Depression is becoming widespread. Today it could be triggered, in some individuals, by the global economic downturn, as well as the constant barrage of bad news spewed by the corporate media that seems to derive a perverse satisfaction in spreading hopelessness and fear. However it is generally believed that the original causes of depression are not well understood, so scientists choose the narrowly materialistic and seemingly practical approach of focusing on brain chemistry.

The fact that they do not appear to make the connection between suicide – which is a form of murder, of violence against the self to which depression can lead – and suppressed anger or rage, is significant, as it is a sign of how much anger has become a taboo subject and how little it is understood in our societies, how much it is regarded as undesirable and irrelevant.

There is a profound difference between sadness and depression. Some people confuse them, yet sadness is an actual feeling, depression is an absence of feeling, a general numbness and sense of emotional paralysis and hopelessness that come from the suppression of the feeling process. It forms a self-destructive pattern whereby thoughts and emotions are turned against the self, preventing the vital flow of healthy self-expression as well as growth and reaching out, and leading to stagnation and deep despair.

At the root of all depressions is suppressed and often unconscious anger, the more intense the anger the more profound the depression, suppressed rage often leading to suicide, or to murder and suicide. Such anger, such rage can linger just below consciousness, as parents and other adult authorities often quickly correct children whenever they express appropriate, healthy angry feelings, training them to control such emotions.

Anger is also culturally suppressed. Anger is the elephant in the room no one sees, because most have been conditioned to disregard it as soon as it emerges, to associate it with negativity. Anger is not “nice,” it is not pretty, sweet or cute. It can be hurtful and appears destructive, like a storm.

What makes anger destructive? The steam that escapes from a functioning pressure cooker does not cause any damage; block any means of escape and the pressure cooker explodes. Children and adults who have, most of their lives, been trained to suppress legitimate feelings of anger accumulate such anger to the point of self-implosion as in the case of depression, of explosion in abusive, violent behaviors, or of self-destruction through the weakening of their own immune system, as the suppression of such feelings takes a very heavy toll on the body. It is indeed a lot more exhausting and stressful to suppress rather than to express feelings, which explains the exhaustion that accompanies depression.

What is not understood in this process of the suppression of anger, or of any other feeling, is that such feelings do not vanish just because an individual or society wishes they would. All feelings seek and require expression, and will find a way out regardless of how carefully people attempt to seal them in. This requirement can lead to depression in the sense that depression is the ultimate expression of negation: in this paradoxical process the person can only express forms of self-denial and self-destruction, as all other expressions are blocked.

The other unintended outcome of the suppression of anger is the unconscious expression of anger: offensive, provocative behaviors that are grounded in suppressed rage but that an individual is not aware of displaying, which can provoke angry reactions from other people who are victimized by these behaviors; ironically, the said individual then often reacts with explosive rage to such angry reactions, having been given, from his/her own perspective, a legitimate cause to “let it out” and have intense and apparently irrational temper tantrums.

What is the difference between appropriate and inappropriate anger, between healthy, normal, natural anger and irrational anger? Society does not know or willfully ignores the difference. Parents, most of whom have acquired neurotic traits, do not make the difference in their children. Schools do not make the difference in their students. Some religious and superficially thinking pseudo-spiritual people do not make the difference within themselves or anyone else, so paranoid are they about “evil,” “negativity,” “darkness” or “toxicity.”

Many therapists and counselors busy themselves suppressing both in their patients, focusing on behavior and control rather than feelings and their full expression and integration. In this sense they become a kind of psychological police, unwittingly doing their part in the perpetuation of a repressive and neurotic culture, frequently prescribing or recommending mental straight jackets (medications) to their patients.

If you are either drawn to conflicts, to confrontations, to power struggles, to fights, or are conversely afraid of such things and avoid them at all costs, you have most likely suppressed your anger and are either terrified of the lingering, potentially destructive monster you sense you have created within yourself, or are propelled to let it out regularly for a cathartic release of the chronic inner tension your suppression of anger is causing you to experience.

If on the other hand you have no problem expressing anger whenever it arises in a manner that is not cruel, not underhanded, not mean, not hurtful but direct, real and to the point, and if you feel naturally compelled to walk away from someone who consistently provokes such anger in you rather than being drawn into a fight to the finish or a perpetual struggle as are so many, you are most probably healthy, that is to say free of residual anger. Being free of such pathological anger, you are most likely able to feel all other feelings (joy, pleasure, love) that much more deeply and satisfactorily.

