'Darling, please tell mommy, why did you stab your little sister?' When I was young, that kind of research into a child's motivation was not even considered. At least not in the society I grew up in. Nobody was interested in why you would stab someone as a child, unless you emerged badly wounded yourself, and there might be a possibility that you were actually defending yourself.
Violence was looked down upon, and as a rule it resulted in serious punishment for the individual resorting to its use. Although people in authority had some leeway to use physical correction when handling minors, as long as they controlled their temper. This leeway has been withdrawn in my country, and most of Europe, because experts were not able to define 'appropriate'. They shifted the burden to establish which punishment is appropriate to the judicial system. Which shifted the responsibility for the response to violent outbursts in children to lower authorities, trained to start with the kind of inquisitive approach in the opening of this essay. After which they decide on a time-limited 'treatment', careful not to list it as punishment.
If you question the wisdom of these changes, you put a mark on your head. Even if your only intention is to get the debate going on why our present society is seeing so much violence. To begin with, you will be shown statistics which 'prove' that you are wrong. There is actually far less violence, so what are you talking about? Case closed. If you insist, pointing to school-shootings, stabbings, gang-wars, and war in general, the mark on your head is becoming more pronounced. And the moment you touch on violent language, and Hollywood churning one violent movie out after the other, all of them 'Blockbusters', supported by truckloads of extremely popular 'First Person' violent games, and question the need to infringe on the 'sacrosanct' body of a child through irreversible alterations, you are dead meat. An outcast. A racist for sure. A fascist. A sadist.
'No, Sir/Madam, I was only asking questions. I'm a law abiding citizen, with questions. Do you have any answers, by chance?' Why do we have leaders who not only use violence to solve problems before considering talking, and giving diplomacy a chance, but who publicly cheer when some political opponent is murdered? With plenty of collateral. Why do they list every policy they support to tackle a problem as a 'war'? 'Could it be that this has something to do with this very successful approach to stem violence, as revealed by your statistics?'
We all know that statistics are a fraud. They are very useful when used by capable, sincere scientists, but far worse than blatant lies when use by, or in support of the authorities, keen on steering our collective perception. That said, I'm not in possession of the 'Gospel Truth' myself, and I'm most certainly not saying that violence is a recent invention, and that it didn't exist when I was young. That is not the point I'm trying to make, at all.
Violence is in the eyes of the beholder. On 'X' I come across extremely violent language all day long, covered by the 'Freedom of Speech', and rightfully so, as far as I'm concerned. Because it exposes these people for what they are. This most prominently includes all the people cheering about killings and strikes on 'the enemy', which are nothing to be tickled pink about, if you ask me. Similar to someone in authority who decides to administer punishment should not be happy to have this opportunity. Because that defines that person as a sadist. Right?
Clearly our world would be so much better without violence, but since that includes violent outbursts which are unprovoked, while violence is in the eyes of the beholder, there is no easy answer. Someone may have fits of rage which are scaring, and even if they do not actually touch us we fear for our lives as they fume and bang the table. But a moment later they are the perfect gentleman, or lady again. They merely took out their right to have their 'Two Minutes of Hate'. Innocent lambs, really. No intention to hurt or scare anyone. Honest! (Likely sick in the head, and dangerous psychopaths).
Since we did away with the physical response to 'over the top' behaviour (however you want to define that), but felt the need to replace it with something else, experts suggested the 'humane' approach of 'social shaming', and 'social isolation', since you do not have to touch the child. Or the adult, because using that tactic has been spread liberally with 'MeToo' and similar concepts of getting even decades after the fact, and no need to prove anything. On 'X' people belittle their opponents even before identifying the root causes of their grievances. I'm pretty 'old school' myself, and I do not address others as if they were the kid next-door. In fact, I treat the kids next-door with respect as well. Our Western leaders threw being polite to leaders from other countries out of the window a long, long time ago. They spread the word that to them, Putin is 'Pootie Poot', the tyrant, murderer, fascist and sociopath, exactly because Putin doesn't give an inch, even as by now he refrained from addressing his opponents as 'friends', which he still did at this Munich Security Conference in 2007, after which they spit him in the face, and laughed out loud as he stared at them, not slapping their face then and there.
That adult approach to being mistreated is spreading throughout the 'Global South', while our leaders do the exact opposite. They 'riot'. They do as they like, because they are the 'G.ddamn United States'! They are NATO! They are Israel! They stab their little sister if they want to!