Two seem­ing­ly un­con­nect­ed re­ports in Thurs­day’s T&T Guardian pro­vide read­ers with one of the caus­es of the cat­a­stro­phe of the times, and a means to at­ten­u­ate, at least, the vi­o­lence so preva­lent every­where.

The first is the news of the be­head­ing of a four-year-old child, al­leged­ly by some­one close­ly con­nect­ed to her and her moth­er. Out­side of the news sec­tion of the Guardian is an analy­sis by an ex­pert in the field of the heal­ing and di­rect­ing pow­er of Emo­tion­al In­tel­li­gence (EI). From the de­scrip­tion, ex­am­i­na­tion and analy­sis of EI, it is “the in­ter­nal ca­pa­bil­i­ties of in­di­vid­u­als to man­age their emo­tions, as well as to rec­og­nize, in­flu­ence and re­late to oth­er peo­ple’s emo­tion­al ex­pe­ri­ence.”

In ref­er­enc­ing that das­tard­ly act of vi­o­lence and re­flect­ing on the thou­sands more which have oc­curred in this coun­try over the last decade, we see the pat­tern of in­di­vid­u­als and groups of per­sons un­able to come to terms with their prob­lems and chal­lenges in a con­struc­tive man­ner. In­stead, they re­sort to var­i­ous forms of vi­o­lence as a means of find­ing false so­lu­tions.

While this is not an at­tempt to play at psy­cho­an­a­lyz­ing the per­pe­tra­tors of vi­o­lence and do­ing so from a dis­tance, it is clear that in many in­stances, es­pe­cial­ly among per­sons known to each oth­er, the per­pe­tra­tors of the vi­o­lence do not have the Emo­tion­al In­tel­li­gence to deal with their an­guish in a non-vi­o­lent and pro­duc­tive man­ner.

The same can be said in cer­tain in­stances in which the vic­tims of the ini­tial vi­o­lence against them, re­tal­i­ate in kind rather than us­ing EI to at­tempt to bring calm to a sit­u­a­tion. For all in­tents and pur­pos­es, EI is an un­used means of re­spond­ing to vi­o­lence.

And we are sure­ly not re­fer­ring to a four-year-old child, hun­dreds of oth­er small chil­dren, and even adults who can­not re­spond with vi­o­lence in any man­ner.

The fo­cus of the study re­port­ed in the ar­ti­cle in ques­tion is on the use of EI in the en­vi­ron­ment of the work­place which is a “mi­cro­cosm of so­ci­ety that in­cor­po­rates unique per­son­al­i­ties from mul­ti­cul­tur­al back­grounds, di­verse groups and a pletho­ra of volatile emo­tions.”

It is in­evitable that in such sit­u­a­tions, con­flict will arise be­tween and among in­di­vid­u­als. The same will ap­ply to fam­i­lies, re­la­tion­ships of all kinds, and even in the in­ter­ac­tion be­tween some­one at a counter, wait­ing for ser­vice from an in­dif­fer­ent em­ploy­ee.

As we fre­quent­ly wit­ness on videos, stu­dents in the same school, pos­si­bly in the same class, en­gage in amaz­ing­ly vi­o­lent be­hav­iours against their peers, friends, and even class­mates, in re­sponse to a com­ment tak­en bad­ly, an ac­tion un­ap­pre­ci­at­ed, and, in mat­ters even more triv­ial.

It is ob­vi­ous that there is a lack of Emo­tion­al In­tel­li­gence to han­dle such sit­u­a­tions in a man­ner which can solve the prob­lem, pre­vent the re­sort to vi­o­lence, and bring heal­ing. The in­tel­li­gence gleaned from an un­der­stand­ing of the im­por­tance of EI is to ac­knowl­edge that it’s a method­ol­o­gy of learn­ing which needs to be spread far and wide in schools, in fam­i­lies, on the blocs, the play­ing fields, and in every en­vi­ron­ment in which per­sons in­ter­act with each oth­er and where there ex­ists the po­ten­tial for con­flict.

We need to put in­to ef­fect the most ben­e­fi­cial means of learn­ing and nur­tur­ing.