It's not the deeds, it's the hate.
POSTED BY: Fremdfirma
UPDATED: Tuesday, April 8, 2008 18:47
VIEWED: 10808
PAGE 10 of 13
Maybe its something with third graders; I remember way back when, when I was in elementary school; the third graders were playing "Simon Says"-got the order to run over the teachers...and almost the entire 3rd grade put two teachers in the hospital with minor fractures, some scrapes, and possibly a broken finger or two...
8 boys* confessed and lost recess for the rest of the year while the rest went off Scot free.
Did they really mean to hurt the teachers? Probably not, but it happened because we were idiots. Maybe its just something with third graders. Though for planning...in kindergarden I can remember trying to tunnel out of the recess area...how's that for a plan?
*Swear there were more then that doing it, including girls.
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There's a widow in sleepy Chester
Who weeps for her only son;
There's a grave on the Pabeng River,
A grave that the Burmans shun;
And there's Subadar Prag Tewarri
Who tells how the work was done.
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Quote:
Originally posted by Fremdfirma:
I mean, if someone is verbally abusing you or creating a hostile environment, does it not stand that they got a RIGHT to BE angry ?
Just a thought, on that particular brand of wholly ineffective conflict resolution.
-F
Sometimes the people "angry" with you have problems you simply can do nothing about. Sometimes people manufacture anger or outrage as a deliberate attempt at manipulation. They have no incentive to want to calm the situation down because they actually want it to play out that way.
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Well aware of that, but I have all too often seen the whole anger management gig used to blunt someones rightful anger at an injustice.
Like getting stuck with cleaning up a younger siblings mess, cause you're present and the sibling has made themselves scarce to avoid having to do so themself.
To tell the kid stuck cleaning it up that they need to practice anger management when they're pissed about it, is a downright ridiculous concept.
That'd be like telling ripped off stockholders in a company that stole from them that they should practice anger management - instead of filing suit.
Better, I think, to rectify the problem, the source of the anger, than to wire shut the blowoff valve, cause the end result of that is never good.
-F
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I think that's because you see any kind of backing down as a sign of weakness, while most of us see it as a sign of strength. I'm not just saying that, I had a viscous temper when I was younger and had temper incidents that put two kids in hospital before I was ten. Did they provoke it? You betya but my granddads old missive "never start a fight but make sure you end it" can work a little too well.
I would have probably ended up in jail had I not leaned how to control it and know when to walk away. Sometimes controlling your temper and your more destructive instincts is the only way to go.
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Quote:
Originally posted by SergeantX:
Fletch,
It's really stunning to me (though, perhaps obvious if I'd really been paying attention), just how differently we see this. You guys really do see libertarians as libertines. I've found that conflation to be all too common, but wildly off the mark. It seems to be your perception that we want the government out of the way so we can do our own thing unhindered, running roughshod over anyone in our way and living life completely free of restraint.
Actually no this isn't a cheap pop at libertarians... well maybe a little but only as a more extreme expression of the observed phenomenon.
Here's my thinking as a European. Where I come from there really isn't the room to do much arm swinging of any kind. Like it or not physical geography means that you end up living in close proximity to an awful lot of human style beings. In this context rules become extremely important as does the higher level concepts of fairness and the law.
Put simply you don't get much chance to "put the irritating people by the side of the road and drive on" they are there, and they will always be there even if none of them are deliberately "in your face." Needless to say as a society we can have fantastic flashes of violence but by and large we mediate our relationships at various levels big and small and try to keep the righteous fury under control. In short as organisms we have been challenged by an environment and adapted to it. We socialise at the drop of a hat, almost any kind of club almost any kind of interest large or small has people that do it together as a group, dealing with people, dealing with Aholes is something we have managed to get down.
One of the nice things about America is that you do have space. If you don't like a place you can just pick up sticks and move on, there will always be places you can move on too. There is no real need to deal too much with your neighbors if you don't want to and like Frem says, you have the luxury of not dealing with people you don't want to. My contention is that because you have that option you take it and thus never have to face the angry neighbor or develop the skills for dealing with the ahole. Consequently when challenged you do react violently because
1) you have not really developed the tools needed to not get really insanely angry with this ahole.
2) You haven't developed social structures to try and mitigate the ahole effect
and
3) You've been convinced that your personal liberty ethic not only ALLOWS you to deal with it as you see fit but even expects you to deal with it solo.
