soul, your mind and your outcomes.

Because if you don’t “duck” today, as any good, surviving soldier, police officer or fireman can tell you, you may not have an opportunity to save someone or something more valuable tomorrow.

-Peace Be With You All-Jesan Sorrells, MA
Principal Conflict Engagement Consultant
Human Services Consulting and Training (HSCT)
Email HSCT: hsconsultingandtraining@gmail.com
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/HSConsultingandTraining
Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/Sorrells79
LinkedIn: http://www.linkedin.com/in/jesansorrells/

[Advice] Masculinity in Conflict-George Zimmerman/Trayvon Martin Edition

“Our fathers were models for God. If our fathers abandoned us, what does that tell us about God?” -Fight Club

“We used to have the church. Which was another way of saying, we had each other.” – The Departed

“The six scariest words in the English language are ‘I’m from the government and I’m here to help.’” -Ronald Reagan

The verdict in the State of Florida versus George Zimmerman has come down.

The opinions of the media, the social justice community and the black community have been largely monolithic. Speaking with one voice, they have roundly expressed outrage over the result through social media outlets, on the internet and in traditional media.

We here at HSCT have an opinion on the case and the verdict, however, we start with three caveats:

We were not in the courtroom and with the exception of details we have gleaned from the aforementioned outrage, have no ideas about the facts of the case.
We were not the jurors, the judge, the prosecutor, the defense attorney, the investigators, or anyone else who had direct access to the facts of the case.
We were not in the courtroom and did not hear one of the facts of the case, presented in evidence, during the trial, nor did we watch one moment of the trial coverage.

However, from the 50,000-foot up level, we recognize the ripple of conflict, brought on by a confrontation, occurring in a society dealing with difficulties in many areas, including race, gender, power, attention and advocacy.

With that in mind, we reprint here a blog post Masculinity in Conflict that we wrote back in December of 2012 following the Sandy Hook school shooting.

We here at HSCT believe that the same, core issues around misplaced masculine power that were in evidence then, are in evidence now, both in the 17 year olds’ actions as well as the 29 year olds’ response to those actions.

When are mature, responsible men going to start “fixing” other men and young boys so that events like this do not have to happen anymore?

We were hesitant to even comment on the killings in Connecticut this week in this forum, because here at HSCT, we have a core value that all life is precious and that all lives have value.

We particularly hold this value dear for people who cannot defend themselves adequately in the world, such as the mentally ill and children. Both of those groups were impacted by the actions of one mentally ill individual.

We tend to also wait until all the facts are in and then make a judgment about a situation, and over the last six to seven days, with a speed never fully imagined in a world before social media, we have been held breathless and traumatized by the changing facts of the hour on the ground.We here at HSCT take no official position on gun control or assault weapons bans.

We do note , however, that gun-related violence and gun based crimes in places where such bans are in effect (such as Chicago and other major metropolitan areas) runs rampant, with black on black murder rates, that make what happened in Connecticut look like exactly what it was: random and senseless.

We take no official position on treating the mentally ill. We also take no position on survivalists and people who fear the “End of the World” or economic collapses.

However, we do take a position on conflict and we do take a position on ways to avoid, ameliorate and prevent conflicts form occurring in the first place.

And in this case, the most glaring issue is not access to weapons or mental illness (those have been with us since Abel killed Cain, or two monkeys slew each other over fruit, depending upon your belief system). The most glaring issue is one, which we have spoken little about at all:

Masculinity.

What does it mean to be a man?

How does a young child grow into a boy and finally, through the throws of the teenage years to be a man?

How does he honor, respect and protect himself? What emotions is he allowed to show, express and experience?

We have a crisis in the world, and it is with our young men: young men ages 12 to 35 commit the majority of violent crime. Restless and bored young men commit the majority of rapes, murders, robberies and assaults. We watch as young men in this country play video games and consume media that passes along messages that violence and anger are appropriate methods of resolving conflicts with others.

We compound our problem by medicating young men for ADD and ADHD when in the past, they would have been put out to push a plow or work in a factory to wear themselves out.

And then we wonder at their behavior. They lash out aggressively after years of bullying and violence that they have seen: Unable to talk to parents, educators or even each other. They feel alienated from females and from education: Some colleges are almost at 60% female 40% male and the male dropout rate in the first year of college is criminally underreported.

So….who’s to blame? Who’s responsible for all of this? To whom can we point? What government agency or law can be passed to “fix” this so that we can return to our lives?

One group is responsible for all of this and can fix it effectively and one group alone:

Men.

Let me restate that in case you missed it: Responsible, mature, steady adult men have an obligation to mentor, coach, advise and raise (yes, I said raise) the next generation of men. And too many fathers, brothers, uncles, grandfathers and others have failed miserably at that task.

The “why” is unimportant; what is important is that men have abdicated this role for too long in our society overall and in families in particular:

They have allowed unscrupulous males to abuse and molest innocent young children;
They have allowed the state to step in where they should have years ago;
They have not partnered with women; instead they have allowed women to take on more of the blame and the responsibility for the failures of men and boys to acculturate to our new society and culture.

It’s no mistake that the killer in Connecticut was taken to the gun range by his mother and taught to shoot.

Men have to stand up and say that emotions and feelings are real and that they feel them and that anger is not a primary emotion: disgust, fear, worry, betrayal, love, grace, and on and on.

Men have to stand up and be responsible for their own reproductive, mental and physical health: Go and see a therapist and talk about the experience. Go and talk to a religious leader and talk about that. Wrap your tool in a condom and talk about being with one person monogamously and how fabulous that is. Go to the doctor and talk about how that restores you as a man and makes you stronger.

Men have to take their sons, nephews and grandsons and hug them every night of their lives and tell them that they love them and that failure is only temporary and that the world, while scary, can be conquered through hope. Men have a responsibility to teach and mentor the next generation to remember that a child is more than a support payment or a burden and instead is a gift that comes with a price.

Men have to take their daughters, their wives, their aunts, their mothers and their grandmothers and demonstrate that honor and caring are strengths, not weaknesses.

Men have to stand up and say that bullying someone because of color or sexual orientation is cowardice and that understanding comes, not from the media or the pundits, but from talking through differences and accepting them.

Men have to stand up and show that being physical and being strong are two different things.

Men have a lot of responsibility to take responsibility for, before shootings and murders stop, before violence is banished; but if we don’t do it now, more kindergarteners will die, more mothers and parents will wail, more laws will be passed and the problems will continue.

-Peace Be With You All-