Today you see overwhelming situations such as violence and abuse against women, the gun violence issue, the racial issues, the terrorism issue, the wars, equality issues. When you look at each issue in isolation and look to someone else to resolve it, whether that be looking to the community you live in to resolve or your city or your government, you will always end up with sweeping actions that bundle up everything and everyone together, and give you the band aid approach. This never solves the issue because you are taking something that is about personal choice and responsibility and clubbing it into a collective solution which sweeps up the innocent and the guilty with consequences for both.

What allows clearly hurtful, harmful, disconnected, and hate filled action? A society is filled up of individuals who harm one another. The solution cannot be collective when the crimes are committed by individuals.

Behaviour is about learning that one’s actions bring with it reactions [consequences]. However we are now living in a society where there never seem to be any consequences for the heinous acts committed. We now blame everyone for the actions of individuals.

We are made to believe men or women, grow up and one day just decide to start abusing other people, or have ideas and assumptions of superiority over other races, or religions or that someone just decides one day to wake up and shoot and kill people, or that there are people who just decide when given positions of power to suddenly begin to take advantage of vulnerable people.

Who believes these things just happen and are not a pattern of behaviour, either from personal trauma from childhood or learnt and quietly permitted behaviour, that was ignored, belittled, kept silent on, or absolved?

Every time there is an outcry of injustice by this or that group, we want to blame  everyone within that group. We need to be alert to being coerced into this way of thinking and acting, because it then brings into effect more government controls.

When we ask for and allow collective solutions to individual actions, what we are essentially asking for is going to mask the problem, never to solve it. It will also allow us to be shackled further and further, all the while providing us with superficial solutions.

Look at any issue and the legislation governments have brought into effect to essentially solve them. Have they? I would say no. How many issues have become worse in the ensuing years, even though legislations are increasing at a frightening pace? No forced legislation ever works and yet we are moving towards legislating every human behaviour, because someone is hurt or offended? We are heading at a rapid pace to forced behaviour modification. So the question i ask is, as a society are we better of today because of all the rules and regulations? Are we safer? Are we a more equal society, are we racially more cohesive because of all the so called solutions, governments have come up with or are things getting worse?

Band aid solutions are great at covering up wounds and sometimes allowing healing to take place, however they are never able to get to the root cause, as that is not the role they are there to play.