One morning this year, a 12-year-old girl entered her school in a United States farming community and shot three people. Soon after, a brave teacher emerged from her classroom and, seeing who the shooter was, calmly walked—and talked—to her. In just minutes, the teacher had quietly taken away the handgun. Then she held and consoled this “very unhappy” girl until police arrived. Later, the teacher’s brother-in-law called her “a born mother.” He wrote in his blog, “Determination pushed her to act, but tenderness and motherly love—not force—lifted the gun from the girl’s hands to hers” (“How a teacher disarmed school shooter with motherly love,” The Christian Science Monitor, May 20, 2021).

Thankfully, no one was killed, and the injured have largely recovered. But what drives people, including a little girl, to resort to violence in the first place?

The author of a recent book about conflict resolution makes the point that the root problem in most explosive situations is what has been referred to as “the nuclear bomb of the emotions”: humiliation (see Stephen Humphries, “Is any conflict unsolvable? This author doesn’t think so,” Monitor, June 14, 2021). For some, the feeling of being degraded, of not belonging, or of not even mattering, seems constant. And when people believe their very identity is at stake, they will do just about anything to fight whatever or whoever is putting them down.