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THE UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN
11
Wednesday, April 24, 1968
Violence gets old fast
Shock came to the American scene in recent years with the assassination of President Kennedy.
The shock that came with that sudden violence struck deeply into the American conscience, psychological structure, and peace of mind. But that was years ago.
Since then, the most shocking aspect of rising Vietnam deaths, mass killings by the Richard Specks and Charles Whitmans, and the overwhelming racial violence is not the shock but the conditioned way in which Americans have come to accept violence as part of the American scene.
We are becoming conditioned; we are no longer shocked in the same, basic way that we once were. Dr. King's assassination was a great shock, yet an assassination on a national scale was not new to the American people. It was almost as though we now know how we are supposed to react and know what roles to fall into for the duration of the mourning.
And what will happen the next time there is a mass slaying of some kind? We will be startled, not shocked, and will play the did-you-hear-about-it-ain't-that-just-something game, and it will be compared to Whitman or Speck, and then the next day, it will be essentially forgotten, except when the event is needed as a
comparison on the editorial pages for a new tragedy.
The Vietnam headlines, screaming the number of dead each day, do not faze us anymore, the stories are not read, the figures are not personal, and the impact lessens everyday. One newspaper editor reportedly ran the same major Vietnam story for three days in a row, but with a different headline each day. No one noticed.
There are countless examples of how violence is now part of our culture. The point is that we are becoming very callous and sophisticated in the area of violence and death.
The loss here goes beyond what this will continue to cost us as Americans. Now, the loss is what we are essentially relinquishing as human beings—compassion, concern, and a personal identification with other people and their problems.
Perhaps the worst of it is what the children of today will be like as the next generation after growing up with violence being accepted as everyday.
Being acclimated to the steadily dulling shocks of a violent American society as we are now doing is one thing, but to never have known anything else may prove to be quite another.
Kansan book review
'Joy': potential only
"Perhaps we can recapture some joy, regain some of the body-pleasures, share again the joy with other people that once was possible. This book strives to make an inroad in that direction, by presenting some thoughts and methods for attaining more joy."
By Scott Nunley
Speaks group psychologist William C. Schutz. His new book—"Joy: Expanding Human Awareness"-may become prophetic for our future struggles toward self-fulfillment.
"Joy is the feeling that comes from the fulfillment of one's potential."
Schutz's basic prophecy is that psychotherapy, formerly reserved for the "sick." will become an accepted part of the lives of "normal" individuals. The emphasis will not be upon a drastic cure for extreme abberations but rather will lie on developing each human being's resources.
In the Big Sur country of California, Dr. Schutz has gained (and here passes on) new experience regarding methods of achieving this end. His setting is the "encounter group"—six to 12 normal individuals directed by a group leader into community interaction. His media are virtually unlimited: words, dances, gestures, games, fantasies—any ways by which people can express themselves and react to their fellows.
The assumption is that our family and communal environments have heavily conditioned us against honesty. In fact, the more intellectually developed the individual, the more his "communication" may have become a camouflage or shield.
Non-verbal, non-rational activities, therefore, reach around conditioning to touch the realities that have been hidden. A man plays the "game" of punching a sofa pillow that he is imagining to be his mother (father, wife, boss). Soon the violence of his physical activity is revealing the amount of hostility he actually carries for his parent. Socially unacceptable, such hate-feelings could not have been exposed verbally by our normal game-player.
Schutz' prophecy extends into the realm of sensualism:
—John Hill
"Awareness of feelings and emotions allows experience to be felt and integrated into the self. The person who is more open to experience, and thus able to feel and appreciate, has more experiential elements than the constricted, denying individual who cannot allow himself to feel deeply."
Nor is Schutz blind to the current frenzy for such expanding experiences:
"The current interest in LSD and other psychedelic drugs has a relation to joy techniques. The aims are similar—to make the experience of life more vital. The joy methods attempt to achieve this without drugs."
In our dependence upon logical reasoning, we have learned distrust for the messages of our senses.
Hunches, intuitions, and "feelings" we have relegated to the folklore of superstition. But the new prophets of joy recognize the frequent validity of "pre-logical" experiences—in fact, Schutz seeks to train his group members to a greater sensitivity for pre-logical truth.
The simplicity of Schutz' theories must be at the base of their easy acceptance by the reader.
But unfortunately, Schutz' language precludes any possibility that this book could become the Bible of Joy. Written in unimaginative documentation — stumbling from one sub-category to another—"Joy" is a frankly dull book. Schutz' prose cannot create for the reader that vital "feeling" of having physically participated in these encounter groups.
Poorly written, but fantastic in its implications for our future. For our family experiences. For our social encounters. Even some day for our classroom techniques?
If not the Bible, then, perhaps a pre-Bible.
"Hell, I can't shoot a kid running away with two sport coats."
—Chicago cop, on recent looting.
... quotes ...
"War is cruel and you cannot refine it."