Indeed the suppression of anger, or of any feeling, eventually causes an inability to feel other feelings adequately, until a person no longer knows who he or she is, what he or she wants, having become driven by unconscious impulses, compulsions and the dictates of society and culture rather than by conscious needs, consequently afraid of him/herself, of what could be festering within and lurking below conscious awareness, and frequently inclined to supporting the implementation of social systems, from governments to religions, whose prevalent ideology is one that is characterized by denial, suppression, repression and control.

The police state begins in neurosis, and neurosis begins in the suppression of feelings.

“In an unreal society, the simple truth is revolutionary” Arthur Janov, “The Primal Revolution.”

Raphael Montoliu lives in Lakeport.

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I've been covering Lakeport's city government for close to eight years, and as a careful observer of the city's business I feel able to offer a few suggestions of my own on how the city can close a $400,000 budget gap.

Going back to last week's special budget meeting, despite the concerns voiced by some council members that the actual mismatch between spending and revenue wasn't really addressed, I actually think it was. Staff has curtailed spending by $200,000 so far this budget year, so that's at least half of the problem addressed right there.

But, let's say that there still would be a $400,000 gap going forward, accounting for reduced revenues in the form of sales and, eventually, property tax due to reassessments.

And let's say that city staff is able to further cut down expenses by $100,000 a year, and that several staffers take a “golden handshake” early retirement that saves about $71,000 in the first year and $96,000 in the second.

In addition, the city could shift payments for county and chamber of commerce marketing services to the redevelopment agency, which could successfully argue that those services benefit the redevelopment area.

The city's redevelopment attorney thinks they should pay no more than $5,000 for each event or service, so that might mean curtailing contracts with the county and chamber significantly, or otherwise using redevelopment to supplement general fund payments. Still, that could mean about $20,000 in savings to the general fund.

So, let's say we're now down to a $200,000 budget gap. Where to go next?

My basic philosophy about budgets is this: Balancing a budget and keeping spending plans sustainable are impacted not just by actual bottom line decisions, but by smart management that approaches critical resources with an eye to the future.

Luxury items that have to go

First off, it's time to look at getting rid of City Council salaries and benefits.

Do they deserve to be compensated? Absolutely. But sometimes what you deserve and what you get are two vastly different things. The more important question is, can the city of Lakeport currently afford it? Maybe not. I'd go so far as to suggest this is a luxury item in the current economic climate.

Council members currently receive $300 a month each, which comes out to $18,000 annually. In light of the fact that city employees are now having to take furloughs, essentially cutting their salaries, I think it's only right the council give their own salaries back until the city's financial condition improves.

The bigger issue is the full health benefits package – including health, dental and vision – council members receive for themselves and their spouses, which is budgeted to cost the city $58,503 in this budget year. Those costs can expect to grow in the years ahead; those costs have risen more than $3,000 since the 2005-06 budget year.

Salaries and benefits together are costing the city $76,503 this year, or $1,275.05 per month, per council member.

For the budget years 2005-06 up through the current fiscal year, council salary and benefits packages have cost the city approximately $300,492. That's not a drop in the budget for a small city like Lakeport.

It's interesting to note that the city of Clearlake's annual expenses for council members are actually much higher. While they pay the same $300 per month salary, health insurance for the fiscal year 2008-09 is budgeted at $94,200, plus $2,970 for redevelopment agency stipends, for a grand total of $115,170. That's up by approximately $69,768 since fiscal year 2006, when two council members waived coverage. In 2005, the city administrator had suspended council health insurance temporarily.

Compare what the two cities offer to the benefits the county Board of Supervisors' members receive.

This year's county budget includes $42,000 for all five supervisors. That number is the county's share of the premium, not the supervisors' individual share, which they pay out of pocket. The county doesn't pay 100 percent of the premium for dependent coverage for any county employee, including its supervisors.

Keep in mind that the supervisors are considered full-time employees.

If things begin to look up for Lakeport in the future, maybe it would be reasonable to consider reestablishing a generous salary and benefits package for council members.

But when they're asking employees to give up pay, and looking at curtailing the benefits of both current employee and retirees, it's hardly reasonable that the council members themselves shouldn't also participate in the sacrifice.

In fact, I believe self-sacrifice is an essential ingredient in effective leadership. It basically says, “We're all in this together.”

