podcast icon Just Launched: ListenUp! The KidSpirit Podcast

The Removal of Choice

Violence is often looked at as bodily harm in any way, but the only way to cure something is to know its nature and source. You can’t fight if you don’t know what you are fighting, so to start, let’s examine the meaning of violence.

Violence is the use of physical force so as to injure, damage, or abuse. But, if a criminal comes to you and threatens you to give him money, isn’t that violence in some way? Although he didn’t even make contact with you, he still removed the kind of choice that you had. You either give him the money, or you would be likely killed or badly injured. So, we can’t say violence is just using force. It is removing the choice of someone to act, and that’s not just in normal crimes. We see this at schools when a student does not have an opinion because another student will injure him, or in workplaces where some workers feel threatened because another worker is capable of injuring them. Violence isn’t only the use of force, but the abuse of any kind of power that people have.

To start treating violence, we need to look at its core, which is often the family of a person, such as an abusive father or mother or a lack of attention or jealousy between brothers. It may seem like tiny problems, but over time, seeds grow into trees that will be hard to pull, so we need to raise awareness about the right way to raise a kid and make them feel confident. That way, he will not go around hurting others to make himself whole

I don’t think my community has a way to prevent violence, so I hope this could be a start to raise awareness about this problem that destroys lives, or even ends them.

Every time that we close our eyes thinking it will go away it only gets bigger, and it gets to a point where even if we close our eyes we will be able to see it.

The world suffers a lot—not because of the violence of bad people, but because of the silence of good ones.

Image

Abdullah Etan is a 16-year-old from Madaba, Jordan. In his free time, he likes to read books, play video games, and watch documentaries about myths and legends. He loves all kinds of music.