William Tecumseh Sherman
* *
--casual observers disguised as Guardsmen, weren't so lucky. Looters had a field day, as entire families ransacked food, liquor, appliance, clothing and jewelry stores. Many merchants were financially ruined. More than a few have closed their doors for good or will go elsewhere to reopen. Some of these merchants are Negroes.
"Man is the only animal that blushes. Or needs to."
"The first half of our lives are ruined by our parents and the second half by our children."
Mark Twain
—Clarence Darrow * * *
"The Republicans have their split right after election and Democrats have theirs just before an election."
Will Rogers
Letters
To the Editor:
I am writing about the issue of dropping the present requirement for 1B or A if one is majoring in liberal arts. I feel my opinion is worth consideration because as a freshman I took Speech 1A. As a first semester senior, I took Speech 2, and now, as a second semester senior, I'm taking 1B (I was able to take both A and B because of a teacher I know in the speech department). Aside from the students taking 1A or B because they had to and didn't want to, I can say that the many students taking it not for a major, but ironically because they saw the need for a far-sighted, liberal, and educated education, have gotten a great deal out of Speech 1A and B, as it broadens one's perspective.
Mike Scanlon Lawrence senior
To the Editor:
The undergraduate career of many college students seems to involve juggling courses, credit hours, and grade points until the magic number of each is reached to acquire the coveted diploma. Neither we nor the faculty have any rationale or criteria for the establishment of our requirements.
Now the Speech requirement, because of an attempt to improve and become more flexible, is singled out for consideration.
There were other requirements I fulfilled as an undergraduate. My "natural science" courses remain in my mind as large bodies of facts and concepts already becoming outdated.
Sixteen hours of language is not enough to allow real contact with the thought of another culture. In the future, if I need a foreign language, I will probably gain passable fluency in a few weeks of intensive drill. After all, memorization of vocabulary and grammar does not even require an adult intelligence.
But science and language requirements, established, like all requirements, for unexplained reasons, are not being reviewed. However, the Educational Policies Committee of the College has recommended that the Speech requirement be abolished. If this recommendation is accepted by the College Faculty, it will mean that, in the future, holders of the bachelor's degree may be incompetent in oral communication.
Instead of abolishing one requirement (Speech), shouldn't the College Faculty consider the nature of the undergraduate curriculum and decide what requirements are really defensible?
Anne Lockhart
Editorial Essay
Wichita graduate student
Only guns will ever stop riot looting
By Rich Lovett
During the recent riots and looting in Washington, D.C., in which that city suffered an estimated $10 million loss, one observer to looting in a Negro neighborhood tells this story:
"I was watching from a window across the street while a clothing store was being looted. Two policemen stood by, looking on. A looter, running from the store with arms loaded, dropped some of his stolen goods. One of the cops picked it up and handed it back to him."
Another witness said he saw a looter walking casually away from a grocery store pushing a loaded shopping cart. Upon rounding a corner into the alley, his cart bumped into a policeman. "Is this the way to the checkout counter?" the looter asked blithely—and was allowed to pass.
Such stories, coming at a time when lawmen and citizens alike are decrying the apparent lack of respect for the law, make it difficult to understand how anything can be expected except disrespect. Law enforcement during the Washington riots bordered on the nonexistent. Both the Washington police and the 15,000 hastily-summoned troops and National Guardsmen were ordered not to shoot looters. The soldiers' rifles were not even loaded—and the pillagers knew it. No show of force was made against them.
Yet a show of force often was all it took to prevent looting. One chain store official in the riot-struck area armed his store guards and warehouse employees with 12-gauge shotguns and buckshot. Looters avoided his establishments. Another store operator and his employees locked their doors and stood at the front windows. The pillagers yelled menacingly at them, but passed on by.
But other businesses, "protected" by tourist-like policemen and
What must be on many of their minds was expressed by Ohio's Adjunct Gen. S. T. Del Corso: that "with a no-shoot, no-load policy, there is no need of even going to a disturbance."
But why the no-shoot policy in the first place? Apparently it stems from the thinking of several top leaders across the country, including John V. Lindsay, mayor of New York City, and U.S. Atty. Gen. Ramsey Clark, both of whom have denounced the shooting of riotsers and looters. On April 17 Clark declared, "I do not believe the use of deadly force by law enforcement officers is permissible except in self-defense or when it is necessary to protect the lives of others."
Whatever the answer to recent rashes of looting, it's not the noshoot, no-force policy. By now it should be apparent that wherever this policy persists—wherever policemen and government troops are forced to take the part of observers rather than protectors of human rights—looters will continue to gut stores, and respect for the law—among criminals and the law-abiding alike—will continue to hit new lows.
This type of viewpoint has outspoken opponents. Rep. James C. Gardner, R-N.C., called it "an open invitation to the people to burn, riot and loot in every city." Also against non-shooting are Gov. Richard Hughes of New Jersey, Detroit Mayor Jerome P. Cavanagh, and Chicago Mayor Richard Daley.
Only the names have been changed.
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