Frances Moore Lappé

Frances Moore Lappé is a contributing editor to YES! Magazine, a national, nonprofit media organization that fuses powerful ideas with practical actions. This article is adapted from EcoMind: Changing the Way We Think to Create the World We Want, now in paperback from Nation Books).

High anxiety levels lead to high violence rates

Apr 252013
 
 Features
Frances Moore Lappe.

Fewer and fewer of us feel a sense of belonging.

by Frances Moore Lappé

In his book Violence, psychologist James Gilligan asked a Massachusetts prison inmate, “What do you want so badly that you would sacrifice everything in order to get it?”  The inmate declared, “Pride. Dignity. Self-esteem… And I’ll kill every motherfucker in that cell block if I have to in order to get it.”

Or, as another inmate said, “I’ve got to have my self-respect, and I’ve declared war on the whole world till I get it.”

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