I got a kick out of a Herald front page last week that screamed "PULL YOUR PANTS UP!" This was the paper's take on the governor's response to the continuing violence in a couple of Boston's neighborhoods, and it wasn't far off the mark. I saw the governor's comments on TV and he did in fact refer to the epidemic of baggy pants in many of Boston's most violent neighborhoods, urging adults to urge youths to pull their pants up. This is apparently the extent of his program of urban renewal.

It was largely reported as a call to discipline and personal responsibility. But the truth is, it's fashion, and fashion is nothing if not an ironclad discipline.

And this particular fashion requires even more discipline than most. I mean, have you ever tried actually walking with the crotch of your pants at your knees without tripping over them? It takes incredible discipline. It's really the rest of us, the workaday schlubs and slackers dressing for comfort and convenience, who lack it.

Beyond this, everything from the elaborate grooming and posturing to the learning of ever-changing indecipherable slang and the "Stop Snitchin" code argue for more discipline than most of us would want in our lives or could handle were it demanded of us.

Gangs, with their secret handshakes and dress codes, their ironclad laws and loyalty tests, their overwhelming uniformity reinforced by alternating threats of violence and promises of acceptance and protection are full of disciples desperately seeking structure in a world in free-fall. Discipline is what they crave, and discipline is what they get.

So is pulling up your pants really discipline, or is it more disciplined to wear them with the crotch around your knees? It may take courage to defy the code, but make no mistake: it takes discipline to follow it.

The governor's silly, flippant response to a serious epidemic of gang violence that is getting more ballsy by the day is disappointing and dispiriting, but again, not particularly surprising. The problem is intractable, but it has not exactly migrated out of the hot spots (Mayor Menino is right to insist that this spate of violence is "not out of control"—it is largely confined to Dorchester and Roxbury,and is largely minority-on-minority), and a solution offers too few rewards to take real risks tackling it.

And the world outside of the war zone is right to be weary of the violence and wary of simply throwing money at the problem, but the premise that it is discipline that's lacking betrays a lack of understanding excusable in some, but less so in our governor, who grew up on the wrong side of the tracks himself.

What was there for him, and what is lacking for so many out there now like him, is an alternative vision of the future they face. The discipline is there, but it's in a vacuum.  Sure, families and communities have a responsibility to instill values, but society at large must also be committed to really seeing all of its children succeed, and ours is not.

In fact, when you get to really scrutinizing the motives and values of society at large, they're not exactly sterling. What you see in the ghetto is merely one expression of them. It's not a separate society, after all, though we'd like to think so.

So what may be lacking is actually that vision of hope candidate Patrick used to bang on about, a way to communicate it to those who really need it, and a commitment to marshaling the resources to realize it.

Rather than simply saying "police yourselves!"—which is fine, but only goes so far to quell violence in communities without ample resources, opportunities, hope—why not commit more to revitalizing and reducing the isolation of these neighborhoods?

Mentoring is also a powerful way to bring hope to children in vulnerable communities. It's been suggested that the government offer mentoring opportunities to recent college grads in exchange for deferment of student loans. But the only mentoring program I've seen proposed for Dorchester is one that couples ex-cons with young thugs.

I'm not for legitimizing the thug lifestyle with "Thug Summits," like Reverend Rivers of the troubled Baker House. I'm for trying to reach out to all those kids who want an alternative to that lifestyle, but who are trapped in isolated neighborhoods, poor schools, and who end up either in gangs or victims of gangs because of a lack of an alternative vision and leadership in their communities, aided by the outside world's indifference.

Which is what Governor Patrick's remarks conveyed. "Pull your pants up!" is a far cry from the soaring rhetoric and saccharine slogans of candidate Patrick, is all I can say.