Healing Nature of Art
In our increasingly violent and chaotic corner of the world, a bystander could reasonably ask “What the hell went wrong?” While the answer is bound to have many factors, one of the most glaring is the increasing number of people who lack a basic relief valve for their feelings. These are the folks who are so pent up that they resort to mass shootings and melee violence in the streets.
During the darkest days of the pandemic, many of us have certainly binged on streaming movies and podcasts on the psychological makeup of mass shooters, murderers, and serial killers. Somehow, their darkness matched our collective moods at the time. Invariably, the big question that always comes up: Could any of the tragedies have been avoided?
Expression as Relief Valve
The point of this article is not to establish blame. Rather, it is to see some of the dysfunctions in human beings that lead them to become the monsters we abhor. Consider for a moment if they had learned in their youth a form of artistic expression that allowed them to ratchet down the frustration and ‘act out’ in smaller more positive ways. In other words, is it possible to preempt a person from turning into a murderous gunman with greater contact, teaching, and caring?
Stress Relief
As a coping mechanism, art in all it’s forms has been a hallmark of culture and humanity for several thousand years. Straddling multiple genres and taking on many shapes and sounds, it is highly effective in stress relief.
Whether it be painting, sculpting, dance, writing, acting, design, music, or any expression in it’s highest form, they constitute art. If we only look at musical expression, there are so many types encompassing rock, pop, classical, death metal, zydeco, country, Andean flutes, and everything in between. Certainly, artists have even enhanced their performances with the subcontexts of their tumultuous lives.
Converting Fear and Anger
The wide variety of expression can provide some valuable tools to decrease the internal frustrations that build up over years. It allows a nuanced layered approach to convert the dual barbs of fear and anger into any number of positive beautiful things. Nonviolent expression leads to art in many forms.
Harvey Milkman
One might say that this is a pipedream of an idealist. However, just such an experiment was done by psychologist Harvey Milkman in Iceland (How Iceland Got Teens to Say No to Drugs — The Atlantic). In the 1990s, Iceland had the highest rates of teen alcohol and drug abuse in Europe. Today, this Nordic island in the North Atlantic boasts some of the lowest numbers of substance abuse in the world.
It all started in the 1970s, when Milkman noticed that some drug addicts preferred heroine, and others preferred amphetamines. In his doctoral dissertation, he surmised that some people sought ways to stimulate themselves, and others found comfort in sedation. This dichotomy depended on how their brains were wired.
Feed the Need
Over the course of his career, Milkman developed a program for children that addressed their particular brain chemistry. In other words, he hoped to provide children with the brain stimulation or relaxation from healthy activities. He recommended offering a whole host of artistic and athletic activities, tailored to the specific child’s brain wiring. In doing so, it would fulfill a major need for the children so they would not need to seek a drug substitute.
Results in Iceland
In consultation with other psychologists, the Icelandic government implemented many of Milkman’s recommendations, and began to see results immediately. Alcohol, marijuana, and cigarette use among teens plunged, and have remained low over the course of two decades.
Critics may say that there is a world of difference between substance abuse and violent mass shootings. From my particular perch, the similarities in psychological dysfunction are unmistakable. Much like feeding an infant, when you satisfy the root need, the downstream symptoms (crying, attention getting behavior) decrease. Feed the deficiency, and the dysfunction declines. In this case, the heavy societal costs to violent behavior may well justify an increase to the arts and humanities budgets or our middle and high schools. It would be a wager worth taking.