This, I'm sure, will be unpopular with the council. The benefits were mentioned by Burke briefly in the special Feb. 24 budget meeting. The reaction from the council on that point was silence.

My feeling is, if you're on the council to get the benefits, you're there for the wrong reason.

The big ticket item

OK, so we're now down in the range of a budget gap of $123,000.

What to cut next?

In my estimation, it's the big ticket item that the city can't really afford right now: The city manager job.

The city established a city manager position in 2001. The current salary and benefits package for the position totals roughly $110,000, according to previous statements by city officials. That's a salary level pretty comparable to much larger cities, and it's beyond what Lakeport can afford.

So I'd suggest one of two options.

First, indefinitely suspend the city manager position. Appoint one of the city's department heads to be a “first among peers,” essentially a position of senior rank; that person would then be the point of contact between city staff and the council. Give them $20,000 a year extra for that duty – think of it as hazard pay. The city last year went through an expensive reorganization process to create new titles and rearrange the place. That has nicely set the stage for this transition.

My second suggestion is better.

The redevelopment manager position goes hand in hand with that of the city manager. Combine the responsibilities of those two jobs into one. Then the council can do what it should have done nearly two years ago: Hire Richard Knoll to lead the city and give him a raise, which will still save the city money.

I want to make clear here that I think Kevin Burke is doing a fantastic and effective job as interim city manager. But he's made clear numerous times that he doesn't want the job permanently.

If the average city staffer has intellectual capital, Knoll is a literal bank of it. He's been with the city for years, is calm in the face of challenges, understands the city's responsibility to its citizens, has extensive knowledge and contacts, and is ultimately a very decent person, a trait that's often in short supply in any field these days.

He's no yes man, and that's also what the city needs – someone who isn't afraid to tell the council the truth when they need to hear it. To simply hire someone to say yes to you, even when they really shouldn't, is like hiring someone to watch your kids who won't hesitate to give them beer and your car keys. (Apologies to PJ O'Rourke for a wild paraphrase of one of his quips.)

In either scenario, the city stands to save as much as $90,000.

So, we're now down to about $50,000, which can be recovered with a nip here and a tuck there, including modest reductions in professional services budgets and training, without completely gutting those items altogether.

A better approach to city staff

The proposals I've offered above are made with an eye toward protecting one of the city's most valuable resources: its staff.

The city of Lakeport has an eminently qualified group of employees who, despite the recent tough times and enormous normal workloads, have stuck by the city and continue to try to serve it and the public the best way they can.

So it's been especially hard to see them have to take a 5-percent pay cut in the form of furloughs – which the city's employee bargaining units agreed to do – in order to help the city's bottom line.

You can bet that 5-percent pay cut was no small sacrifice for many of those employees.

So the suggestion that the city consider an additional furlough, raising the cut amount to 10 percent in the coming fiscal year is, to me, patently unacceptable.

Further, I believe the city should have no pay cut at all in the year ahead.

What about saving money, you ask? Aren't furloughs better than layoffs?

Yes, in the short term, they are vastly preferable to layoffs.

However, I think that the furlough is an emergency measure that simply shouldn't be repeated, and that if it's used again it will do quite the reverse of its intended use, and end up costing the city money.

That cost to the city will come in the form of experienced employees walking out the door, taking their intellectual capital – an often hard-to-quantify value that includes a person's experience, knowledge and training – with them elsewhere. In the current job market, they may not leave right away, but they will leave eventually. The cost to replace those employees could easily exceed any savings.

Just as costly will be the damage to the city's reputation if it begins layoffs, a point Burke has made numerous times.

The specter of layoffs has been hanging about the city like an unwelcome guest over the last year, and the council needs to dispel it immediately, for the sake of the city's reputation and employee morale.

Some of the council appear to want to say the word “layoff,” but are weighing the political ramifications. Let me remove any doubt for them: The fallout will be severe.

And why take that step if it may not be necessary? I think there are better ways to address the city's budget problems and they don't involve making cuts at the expense of employees or the much-needed services they provide to the public.

It's crucial to point out that this isn't just about employees, but the work they do for the public.

If you don't like the fact that you can't get your street paved now, just wait until there's no one to run the pavement grinder. Want the parks kept up? What if you suddenly have two or three less people to do that work? How will that make the city look to the rest of the world? And what about when you need a police officer and can't get one?

These are questions everyone in Lakeport – from council members to the citizens paying the taxes – must weigh carefully in the months ahead.

