The Peoples Forum

...While it is true that to the extent that "black power" advocates destroy the liberal-Negro-labor coalition they harm the movement, there are beneficial aspects of "black power...

...Why the prevalence of violence in the playroom and in the mass media...

...This ability to tone down and rechannel aggressive drives—the hallmark of civilized man —does not appear fully-formed in the adult personality, but grows through years of childhood play at sham-aggression...

...Southern California Psychoanalytic Institute Los Angeles, California Dear Sirs: In his article, "Killing for Christmas," Dr...

...I do not understand what Dr...

...Why can't we honorably negotiate and arrive at a responsible conclusion to our holy war...

...Rather, the key point he makes, as half dove and half hawk in this particular war, is that for the United States to disengage from Vietnam under adverse conditions might undermine our entire "position" in Southeast Asia...

...Sheehan, as all people, must face up, take a firm stand and put nationalism aside for humanism and morality, to end this horrible killing and brutality in Vietnam...

...to the extent that it . . . puts its faith instead in collective action aiming at dealing with a collective fate, it is an intelligent response to the realities of American life...

...Jerome Frank, and many of my colleagues in the American Orthopsychiatric Association who feel that toys of violence help to destroy children's capacity to love...

...In my opinion, his implication that psychiatrists agree that "sanctioning of war through the condoning of war toys desensitizes children to the evils of war" is unfounded...

...One defense against chronic anxiety is to become tough, callous, indifferent to suffering in others and in ourselves...

...Fortunately, children are generally capable of distinguishing fantasy from reality and so they seldom kill people...

...If parents are so fearful of their own aggression that they must suppress every sign of sublimated aggression in their children, the children will probably grow up to be as neurotic as their parents...

...What "position," be it moral, military, or popular, do we have left in Asia...

...Humane leaders around the world including U Thant, Pope Paul, Senators Fulbright, Gruening, Morse, many educators, religionists, and other people have offered alternatives...

...We are left with only one position—that which inspires deadly fear and respect for our military and industrial might...

...Up until the last column, that is...

...To prove his sincerity, he could offer the United Nations our military base at Cam Ranh Bay to be turned into a university...

...The organizational potentiality for the Negro in the "black power" concept is important...

...Children who learn to release aggression without hurting people will grow up to be adults who can release aggression without hurting people...

...Gerald Barnes Denver, Colorado...

...emphasis added) is an irresponsible attempt to justify an immoral continuation of a brutality against our fellow humans...

...As David Danzig notes in the September issue of Commentary: In short, to the extent that "black power" expresses a determination to build a Negro community which would be something more than a euphemism for the ghetto, it is a valid and necessary cry...

...Why not question our position in Southeast Asia...

...Children do not beg their parents for aggressive toys to learn how to murder each other when they grow up, but rather to work out in fantasy some of the aggressive feelings they have at the time toward other people (principally their parents and siblings...

...He added that many Europeans are convinced that American parents deliberately train their children to become gangsters...

...Mary Phillips Lemont, Illinois Eloquent Analysis Dear Sirs: Cheers for Arthur Larson's eloquent analysis in "Power and Law in World Affairs" in the November and December issues...

...Isidore Ziferstein, M.D...

...Let us examine our position from the viewpoint of humanity, morality, and legality instead of from the view of military, political, and economic power...

...Now it looks as though I could recommend the periodical as truly "progressive," without reservations...

...Instead, he has demonstrated by his article that people are capable of behaving aggressively toward other people without inflicting physical harm upon them...

...I also endorse his proposal that, in the absence of a general ban on war toys, parents institute their own bans...

...Children do not "learn" to play violently any more than the young of possibly every mammalian species learn to play violently...

...What must be learned is the art of expression of our natural aggressions in fantasy or symbolism—for example, with the pen or with the toy gun...

...He has wide knowledge of the war-begotten graft, crime, corruption, and degradation in Saigon and other Vietnamese cities...

...Brock Chisholm, the first Director-General of the World Health Organization, has commented that nowhere else in the world has he seen the spectacle of six-year-olds running around with six-shooters, shooting each other down...

...If children did not repress their "real hostilities" we would have an abundance of dead parents and dead brothers and sisters...

...In this process, we become brutalized and reckless of human life...

...How many more people must die before we finally negotiate...

...Daniel Kesden North Miami Beach, Florida Sheehan's 'Final Analysis' Dear Sirs: Like the editors, I, too, felt Neil Sheehan's condensation in the December issue, "Not A Dove, But No Longer A Hawk," to be a most ". . . significant and searching commentary on Vietnam...

...In line with this, the world famous expert on learning processes in children, Dr...

...But still little or no attention was given to international anarchy, and the only basic cure for it...

...Gary E. Miller, M.D., Director Harlingen State Adult Mental Health Clinic Harlingen, Texas Dr...

...Kline's essential thesis (in his last sentence) that "people who learn to play nonviolently as children can learn to live nonviolently as adults...

...When we condone killing by cloaking it in the guise of patriotism and consensus, the suppressed drive finally gets, as in war, the chance it never had in childhood to be expressed...

...The premise that the creation of a fantastic expeditionary killing machine that will force the enemy's collapse over the years through exhaustion and despair is ". . . possibly the only feasible alternative open to a modern industrial power...

...Or, interestingly, it may find its way into direct expression by becoming rationalized in terms of some just cause...

