An interview with James Garbarino
Articles & InterviewsSpiritual Emptiness
Dr. James Garbarino is a professor of Human Development
at Cornell University
and the author of numerous books, including Lost Boys: Why
Our Sons Turn
Violent and How We Can Save Them, a pioneering book on the
causes and
solutions to youth violence. A national authority on youth
aggression and
violence, he has served as an expert witness in a number of
youth homicide
trials throughout the country. He is Co-Director of the Family
Life
Development Center in Ithaca, New York.
Lineage Project: How did you get interested in offering
contemplative
practices to very violent youth?
James Garbarino: One influence has been my partner, Claire
Bedard. She has a
very strong interest in spiritual development. A second
influence is my own
interest going back to my college days and being interested
in contemplative
practices. Some of it also has been my own scrambling around
working with
these violent boys and wondering what might help transform
them.
I've also been very influenced by my friend and colleague
James Gilligan, who
speaks a great deal on violence. He says something to the
effect, "Only the
person who is not fully alive, who is dead inside, can commit
acts of
violence. For anyone who loves life and is spiritually fulfilled,
such acts
are incomprehensible to them."
LP: Taking that question a step further, based on the causes
and conditions
that you see bringing about violent behavior, how do you
think meditation or
yoga can help violent kids?
JG: I think there are several grounds for thinking that.
One, the
commonalties of untreated and unresolved traumatic experiences
in their
background argues for this. Anything that can help them
deal with problems of
arousal and focus and a way to manage emotions other than
dissociation is a
useful tool. A second reason is that the dominant larger
culture is so
unhelpful, if not outright hostile, to the development of
spirituality and
mindfulness because of its materialism and its nastiness
that this is not
something they are likely to get in the mainstream culture,
let alone the
fact that most of the kids come from the most socially-toxic
environments.
Nor is the secular educational system likely to provide
this. So it is not
likely accessible or presented to them otherwise. A third
reason is the
dynamic connection between spiritual emptiness and violent
behavior. This
would argue for trying to fill that spiritual emptiness
through
spiritually-grounded practices, as a way of disarming violence
directly.
LP: Some people cannot believe that we go into to juvenile
halls and youth
prisons and teach contemplative practices. They say, "You
go where and teach
what to whom?" You're going to teach a kid who is charged
with murder how to
meditate! What are you thinking?" How do you respond
to such a question?
JG: Well, I would say from my observation and experience
from visiting guys
on death row, serving as an expert witnesses in many cases,
I have observed
that these people fall into two categories: monks and savages.
The people who
do not take the monk route, become savages. That's how they
seem to sort
themselves out. The question, then, is how can we decrease
the number of
savages and increase the number of monks? This is to everyone's
advantage.
A second reason is that conventional approaches are so
dismally unsuccessful
that anybody should be open to trying something different,
especially when
you have recidivism in certain areas at 90%. Third, these
are boys who have
great difficulty managing intense emotions. They usually
either dissociate or
act out, and techniques of mindfulness are specifically
designed to create
the space with which these boys can control themselves better,
which everyone
says they want them to do. People have been working out
the kinks in
mindfulness practice for two thousands years. It has a track
record we ought
to go with. Also, I have seen first-hand kids make use of
meditation. Most
people do not have direct contact with kids in these institutions
and they
are at the mercy of second hand accounts. And even the ones
who do work
there, when I tell them that kids in these places can thrive
on meditation,
they do not always believe me. The biggest impediment is
not the youth, it's
the staff. We are doing a project on two units at a juvenile
hall. In the
unit where the staff is supportive of it, something like
90% of the kids are
into it. In the class where the staff is not supportive,
something like 20%
to 30% are into it. Same population, same facility, same
situation, different
staff interest.
LP: What do you think are the cultural responsibilities
for youth violence?
When a violent youth or adult is let out of prison and commits
a crime it is
in all the newspapers. It is often the negative acts that
get highlighted. As
you know, it cost $40 billion dollars last year to house
about 2 million
adult prisoners. What do you think as a culture we can do
to help turn this
around? What can the average person do?
JG: I think one action is for people to talk to their legislatures
about how
we can use this money more wisely, which means putting more
money into
programs both inside the facilities and post-release. People
can also look at
what opportunities they have to support kids once they leave
facilities.
African-American churches used to have an adopt a child
program. People might
be able to get their church to adopt a child who is being
released from a
juvenile facility and help that person integrate back into
the society.
LP: In the people who have taken the route of the monk
versus the savage,
what has brought that about? Have you seen any patterns?
JG: I don't think I have an extensive enough data base
of knowledge to talk
about the process. From my informal observation, one of
the mechanisms is a
new found interest in education and developing a literary
interest. Another
is making the time, often out of desperation, to do the
meditation so that it
becomes so self-reinforcing that they feel a deprivation
when they do not do
it. Sometimes there is a specific influence like another
inmate or volunteer
who is helping them do this.
LP: We want to ask you a little more about the role of
early trauma and how
that influences violent youth. In your book you said that
first kids need
spiritual anchors, and that once that is in place, they
can take on other
forms of help like therapy to deal with trauma issues. Could
you speak to
this?
JG: Certainly, the damage of trauma provokes diminished
future-orientation
and produces terminal thinking, and all of these are fundamentally
a crisis
of meaninglessness which, in a sense, is a spiritual crisis.
I think you can
make a very good case that the most efficient way to address
these symptoms
is to first build, or in some instances create, a sense
of spiritual
grounding, spiritual connecting, so that self-improvement
and therapeutic
intervention makes sense. It becomes a much more efficient
use of everyone's
time. It is really amazing the time spent trying to therapeutically
intervene
when it is often completely ineffectual. I think there is
a good case to be
made for improving the efficacy and efficiency and cost-effectiveness
of
these other interventions by first creating a more fertile
climate for them,
which is exactly what mindfulness meditation practice aims
to do. Rather than
saying that it is therapy or it is therapeutic, I think
it is better to see
it as building the context and the foundation in which therapy
and other
forms of interventions can thrive.