E-mail Elizabeth Larson at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it..

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Columnist and contributor Mandy Feder.

Regardless of how old I get, I am simply juvenile about my birthday. I shamelessly announce it and absorb the well wishes.

Maybe it’s because in order to enter the world I battled an IUD victoriously. My brother Steve, 13 months my senior, was a diaphragm baby.

I woke up Thursday morning to my friend Carol singing happy birthday in two languages. My boy, Rex, now more than 6 feet tall, grinned and sang to me as he was on his way out to school and punched his friend Payton in the arm, who ran back to say, “Hey, Mandy, happy birthday.”

I saw my daughter Nicole’s grocery list on the counter, which consisted of ingredients for my favorite soup, hot and sour, and at the bottom of the list it said, “cake mix.” Next to the list was a bottle of my favorite red wine accompanied by a card from my housemate Dave.

I cannot recall anything, at any age that got in the way of enjoying my day. Some people don’t like getting older. They deny it, fight it, ignore it or reject it.

My friend Charlette from high school greeted me on Facebook with this: “Happy birthday. 43 huh? Who would have thunk it? I remember being 17 and thinking 30 was ancient. When I have cocktails this weekend, I will dedicate a lemon drop to you :) I just got back into town. Do you have any plans for a birthday celebration? I am letting birthdays pass quietly these last few years. No need for all the hoopla. Mahalo.”

She’s at least as beautiful as she was in school and the years certainly lend wisdom to us all.

I am celebrating this year quietly at home, but happily with friends and family. I am writing this as a respite or departure from political, social and economic issues of the time, because this is my day.

Though others share the same date of birth, some even the same year, like my accountant Christine, nobody shares the same experiences as I do. That indeed makes me an individual.

Each year my dad points out my age, “Boy you’re getting old he says.” I tell him that must make him super-old; after all, I am the youngest of his three children.

On a more mature note, my birthday is a time when I can assess what I have contributed to the world thus far and what I would like to, or intend to, contribute in the year ahead. I think about the places I’ve lived, people I’ve known and memories created. This year I’m grateful that I saw my favorite Uncle Mark and got to know my cousins and aunt. I was surprised at how much we mean to each other even after many years.

I made a list of aspirations and a list of resolutions. I thank my parents as if I were accepting an Academy Award, “I would just like to thank you for making this all possible,” type of thing.

This year I wish that everyone find a day for themselves, a day to set humility aside and celebrate life shamelessly and joyfully.

“In life we need three things, a wishbone, a backbone and a funny bone.”

Mandy Feder is a contributing writer and columnist for Lake County News.

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Columnist and contributor Mandy Feder.

Elizabeth Larson and I are both alumni of California State University, Chico. Though I met her only a few months ago, I appreciate her integrity, ambition and the love for journalism that we share.

In a time of publications that have seen two centuries or more in print buckling with the weight of the economy, we may serve as the proverbial musicians on the Titanic – doing exactly what we love until we die.

That’s OK – we are in good company.

Henry David Thoreau, author of “Walden,” spent his life dedicated to environmentalism and writing, so far ahead of his time that the majority of his life he was considered crazy.

Dannie M. Martin, a Lompoc penitentiary convict, loved writing almost as much as crime. He wrote columns for the San Francisco Chronicle from prison and later published a book titled “Committing Journalism: The Prison Writings of Red Hog,” with editor Peter Y. Sussman.

Journalism is a career field chock full of excitement, condemnation, criticism and glory.

Those who are passionate about it are ethical, balanced and embrace the unknown. There is a constant need to understand others in order to translate a story to a large population of people with varying backgrounds, opinions and beliefs.

Elizabeth might be compared to Margaret Fuller, born in 1810. She was the first American woman correspondent to cover foreign war. She joined the New York Tribune as the first woman on the newspaper’s staff. Elizabeth confidently created a worthy and accurate news Web site for Lake County.

She’s also somewhat like Anna Quindlen, born in 1951, the voice of the baby boomers as a writer for the New York Times. Her words encompassed a generation’s concerns about social, political, and personal issues. She won a Pulitzer Prize in 1992.

There’s a category for Elizabeth and me; we are word nerds.

We both love the book “Eats, Shoots and Leaves: The Zero Tolerance Approach to Punctuation.” It’s perfect for people like us.

Being in Elizabeth’s company reminds me of conversations and debates with other word nerds from my past.