...Kline Responds Dear Sirs: Writing in the Eighteenth Century, Alexander Pope turned out many phrases that continue to be quoted because they speak so clearly to the human condition...

...However, "black power," at the same time, must not be the means for the destruction of the liberal-labor-civil rights coalition...

...After twenty years of working with children, I agree with Dr...

...The United Nations is available, and willing to be the effective means to end the war and remove us from Vietnam in as politic a manner as possible, under the miserable conditions we have created...

...Everyone has aggressive drives, and even a moron can stab someone or pull a trigger...

...For over a quarter of a century I have been privileged to read and recommend The Progressive, but with the reservation that it paid little or no attention to the two most critical dilemmas facing mankind: population control and enforceable world law...

...It is a thorough recording of factual happenings analyzed by an experienced observer...

...Sheehan's ". . . final analysis" and conclusions, while reflecting his frustrations, left me shocked, as I never have been, and truly disgusted...

...A public statement by President Johnson expressing a willingness to accept a settlement based on international law—on the United Nations Charter and the Geneva Accords of 1954—could save untold lives and gain respect for him...

...Parents in our society worry when their offspring, especially the sons, do not begin to manifest fairly early in life the appropriate amount of aggressiveness and rapaciousness...

...For fools rush in where angels fear to tread" is one example which we can well ponder...

...Maria Montessori, said, "Why educate at all if you educate for destruction...

...However, it is my distinct feeling that his feelings are limited solely to a political orientation that refuses to be emotionally contaminated by any moral considerations of human suffering, with the exceptions of his anguished summation that he hopes we will not do this again...

...Erich Fromm, Dr...

...There are alternatives to his genocide...

...One does not have to learn to kill...

...I disagree with, and am unaware of evidence to support, Dr...

...This to me seems as illogical as urging children to play rape so that they can learn how to handle their sex drives...

...Several years ago, after the editor had written an entire supplement on Latin America, hardly mentioning the curse of biological inflation, we began to get strong editorials and an occasional article which stressed the need for birth control...

...Kline means when he says that war toys "actually cause a child to repress his real hostilities for they allow little flexibility in use...

...The aggression of children is innate, although the manner in which the child deals with it may be learned...

...I doubt if he has even smashed a single plastic rifle...

...If the aggression is constantly suppressed by parents, it may be turned inward in later life as mental depression, or it may come out in some distorted fashion as a neurotic symptom...

...Benjarriin Spock, Dr...

...In my opinion, one of the most successful ways of handling childhood aggression is to "pretend" to hurt people with toy weapons...

...The chronic anxiety produced by living under the constant threat of the possibility of instantaneous nuclear annihilation probably adds its share to the prevalence of violence...

...What is so sacred that to maintain it we must continue our strategy of "creating a killing machine in the form of a highly equipped expeditionary corps and then turning this machine on the enemy in the hope that over the years enough killing will be done to force the enemy's collapse through exhaustion and despair...

...Miller contends that pretending to kill provides children with a desirable outlet for hostility...

...Yet, regrettably, his concern for "our entire position in Southeast Asia" outweighs his compassion and misgivings...

...Certainly children repress their "real hostilities," for repression of aggressive drives is a necessary precursor to sublimating them, or permitting them to be expressed in an acceptable form...

...Carl L. Kline, M.D., Medical Director Marathon County Guidance Center Wausau, Wisconsin Black Power Dear Sirs: I was somewhat disappointed by the superficiality of James Wechsler's discussion of "black power" in the December issue...

...We try to immunize ourselves and our children by deliberately subjecting ourselves vicariously—in our "entertainment" and in the playroom—to ever-increasing doses of violence...

...Carl Kline has chosen to attack his foes with angry sentences...

...Albert Bandura of Stanford University concludes a report of a laboratory study of the impact of television violence on children with these words: "In view of the fact that television is one of the most important influences in the lives of children, the laboratory findings taken together do not present a pretty picture— unless our society is interested in strengthening the aggressive predispositions of a growing generation...

...Sheehan has misgivings and I am aware of the mixed emotions and frustrations he feels...

...Irwin Berman South Laguna, California Dear Sirs: In Neil Sheehan's article, "Not a Dove, But No Longer a Hawk," he reveals deep compassion for the rural Vietnamese people who suffer the daily horrors of war...

...This is an extremely tenuous position at best and one from which we could never turn to the chanty of another when our "position" weakens, as historically every other country's has...

...Children form their personalities and values through becoming like their parents...

...Another, which seems rather appropriate here, is: " Tis education forms the common mind: Just as the twig is bent the tree's inclined...

...The attitude of a parent toward himself, life, and other people will be far more decisive in determining the kind of adult the child becomes than the particular kinds of toys he plays with...

...Undoubtedly he has never clubbed, or machine-gunned, or bombed a single one of our nation's hypocritical peace lovers, "the Pied Pipers of Madison Avenue," the manufacturers of war toys, or the parents who permit their children to play with them...

...This school could be used to train world service volunteers for constructive work in a United Nations Peace Corps...

...We thus increase the likelihood of the very danger against which we are so anxiously defending ourselves...

...The important difference is that techniques of sublimation have not been developed to drain off some of the pent-up aggression...

...We live in a highly competitive society, in which aggressiveness, drive, the determination to get ahead of the other fellow by any and all means, are considered desirable attributes...