Ain’t That a Kick in the Head

Just yesterday, I witnessed several fight videos circulating on social media.  They aren’t anything like what I have seen before. They are mob assaults. One person grabs another pulls them down and suddenly there is a group kicking, punching, attacking one individual on the ground until they appear lifeless.

It took me back to the first actual fight I ever saw in the street in NYC growing up.  I was young – maybe 8 or 9 and these two grown teens (maybe 18 or so) got into a fight.  A crowd gathered around to watch.  The two bloodied each other for about 15 minutes before it ended.  There was no “group” interaction or interference.  Just two guys sorting out their differences.  But the videos I am seeing lately are much different.  They are not so much one-on-one fights as brutal group attacks.  I found myself asking, “What type of prowess does one possess to run up and kick someone in the head when they are down?”

I did a google search under psychological profile of someone kicking another in the head.  Without reproducing the entire document, this is what I found:

“An ordinary individual will have some sense of what it might feel like to be assaulted, of being robbed of a valued possession of death in relatives.  Without this empathy-producing taboo against violence, it is argued, the psychopath can pursue self-interest and hedonism irrespective of the wishes and rights of others.  If there is something they want, they will do whatever they have to gain it. “The

article further states:  “Meloy (1988) has proposed a psychodynamic hypothesis to understand this apparent empathetic failure.  He suggests that the psychopathic individual’s lack of empathy is a function of disordered developmental attachment relations.  The psychopath as a child has had attachment figures; parents, care givers, who consistently failed to establish an empathetic bond during childhood development, so that this is an aspect of human relations that is simply not learned or developed.” (Mizen and Morris, An Analytic Perspective)

Translation, it begins at home! 

There is a reason that children need parents.  They need unconditional love.  They need guidance.  They need support.  They need to be taught right from wrong.  I am not in any way condemning single parents.  What I am suggesting, however, is that as we have seen the family unit deteriorate and single parents are working sun up to sun down to meet their bills, the result of that void is what we are witnessing in our streets.  Worse yet is the absence of parents; disinterested fathers who have walked away from their responsibility, mothers so lonely they are seeking to fill the void in their own lives with little thought given to the affect this has on their child. And those cases are the tip of the iceburg. 

Make no mistake.  A child can manage to survive in this world against the odds and make something of his/her self.  But without the love and support of someone they call family, they will not learn to love themselves.

Don’t like what you are seeing in the streets?  This did not happen by accident.  And it did not happen on its own.  Many, many people looking the other way distracted by their own voids in their lives caused this mass of people who feel no love.

Now the question remains, What can we do about it?

References: 

Richard MIzen and Mark Morris, An Analytic Perspective, retrieved from the world wide web on July 11, 2020 from https://books.google.com/books?id=TPUnBQAAQBAJ&pg=PT47&lpg=PT47&dq=the+psychological+profile+of+someone+kicking+another+in+the+head&source=bl&ots=9uaBPaROHl&sig=ACfU3U3zjefni4Q2mqx_xzHancwzLj54ww&hl=en&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwi2wdzhpMXqAhViTt8KHY8DAlEQ6AEwE3oECAcQAQ#v=onepage&q=the%20psychological%20profile%20of%20someone%20kicking%20another%20in%20the%20head&f=false