We both admire Benjamin Franklin and Mark Twain’s contributions to journalism as well.

Not only do we love journalism and all that accompanies the career, we also love Lake County.

During the period that I was displaced Elizabeth gave me a voice with the Lake County News. I cannot begin to express my humble gratitude and respect I have for her and her passion for journalism.

While I am returning to the Lake County Record-Bee as the news editor, I look forward to the healthy competition the Lake County News will provide.

Mandy Feder returns to the Lake County Record-Bee on Wednesday. Lake County News has been proud to feature her work, wishes her much success and values her presence in the field of journalism.

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The crash of salmon in California affects us all. This once-abundant fish, famed for huge king salmon in numbers so great they crowded our rivers, is now teetering on the edge of extinction. While some specific populations are not listed under the Endangered Species Act, several king salmon and coho salmon runs are listed as “threatened” or “endangered.”

These are not just trophy and sport fish. They form the backbone of California ecosystems, tribal cultures, local economies, a commercial fishing industry and a once-plentiful, wonderful food. Most Californians would mourn the loss of salmon, and rightly so – it would be a resource squandered.

This will likely be the second year in a row with no commercial or sport ocean salmon season. This is not an anomaly – it is the sad result of a long-term trend that government and the public have been unable to stop. And, as last year’s no-catch season demonstrates, a blanket ban on fishing will not, by itself, reverse that trend.

Salmon have borne the brunt of development in California. With every major dam, they lose habitat. With every ounce of polluted runoff from farm or city, they lose water quality. With every quart pumped from once free-flowing rivers, they lose water.

In-stream pumps trap juveniles against screens; invasive species steal habitat and eat young fish; wildland roads dump sediment into streams; and hatchery management practices are incapable of replacing natural spawning. Add to this the natural – and human-induced – changes wrought on climate, the ocean and streambeds, and the salmon face one tough uphill swim.

One particularly pernicious practice affecting water quality and the beds of streams is motorized in-stream motorized gold mining. Gasoline-powered engines on suction dredges on pontoons or rafts are used by people to scoop up riverbeds in order to find grains of gold in Northern California streams. Sediment from suction mining covers emerging salmon in stream gravels, and the suction alone, in the deep, cool parts of wild streams, entrains and kills young fish.

Statewide, there are about 3,000 miners operating in places like the Klamath, Scott and Shasta watersheds who buy permits from the California Department of Fish and Game (DFG). Resident permits cost about $50. Combined with non-resident permit sales, they generate from $150,000 to $200,000 annually – for a program which costs DFG over $1.25 million each year to enforce.

In contrast, California fishermen buy 2.4 million fishing licenses each year. The sport-fishing industry supports a total of 43,000 jobs paying $1.3 billion in wages and salaries annually. Fishing equipment sales total over $2.4 billion per year. And salmon, fish highly susceptible to the impacts from suction dredges, are traditionally the most important fish to Northern California commercial fishermen and native tribes.

Yet, late last month, the DFG rejected a petition to restrict mining in areas most important to fish. The department director seemed more swayed by a partisan letter from the Siskiyou County Board of Supervisors in support of the miners than ecological realities. In sharp contrast to overwhelming evidence, the board stated that there is no emergency.

DFG’s action – or rather, the department’s shameful lack of action – is unconscionable. Environmental choices should be based on fact, as well as on fair evaluation of economic realities. Gold mining is a minor, recreational activity. Many commercial fishermen, along with sellers of fishing equipment and others in a multi-million-dollar industry, deserve equal if not greater consideration. DFG has already admitted publicly that the regulatory status quo is harming fish like the coho salmon.

DFG officials have a responsibility to protect our state’s fishery resources, the livelihoods of our fishermen and women, and the supply of local seafood for our tables. And if they don’t fulfill that responsibility, the state legislature, along with other concerned individuals and organizations, must hold them accountable.

Accordingly, I plan to introduce legislation to ban suction-dredge mining in California. While some miners will denounce a ban as infringing upon their “freedom,” no human beings should be “free” to hasten the elimination of these magnificent fish. And millions of other Californians – including fishing families, recreational fishermen and salmon consumers – have an interest to protect, as well.

And on Feb. 5, attorneys for the Karuk Indian Tribe and the Pacific Coast Federation of Fishermen’s Associations filed suit, seeking a temporary restraining order seeking to prevent DFG from issuing additional mining permits and to halt all suction dredge mining operations.

