Robert Olcott posted:I believe Philip Zimbardo's book, "The Lucifer Effect: Understanding how good people do evil", addresses both how institutional environments can affect people, as well as the "World View" that We look at "behavior" through. With the "medical model" of only looking at "dispositional" factors" [personal character flaws/ behaviorism], rather than a "public health model" that includes "Situational Forces" [like the evidence of the ACE study], we might judge people solely on their "character flaws" rather than "Trans-generational and Institutional factors" like Poverty, Community Violence, etc., such as an Epidemiologist noted in a 2000 "Grand Rounds" continuing medical education presentation I attended at [then] Dartmouth [now Geisel] medical school, noting: "52% of Detroit Metropolitan Area Schoolchildren met the [then] DSM-IV criteria for PTSD." More recently, similar numbers for Schoolchildren have been reported in Philadelphia, Baltimore, and Atlanta.... Fortunately Juvenile court Judges, such as Steven Teske, have written about "how adolescents are neurologically wired to do stupid things", like commit a delinquent act but are not "Delinquent"... "even though they sometimes do remarkable things". (see Teske's 12/8/2015 JJIE article: "States Should Mandate School-justice Partnerships to End Violence Against Our Children"
It isn't healthy sane people who are hurting others. I think the appearanace of "good" can be deceiving. There are outliers, no doubt, but overall, hurt people, hurt people, and it describes to the essence of what we see in school children across the country. The environment of poverty alone is enough to cause traumatizing stress, let alone the precise ACE experiences or any of lifes other trauma's.