Also on the issue of school shooting recently in my country, there are many factors that I see as to why the teens has become more violent these days. The Filipino people are historically different when it comes to the US for example. Hence, mass shooting is rampant in the US but not in the Philippines for a long time except for this year.
One of the important studies about why people harm other people and societies has something to do with the idea of Moral Disengagement which only a few people knows about. In the Philippine context, the main reason why teens has become violent these days and projected violence in schools has something to do with accessibility for spreading violent ideology, Moral desensitization due to rising violent content in social media, games, and even in major streaming platforms, and the subversive groups exploitating the vulnerable. Facts, Philippines is the top user of social media among the countries globally.
Okay, so what is with social media? Real death reels based on accidents, and murders. Such contents are in Instagram for example. Then we see a lot of people sharing their violent skills from Military to the police, to the reserve force. Even businessman and local populace who has the means to access weapons and even martial arts share these in social media. It would be unreasonable to say that it does not desensitize young people to violence.
Even in the time of pre-covid, I already noticed how young people in the college are desenstized to moral issues specifically academic dishonety or cheating. Then after covid when I was in the BSEE program, young people not only cheating in tests and just laugh about it, they also disrespect their college instructors and professors and laugh about it. So there is a spike of tolerance for wrong doing. Then this year, if not stabbing, shooting within school premises.
There are many debates right now about this. It does involve flaws in implementation of security including the security policies. There are flaws in firearms safekeeping by the owners. There are flaws in the mental health support system of the school. There are flaws in the anti-bullying laws and policies pushing the young people to distress and commit such thing. There is even a flaw that I see on how the schools are taught to deal with active shooters. Involvement of games that accommodate violence including its exploitation by subversive violent cultures to groom these young people that later end up shooting if not stabbing people around.
In line with this, I have decided to make my Instagram private because my content also showcases training in tactical. Although we have legit and lawful objectives, the young people who are not yet able to hold themselves can be inspired by such content and use it for their own violent actions. For people who are still weak, they see weapons as a symbol of power and then they end up hurting people.
On the other hand, Moral Disengagement is a good topic to read and learn from but it does not mean anyone committing or employing the mechanisms of Moral Disengagement are automatically Psychopaths. Psychopaths hurt people without using the mechanisms of Moral Disengagement.
One thing that I noticed though and also gave me red flags already was last year. There were a series of bomb threats in schools in the different parts of the archipelago and I remember in my online diary that I was complaining as to why it seems that the law enforcement is just letting these things happen. This year, they caught the person who did the bomb threat in the local university where I was enrolled last year for BSEE. After all the finger pointing of the faculty to students, it turns out that the one who did the bomb threat online is the one of the janitors at the university and upon arrest of the authorities, they confiscated many smartphones int the possession. The apprehended person reasoned that he said, “I never thought I was going to be caught”.
The series of bomb threat pattern from last year I have raised to the organization of first-responder regarding explosive ordnance, home made bombs, IEDs, but they never seem to act. The pattern also suggest that there is a network behind all these but horizon scanning also gave me a chilling warning. I realized that the series of bomb threats from last year may also be a form of probing, a test to see how the school communities will react including the response time of the authorities which is slow. I’m not sure yet but maybe, the last year’s unusual series of bomb threats is also connected with the series of school violence that happened this year in schools around my country.
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