We are, hopefully, at a turning point on the path of survival for California’s salmon. There is an agreement in principle to remove dams on the Klamath River. There is reconsideration of Delta pumping and water management. There are broad efforts to bring back the coho, with many people gritting their teeth to cooperate with a broad range of restrictions, starting with fishermen.

It is time for miners to give up their self-interest, too, to give these fish a moment to recover. And it’s high time for the Department of Fish and Game to go from protecting miners to protecting fish … for all Californians.

State Sen. Patricia Wiggins (D-Santa Rosa) chairs the Joint Legislative Committee on Fisheries & Aquaculture. She represents California’s 2nd District, which includes Lake County.

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I recently saw an article describing the negative effects of corporal punishment on children – likening it to child abuse. It said that it teaches violence, destroys self esteem, and generally demeans both parent and child.

This is just another example of the twisted values of today’s generation of misled theoreticians. To support this point of view I’d like to quote an article written by a psychologist and 40-year veteran of our educational system, Mr. Don Henthorn, entitled, “There’s Research And Then There’s Research.”

“I’ve been a psychologist for almost 40 years, also a teacher, guidance counselor, and administrator. In my opinion, the research (relied upon today) is patently false. The research designs are seriously flawed. Using similar methods I could produce studies proving that corporal punishment inflicted by loving parents takes far less time and is far more effective. In social studies today, little valid information comes from research because examination of all the variables is politically incorrect. Many present day researchers have never passed Methods of Research 101, let alone advanced classes. They start with the flawed presumption that children have an advanced capacity to understand the need to behave similar to adults. Children see it quite differently. They view these methods as a sign of weakness. They feel in control with no fear of consequences. Today, drugs are often used as last-resort correctives.

“The phrases 'authoritative discipline' and 'positive behavior intervention' are too fuzzy and nebulous to get hold of. Parents and principals will tell you they get zero results with children who need discipline the most. With both parent(s) working, time outs, withholding of rewards, serious talks, etc., can not be utilized consistently because parents simply aren’t there when they need to be!

“Proponents of these 'theories' fail to make a distinction between abuse and loving punishment because they have a skewed perspective as to what constitutes violence. When spanking was common, experiential data shows there was far less abuse of children and women. Communities took an active role in disciplining abusers, and physically corrected children had love and respect for their parents. We need town meetings to examine public opinion and historical perspective rather than relying on questionable experts. Also police and protective services should not give credence to theories based on dubious research.”

Many Indian tribes were able to enforce discipline through social pressure, but only because they shared similar values and lifestyles. Today, we don’t have any social pressures to speak of. There is no greater family and few of us care what our neighbors think.

Native peoples never struck their children. Our society did without such punishments because the tribal communities’ social pressures were significantly more powerful in controlling and directing acceptable behavior than the splintered and unsupported American family of today. Many native peoples did have warrior societies that occasionally disciplined adults corporally to insure their compliance, but the most dominant method of force was the threat of humiliation or ostracism.

Today, our citizens share so many different moral and ethical codes that, despite a certain nostalgia and belief in a moral majority, no common morality or value guidelines exist. Without powerful social pressure to encourage citizens to live by a common code, and without the threat or fear of corporal consequence to take its place, there remains only the weak and vacillating exhortation to “behave,” “grow up,” “come to task”, etc. These gobbledy-gook encouragements are part of the poorly theorized, improperly studied precepts of educators, sociologists and parents catering to the whims of undisciplined “experts.”

Looking to nature, every species has to discipline its youth as they push the envelope of willful behavior. This is a natural process toward maturity, but first attempts begin long before the individual has reached a level of intellectual maturity to find a motivation for correct behavior.

Animals are quick and decisive in dealing with this “testing” by their young. Fear of pain is their most effective teaching tool. The quickest way for a child to learn not to touch a hot stove is for them to burn their fingers. The consequences of one’s actions are learned behavior starting with a young child’s first attempts at self reliance.

From those early falls is born a sense of caution; from burned fingers comes a respect for fire. Obviously there is the potential for injury, even fatality, from experimentation – and parents are forced to take more drastic measures to insure children will not take unknown risks simply because they are not yet familiar with the consequences.

When it comes to survival, discipline is fairly easy to accomplish, but social discipline is more difficult. The reasons to “behave” and the benefits of appropriate behavior are not as clear-cut.

