EVEN ‘IVAN THE TERRIBLE’ WAS A CHILD!
After the shivers of horror have subsided following the revealing of the gruesome details of the seven backpacker murders, society could well take time to reflect on Ivan Milat’s childhood experiences. This must, to some degree, have contributed to the tragic events at Belangia; as well as to a lifetime of almost unendurable pain for so many innocent people. Even sufferers of other brutal crimes, like the similarly named Walter Mikac, must wonder how society, family, school. and other influences of childhood helped create such a figure of bestiality – such unalloyed evil.
By the time Ivan Milat was 14, the clouds of delinquent, if not necessarily criminal, behavior were already gathering, His early teenage years were a stark contrast to his earlier ‘altar boy’ nature. However, Milat, like so many troubled teenagers, failed to morally survive the baptism of testosterone, so much a part of male puberty.
Due to behavioral problems, exacerbated by a brutalizing discipline regime at high school, Ivan was sent to Boy’s Town at Engadine, an institution for wayward boys. The injustice is that after contributing to the hardening of 13-year-old Ivan, his professionally indigent high school shuffled off responsibility for its young charge by the usual cop-out – educational excommunication.
Ivan seemed to pull out of his anti-social dive during the couple of years at Boy’s Town, being constructively engaged in such wholesome activities as baking as he was. Then, alas, it was a return, to the mainstream, where he soon slipped back into his old ways, and worse. By 18 he was a confirmed and convicted criminal.
Years earlier, the child, innocent and vulnerable it should be remembered, was subjected to highly questionable influences from his Croatian father. Questionable? Well in the light of the current gun debate, to introduce an infant to firearm culture would seem to be predisposing him to violent, thoughts and feelings, which could well fester into violent crime – and in this case did.
The highlights of family life, for Ivan were trips into the bush to blast away at anything that breathed. There was a chilling foreshadowing of what was to come in the form of kangaroo killing sprees in the now infamous Belangia State Forest. At home, under dad’s dubious patronage, the highly impressionable young Ivan had continuous exposure to a growing arsenal of firepower.
How can this desensitizing parental propaganda be thought not to contribute to the child’s psychic configuration – to the stunting of his, emotional and moral development? Naturally the argument raises its head, why didn’t the other, boys in the unusually large family – most of them gun-obsessed as well – become serial killers? Firstly, there is an odor of suspicion over some other members of the family.
But more important is the fact that the influence of guns and killing in the hardening of the hearts of young people might well create a violent and psychopathic personality. This emphatic -‘might’ is reason enough to remove weapons of mass destruction from the eager hands of insensitive parents and their vulnerable offspring.
Another reason for the Milat boys, and Ivan in particular, straying from the path of decency and compassion could be the thrashing this brutal man meted out to his sons, Ivan in particular according to one nosey-parker neighbor. He claims to have seen Milat Snr actually standing on his screaming sons and flailing their thin, bare legs with a fence paling. As any psychologist – nay, reasonable person – knows, violence begets violence, whether perpetrated against people OR animals.
Confusing the issue is the recent triumph of Australia’s shooters at the Olympics. Nothing should take away from their well-earned accolades; trained as they were in a different, pre- Port Arthur, moral milieu. However, to assert that, to assure Olympic gold in the future, we must abandon or decisively weaken the gun reforms, is to cover with contempt the memory of those killed in Tasmania – and Belanglo. (At least two of Milat’s victims were shot, and there is likely to be more over the two decades of his probable reign of terror.) A whole bagful of gold medals is not worth the death of one innocent person, which the reforms will at least assuredly prevent; nor can it pay for the lifelong despair of family and friends.
May Ivan the Terrible truly rot in prison for the term of his natural life, being so conclusively guilty as he is; but to some degree his schooling, and his father if he were alive, would have to bear some of the blame.
Important Earthschooling Notes
Copyright Alan Whitehead & Earthschooling: No Part of this book, post, URL, or book excerpt may be shared with anyone who has not paid for these materials.
Alan speaks in a very symbolic and esoteric manner in some parts of his books. Although they can be read anthroposophically, passages speaking of Atlantis, archangels, gods, etc. do not need to be taken literarily to be meaningful. The more you read, the more you will realize he uses many different religions to express ideas in a symbolic manner and not in a religious manner. His writings are not religious. In some places his writings are meant to refer to religious events in a historical way. In some places he is using religious figures (from Christianity, Judaism, Islam, Buddhism, Hinduism, Paganism, Ancient Roman and Greek Religions, etc.) in a symbolic manner. However, at no point is he promoting a specific religion or speaking from a religious point of view.
I have kept the writing as close to one-hundred percent original so you will also find that he speaks of Australia often and some spelling or manners of speaking may be cultural. Any words I have changed are presented like this: <word>.
Also keep in mind that these books are written by a Waldorf teacher with decades of experience who also studied with a Steiner student himself, so he speaks to an audience that is dedicating their lives to the Waldorf method without exception.
Because of this, all of his views are not reflected in the Earthschooling curriculum and not all of them may be ones you want to embrace or are able to use. In all of Alan Whitehead’s writings the opinions are his own and may not align with Earthschooling or Waldorf Books. In some cases, we will be updating some of these chapters in the future with additional and/or updated information.
Ultimately, however, as I read through these passages I find I can distill wisdom from even those paragraphs that do not resonate with me.
We invite you to read with an open mind and heart and with eagerness to learn and discuss.
END NOTE
Alan has presented dialogue in his writings in an expressive form, where he tries to capture the accent of the person he was with to give his writing more authenticity and to allow the reader to “be with him” in his experience. In no place in his writings is he using expressive language to make fun of or demean the speaker. So, as a person with a linguistics and anthropology degree I find this enriching and informative to me as the reader. Thus, we have made the decision to leave all expressive writing in its original form.
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