How if we control people not to commit a crime?

On Feb 14th, 2018, there was a massive gun shooting at a Florida, high school. There

were at least seventeen people were killed by a former student. Peoples’ attitudes towards the

prohibition of having guns rose to a new level, they claimed that no one should own a gun.

Protests had marched for several days to question the government about gun-control and safety

issues. The day after, the president of the US, Donald Trump responded to this tragedy

immediately. He answered that the key cause of this horrible violence was the “mentally

disturbed” instead of having guns.

The student who unleashed this gunfire once posted a comment about “being a

professional school gun shooter” on a YouTube video. The trigger of him having this idea was

he was expelled from that high school. This information proves that he had a mental disorder, so

it means even he could not access to any guns, he will still hold the thought of harming the

society. Therefore, a question is asked, is there any method that can eliminate those destructive

ideas?

Warnings and punishments from society are needed to prevent action, but by adding a

strong emotional response from individuals towards some particular event, the ideas can be

ceased. There is a method of controlling peoples’ minds is illustrated in the novel “Brave New

World” which written by Aldous Leonard Huxley. Conditioning, which brought by Ivan Pavlov

and his dog. His conditioning is called “Classical Conditioning,” it creates an association

between consciousness and an object. And there is another conditioning method called “Operant

Conditioning” which can be explained by the graph showing below.

 Monkeys are humans; the banana is a particular object or a certain idea, the ladder

represents the attempts. Only the old generation who are the five original monkeys and

experienced the cold water know what will happen if any monkey is trying to get the banana.

After all those five monkeys are replaced by a new generation, no monkey knows why they can

not touch the banana, but the idea and the consequence of trying are deeply rooted, Like humans,

no one knows why some actions are immoral, but the idea is to given by the society. “People

tend to assimilate the characteristics of others into their own personalities.” (The Psychology

Book, 288) People learn from modelling.

 Anyone, regardless of their natures, can be trained to be anything. Therefore, it is

possible to control people not to do something, especially when they are young. The only thing

needs to do in order to prevent crimes is creating an association between crime, the public voice,

and internal reaction. Starting from giving a strong punishment, an example used in the family

will be grounded the son or beat him up. To create a stronger connection between causes and

consequence, more punishments are needed. It means parents could set up some traps if it is

necessary. According to the law of effect, the outcome of doing that thing becomes profitless or

hurtful, so the connection between the action and the event will either be weakened or felt

repellant. After all, the emotional response of the son towards the things he was trying to do

enhanced with fear and pain. It will be a painful process for the people who are being punished,

but the idea of not doing that thing will be inherited. The punishment will cease when the time it

becomes to a tradition because the idea is eliminated.

The benefit of having people controlled will be the remarkable progress of human beings.

All humans can be united to work for the same goals, so there will be no conflict between

nations, races and genders. Since every country has the same aim, a big formation of every

nation can be made. The money countries used to put in the military can be invested something

else; for instance, education will benefit a lot with that money, then more technology will be

invented. The whole world will remain peaceful until the day human meets allies. It sounds like a

dystopian story, but the productivities in any of those stories are overwhelmingly great. If people

absorb only the profitable ideas and eliminate the bad from those dystopian stories, the whole

world will be promotive.

Some people may say conditioning is unacceptable, and everyone has the right to know

the truth. First at all, what human believes are not necessarily the truth. People do not
automatically absorb all the sounds, feelings, and pictures of the world; they scan and select a

few. They believe those selected parts are the objective truth, but their experiences are coloured

by their personal glasses by their views. Therefore people would still choose to change their

existed truth or discard the new truth given by others, so the truth they believe is not absolutely

true. The sacrifice of some personal rights can lead to a peaceful and high-efficient world, and

people will not even realize those sacrifices because everyone is influencing each other, no one

would think a right that no one has it.

In short, gun-shooting is a big issue in many countries, but if people can link guns with

self-damaging together, people would less likely to hold a gun. And the benefits of conditioning

is much greater than a personal loss.

Skeptics, “Was the experiment with five monkeys, a ladder, a banana and a water spray
conducted?” https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/6828/was-the-experiment-with-five-
monkeys-a-ladder-a-banana-and-a-water-spray-condu Access on Mar 20th, 2018

The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica, Britannica “Conditioning”

https://www.britannica.com/science/conditioning Access on Mar 20th, 2018

Emanuella Grinberg and Eric Levenson, CNN NEWS, “At least 17 dead in Florida school
shooting, law enforcement says” https://edition.cnn.com/2018/02/14/us/florida-high-school-
shooting/index.html Access on Mar 20th, 2018

David Nakamura, Washingtonpost, “In response to Florida shooting, Trump calls suspect
'mentally disturbed,' does not mention gun control” https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/post-
politics/wp/2018/02/15/trump-weighs-in-on-florida-shooting-calls-suspect-mentally-
disturbed/?utm_term=.d55ead7ce6bd Access on Mar 20th, 2018