As children, most of the baby boom generation was subjected to the “rod” theory, and looking back now, it was pretty effective. We understood that this “discipline” was not from anger and knew that our parents and other adults had our best interests in mind. Since we were also shown sufficient affection, understanding and praise by these same individuals, it was neither demeaning or destructive to our self-esteem. We observed it in nature, and knew it to be a natural occurrence.

Fifty years ago, with corporal punishment a regular form of consequence for undesirable behavior in children and even young adults, it was safe to walk down any street, leave your car and house doors unlocked, and trust your children to do exactly as they were asked–most of the time. Though we had this closet type of violence in every home, society itself was relatively violence free and, if it occurred at all, it was dealt with immediately and harshly.

Today in our more “enlightened” society, where any kind of corporal punishment or spanking is deemed a first cousin of child abuse, and where even verbal correction can be termed a form of abuse, violence is at an all time high. Society demands it for entertainment and in many places the common citizen no longer feels safe in their own home.

Family temperament, volatility and atmosphere create different personalities and a need for different types of discipline. One solution does not fit every child. But the concept that one can appeal to a disturbed young person’s “good sense” to “behave” denies the basic nature of all species to indulge themselves in selfish behavior and test the limits of social control. Only a few species have the social constructs to successfully discipline without corporal adjustment and the only ones successful on this continent were determined to be ignorant savages!

What can be done with young people who, for whatever reason, are simply too willful to be controlled with words or threats that do not have physical pain lurking around to back them up? While their parent(s) may be abusive, disinterested or just afraid the neighbors will call protective services, these youths (usually male) are used to all the disciplinary measures currently in favor and are unfazed by their application. It only takes only one or two of these “fearless” children to infect a classroom or group with disruptive behavior.

Anyone who has children knows that the time line for effectively teaching discipline is short indeed. If we miss our opportunity during early development, we allow unbalanced children to develop an unnatural acceptance of misfortune in their lives. The result? They have little fear of consequences and even “fear of pain” becomes an ineffective technique. They have “formed” and there is no going back.

We think of today as the age of reason. Many people have the misguided expectation that children will respect and accept verbal direction if it is put to them in a quiet and instructively respectful manner. This is no more true for children than it is for adults.

Take the law for example. If the law did not have teeth in its consequences, even reasonable people would begin to take liberties with it, finding ways of rationalizing their actions to explain their disdain of its observance – like stopping at a stop sign. Everyone knows these signs are put there to direct traffic in a safe manner to protect all drivers. Everyone also knows that even when we can see that there is no clear and present danger, we are a still asked to obey – with the consequence of a punishment if we do not. If there were no consequence, individual drivers would begin to bend the law and rationalize their behavior to their own opinions regarding danger.

To find a balance between effective discipline and affection is the test of parenting. We would like to believe that the human animal is evolving into a more enlightened creature – but the state of the world suggests otherwise. Despite paying lip service to grander concepts, the spectacles of sex and death that were rampant in declining Roman society are beginning, once again, to dominate as forms of entertainment for the masses – a sure sign of civilization in decline.

The implication that previous generations disciplined with corporal punishment were somehow damaged, demeaned or improperly treated is ludicrous. Consider the statistics measuring the levels of violence and depression in youth and you will find increases since the advent of these new concepts of discipline.

Talk to anyone born before 1970 and you will find few who consider reasonable corporal punishment to have been damaging to their development, psyche or self-esteem. To say that corporal punishment has no place in the rearing of children in a dangerous world is, in itself, a dangerous theory. The only real argument against corporal punishment today is that today’s parents are so imbalanced themselves that they would not administer such punishments in prudent and reasonable ways. But that is a discussion for another day.

Fear forces us to learn many lessons related to facing the inherent dangers found in the natural world. Fear of consequence causes human adaptation. Much of this learned adaptation results directly from pain experienced when we make mistakes that threaten our balance or direction in that world. Corporal punishment, reasonably applied, is one of the more useful tools individuals have for insisting that their experience and wisdom is demonstrated to their children in a way that is certain to guarantee, if not their compliance, their attention and/or survival.

Today’s violence is gratuitous and self-serving. Its insidious acceptance into our mediums of entertainment and daily lives affects our children in a much more profound manner than any momentary pain and humiliation they might face enduring a five second spanking. Lack of guidance, self-discipline and success does a lot more to damage the self-esteem of our youth than corporal punishment ever would.

James BlueWolf is an artist and writer. He lives in Nice.

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