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Religion, Practice and Science of Non-Violence
previously have been passed over as a trivial provocation now causes an explosion. The incident may be wholly imaginary or it may be exaggerated through rumour.
(i) When violence actually breaks out, the operation of social facilitation becomes important in sustaining the destructive activity. To see other equally excited persons in a condition of mob frenzy augments one's own level of excitement and behaviour. One ordinarily finds one's personal impulses heightened and one's private inhibitions lessened.
The participants in fist fights, gang fights, vandalism, riots, lynchings, pogroms, are predominantly youthful. It seems unlikely that young people are more frustrated in their lives than older people, but presumably they do have a thinner layer of socialized habit between impulses and their release. It is relatively easier for youth to regress to the tantrum stage of infant wrath and lacking long years of social inhibition, to find a fierce joy in this release. Youth too has the agility, the energy and the risk-taking proclivity, required for violence.
It has also been observed that rioters are usually drawn from lower socio-economic classes. To some extent this fact may be due (1) to the lesser degree of discipline (self-control) taught in families of these classes and (2) to the lower educational level which prevents people from perceiving correctly the true causes of their miserable living conditions.
Control over Prejudice: It is easier not to allow prejudices to be developed than to break those that are already well-established in a community or group. Hence efforts in this regard should be directed particularly towards children.
The school, and the state should not cease practising or teaching the principles of democratic living. Together, their influence may establish at least a secondary model (the family and home being the prime social unit) for the child to follow. If they succeed in making him question his system of values, the chances for a maturer resolution of the conflict are greater than in the absence of such questioning.
Among the school-going boys and girls different approaches are advocated so as to make them more tolerant and less prejudiced. These include: (1) Informational approach, (2) Vicarious experience approach, (3) Contact and acquaintance approach, (4) Group re-training, (5) Individual therapy, and
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