Now that we have another episode of teens killing each other, the fires of anguish are once again stoked with the questions: Why? What could have been done? How can we prevent this in the future? And so on. These questions need to be asked, re-asked and re-asked until we come up with some viable options. The answers that will provide us with true solutions, however, are going to be answers that society is not ready to hear – at least, society hasn’t been ready yet.

Society is ready to hear that something or someone is to blame (take your pick: guns, law enforcement for not enforcing the already draconian laws about guns, TV violence, the devil, abusive parents, uncaring teachers, bleeding heart liberals, the Internet, etc.). We’ve been to the blame-well and each time we go, we are finding that these blaming answers don’t provide us with long-term solutions.

It must be remembered that teenage boys have been doing crazy, violent stuff for a long time. Billy the Kid, for example, was about 12 when he killed his first man, and was dead by the time he was 21. Look into history and what you will see is teen boys finding a cause and using it as an excuse to slaughter one another and anybody who might happen to get in the way. Right now, there’s no World War to fight, no more killing Commies for Christ, and the Balkans are somewhere on the other side of Europe. So what is a testosterone-poisoned, emotionally unbalanced, shame-driven boy supposed to do?

When my boys hit their teen years, my wife asked me what does one do with teenage boys. My reply was, “Make them live in the woods until they’re 25 or so.” I was only half joking. Boys need challenge. They need to test themselves against the world. They need risk. They need to find their limits (physical, emotional, mental and spiritual) by going past those limits. They need the woods: survival training, subsistence living, tracking and killing their dinners, mentoring by elders – basically the whole tribal thing that we have systematically dropped from our civilization. If this process of empowering teen boys had evolved instead of disappearing, what might it look like today?

Following Maslow’s “Needs Hierarchy,” this apprenticeship for teens would start with survival needs. In my view, there are three elements in modern-day survival: 1) knowing how to survive in the wilderness; 2) knowing self-defense; and 3) knowing first aid, CPR, and so on. Since none of these are taught in schools (which teach the survival skills of competing successfully in our society, rather than living as a child of the Earth), we are already at a disadvantage.

I think we all ought to be able to “pop the hood” on our psyches and know what to do when we need tune-ups. We ought to be able to know why we think the way we do, feel the way we do, act the way we do, and be able to change all that for the better whenever we need to. Major overhauls may need “mind mechanics,” but the routine maintenance stuff ought to be our own responsibility.

What this means is that the prerequisites for violence would be conscious rather than unconscious processes within one’s psyche. We know that all criminal violence is a function of “shame.” If we were to teach kids how to deal with the information coming from their emotional selves (i.e., what the shame is saying) in ways that worked better, then passage through the teen years (as well as through life) would be much easier for all of us. As noted, this is not taught in the schools. Nor is it taught in most homes, or at church. The only place it is taught is within counseling settings or as a part of a program of recovery (for example, Alcoholics Anonymous).

The third thing that would probably be a part of a modern teen apprenticeship process is some kind of “vision quest.” According to spiritual theory, there is a spiritual opening at puberty. A number of existential questions emerge at that time – questions such as: Why am I here? What’s this world all about? Why do human beings do the crazy stuff they do? These questions need answers. The answers, since they cannot be found within the ego-self, require the aspirant to leap to his Higher Self.

Where, then, do we go with our frustration, our fear, and our need to answer these tough questions in ways that are finally meaningful? I think we are answering these questions in our search to synthesize the recovery process and deep healing process. For example, there are wilderness survival schools and other programs of apprenticeship, mentoring, and so on.

Malidoma Patrice Some, an African who was raised by Jesuits before returning to his tribe and undergoing the ritual initiation into manhood, explained this concept in his book, Of Water and The Spirit: “Each one of us possessed a center that he had grown away from after birth. To be born was to lose contact with our center, and to grow from childhood to adulthood was to walk away from it. The center is both within and without. It is everywhere. But we must realize it exists, find it, and be with it, for without the center we cannot tell who we are, where we come from, and where we are going.”

Initiations into manhood are opportunities to reconnect with our “center.” Without that, we end up drifting, attaching to something—anything—that will give us a sense of belonging. In all cases of criminal teen violence, we find the underlying shame that many psychologists have determined is there; we will also find, according to indigenous peoples, a lack of “center” in these teens.

These are “problems” that are easily solvable should society wish to do so. In order to solve these problems, however, schools, churches and parenting will have to be re-invented. It is my hope that we will find ways of creating a holistic system for giving our teens, both boys and girls, what they truly need. Bruce Bibee is a Kung-Fu San Soo Master and a counselor specializing in Stage 2 recovery. He also has a Master’s degree in Transpersonal Psychology.

Bruce Bibee is a Master of Kung-Fu San Soo. He also holds a Master of Transpersonal Psychology and works as an abuse recovery counselor.