Zach Brown in trouble again

[ctchamps]

I have no first hand opinions about the issues being raised, BUT, today's Wall St Journal has an extensive article about Jimmy Brown and his work with inner city gangs, street toughs, and inner city convicts, etc. My take away from his comments is that these kids should not be perceived as 'victims' of their environment, they are victims of their own bad choices and should be accountable for those choices. The bad life choices are often made for reasonable reasons, (such as the 'gang' being the desired 'family' when there is a terrible home life). He evidently feels that it is up to their self determination to find their way out, but that society has a role to teach them how to make better life decisions, what to do with education, and to lay the groundwork for economic opportunity, etc. Obviously, this whole issue is complex, but you might want to read this article for his take.

www.wsj.com/articles/an-nfl-legend-trump-and-americas-gangs-1484956591

I can't get the article but unless there is a detailed discussion of the biological changes that take place in the brain I can't support the significance of these suggestions.

The following article is excellent in explaining to the lay person the physical manifestations that take place in the brain that probably leads to behavioral differences between individuals. It's about PTSD (Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder) but it demonstrates my argument that behavior is conferred by physical differences (genetic, nature) and/or physical alterations (environmental/nurture) that take place in the brain, many of which are outside our control and in fact determine how we think, feel and act.

How Does Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder Change the Brain? | Brain Blogger

The general population is behind the learning curve in placing the emphasis on will power or motivation as the exclusive and maybe even the predominate underlying factors between failure and success.

Our military and scientists wanted to know what was underlying difference(s) between two soldiers who experienced an explosion that killed one of their buddies which resulted in one soldier developing PTSD but the other soldier having minimum lasting affects. The PTSD victim (and yes he is a victim), when he experienced the traumatic event, developed an alteration to the the amygdala, the hippocampus, and the ventromedial prefrontal cortex (and probably other areas as well but not yet demonstrated) whereas the coping soldier had no such brain changes. Prior to the experience the PTSD victim's brain did not have those alterations. It was something about the differences in the two brains that "allowed" one brain to resist change and the other to "succumb" to change. That ability to resist physical change is not active on the conscious level in this case and probably in most of the cases in which we scratch our head as to why someone can succeed and others fail.