Extremely Rare Pleasure
Those who follow the media will know that there are often reasons to feel anything but well about what is served there.
I just remember, most unpleasantly, Hbl of Lö 12.12., where there was on p.6 a piece titled ”Ny naturgasledning oroar USA” in which the dutyful declarations of some biträdande statssekreterare Mary Warlick (including such pearls that she ”är inte rädd för att en eventuell republikansk efterträdare [to Obama] ändrar klimatpolitikens inriktning”) are as dutifully reported to the readers as if it were the plain (and very reliable) truth. Which was then followed already on p.8 by a piece titled ”Män som slår ger kvinnan skulden” and illustrated by a picture (showing a man’s clenched fist and a woman cowering in the background) to which the text begins with the statement ”TAR INTE ANSVAR.” in fat print – this about a report which was based on interviews with men who had ALREADY JOINED groups for getting rid of their violent behaviour (which in ca 60 % of the cases also helps after already the first year). Which seems to me to indicate that just these men had in fact already taken something like ”ansvar” – but let’s see what Bert will have to comment on this …
And what is/was now that (really EXTREMELY) rare pleasure? Well, in Hbl of Ti 24.11. there was on p.4/5 an article titled ”Visionen: Till Stockholm – i snabbtåg” which was reporting about a seminar in Stockholm during which a firm from Åland had been discussing possibilities to set up a solid traffic connection between Finland and Sweden via Mariehamn. Under discussion were two different possible systems (both of which seemed rather expensive to me by including, among others, a tunnel between Mariehamn and Norrtälje). And after some googling I was sending to that firm the first one of those my ”Technical Visions” which had been published a number of years ago in Ny Tid (in which I was recommending the aerobus system, which can be googled under ”aerobus international”).
And a very short time afterwards I found in my email an invitation to phone there. And when I did so we had a very sober and pleasant discussion. Jaha, and what is so extremely pleasant about this? Will this make me rich, is there perhaps already now some money jingling in my pocket? Not at all. It is just the fact that there DID come a reasonable reaction (which also gives some hope that once in a while a reasonable idea might actually be realized). Because: if you go to some politician with an idea you will, PERHAPS, get a smile and a warm handshake, but will certainly NEVER EVER hear anything further about the idea. This anyway in Finland, and also with politicians who are posing as, and are also considered to be, progressive. And this is more or less the same in Germany. There was, though, one exception to this: in one of my jobs there was on every working day tea time at 12:00, with lively discussions among all those who were meeting there, and one of them was a politician in Helsinki. And with him it was (under the circumstances) possible to talk, also to see some effect of the talks in his public doings. Unluckily, he has died since, but should it perhaps be recommended to the readers of Ny Tid that they use their personal (or otherwise close) contacts to active politicians to try and push some reasonable ideas (otherwise known as lobbying). And should perhaps Ny Tid try to be an address to which one can go with ideas to be spread (which would mean that Ny Tid also would actively invite ideas about problems which it had previuosly published in some short form)? Considering the nonsense which is at present (and also otherwise) going on all over Europe (not least in Finland) there would, I think, anyway be every damned reason to try (by whatever channels) and introduce some reason into political decision making.
Det första och största steget för en våldsam man om han faktiskt vill bli av med sitt våldsberoende är att ta ansvar för sitt beteende, alltså inse att det är han och inte offret som är den skyldige och att offret inte i något fall kan skuldbeläggas för att ha provocerat fram våldet. Att joina en grupp för våldsamma män är ännu inte att ta ansvar och kan eventuellt rentav vara en undanmanöver, ett sätt att få myndigheter och offer att tro att han vill ’bättra sig’ och på så sätt eventuellt undgå eller minska straffpåföljd.
As my text was already indicating, it is no surprise to me that you are commenting, nor (unluckily) is the way HOW you are commenting. But it gives me a possibility to explain the difference between an instrumental response and an expressive one: To react in an expressive way ist to react emotionally and think the matter settled once there is an emotionally satisfactory answer to the expressive reaction – in the case of violence in a relation the expressive response will try to look for a guilty one and feel it an important step towards a solution of this (supposedly) guilty one is confessing that he (mostly he) is a piece of shit and putting a good portion of ashes to his hair. Whether it helps is then another story.
In contrast to this, the instrumental response begins with the perception that there is a less-than-satisfactory state of affairs, which perception is then followed by the question ”well, what do we do now?” This approach has better things to do than shifting around guilt or making a situation still more inflammated than it already is by loud moral accusations. Instead, it looks at all the factors in the situation (who is involved -directly or indirectly -, who act/reacts how, to what consequences does this then lead, etc.) and tries to find out where one could introduce changes, so that the situation becomes more satisfactory. And the content of the article seemed (to me) to indicate that those men who agreed to join such anti-violence groups often go there with an ”instrumental” attitude, which then might be one factor why there is that really astonishing rate of success (something like 60% after only one year in the group – compare that to the success rates of other psychotherapy!!!). Compared to this, to demand that those men should begin by (so-to-say) ”putting ashes to their hair” (i.e. switching to an expressive response) might very well turn out to be ”counterproductive”. But we can gladly continue the debate with those psychiatrists whom we, after all, do have some private contact to.