That's the point. In societies where most of the onus is placed on the group mechanisms have been developed to try and mediate disputes between individual members. Members of groups have a clear understanding of rights and responsibilities that makes it a little more likely that someone understands when the swinging arm is getting too close. Bloody noses that do happen are mediated and resolved by groupings larger than just the two individuals.
In societies where the onus is on the individual it may not be so obvious when you are invading too close to the other guy's nose. Disputes are more likely to become personal because there is no larger grouping that is likely to mediate. Individuals that feel wronged are more likely to take matters into their own hands because they think they can or believe it's expected.
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I think Fletch has hit this nail on the head. I was already formulating a response on this issue, and his thinking dovetails, if it doesn't precisely agree, with my own. My take is that two of the defining principles of Americanism are individualism and self-determination. These, in their raw form, are also known as pathological asociality. On the other hand, my perception of say Europeans, for example, and I'm thinking particularly of the British here (calm down, Continentals, I know they're not really European), are generally more amenable to your basic socially driven mind-control than Americans are. I imagine this is the same phenomenon Fletch describes, from a different angle. To get an Englishman to do something, you just tell him it's the proper thing and for the common good, and he usually says "Oh, right then, why didn't you say so?" and goes on about it. To get an American to do something, you often have to use reverse psychology and insinuate that he really shouldn't do it, at which point he'll get all bristly about his God-given rights to steer his own course and go ploughing off to take care of them, whether he really knows why or not. That is, I think Americans are inherently more reactionary, and of course that's why after we've been over-run by commies or fascists or aliens or pygmies, there will still be hard-core bands of militia waging guerrilla warfare from the hills and forests (or so we like to think). I don't think that's bad, necessarily; but Fletch has a point also in that we do have trouble with conflict resolution. This is the sort of society where a person can literally be murdered before the eyes of bystanders, and nobody wants to intervene because A) people need to work out their differences as self-determined individuals, and B) because the bystanders' individualism is also a certain alienation, and they really don't know how to intervene. I don't get into fights, because there are few things so important that I'm willing to start a fight over them; on the other hand, the things important enough to fight over are usually also important enough to kill over, and without the slightest remorse or hesitation. That's a point beyond conflict resolution, though.
I also was interested by Frem's (I hope you don't mind the familiarity) idea that anger perhaps shouldn't be managed when it is in fact just anger (not merely, but righteous, that is). I tend to concur on this; there is such a thing as having a hair-trigger, (especially when you're already on the water tower and the trigger is on the rifle you happened to bring with you) but the suppression of righteous anger is the first step towards slavery. A people who cannot recognize and accept outrage are a dying people.
This may be all a dream, but at least mine was consistently erotic. -LB
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Quote:Americans are not only big believers in individuality, they're also big believers in righteous fury. We're a vengeful lot of self-aggrandizing pricks, truth be known. (This is the Chuck Norris- Bruce Willis- Keifer Sutherland view of justice.) It just galls me every time a victim's family says (of a death penalty) "At least we got some closure". "Closure" my ass. It's vengeance.
righteous fury
And the funny thing is, the whole individual hero crap actually defangs most of us from doing anything effectve, because instead of getting together and each doing a little something about something we're so busy looking for a hero (explains our Presidential voting habits) that NOTHING ever gets done!
If I could get rid of two paradigms in the USA it would prolly be 1) that sense of righteousness that excuses our egregious acts of violence and 2) the concept that individualism is the ONLY way to deal with society. OUTRAGE in one thing. Outrage is the shocked recognition that something is terribly wrong. It's what FOLLOWS outrage that bothers me, because most people literally can't think of anything to do except grab a gun... which most people aren't about to do anyway.
I know that galls the rugged individuals among us, but yanno, you can STILL be individuals in a different society if you cant' adapt. I'm sure there would be room for you too.
ETA: WHich goes back to Frem's title: It's not the deeds, it's the hate. We're a hate-filled culture. We hate ourselves for being at the bottom of the pile. We hate everyone else for having to fight with them for the scraps. And the anwser to that is more hate!
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Let's party like it's 1929.
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Quote:
Originally posted by Fletch2:
I didn't think that murder rates were in any way connected to conviction rates? If someone is killed that's part of the statistics even if you don't find a perp.
There is the obvious connection - people are reluctant to do things likely to get them into trouble. To take the extreme example, if the conviction rate dropped to zero, the murder rate would very likely go up.
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No not really, I'm pretty sure I could kill someone and get away with it, the point is that I know it's wrong and therefore chose not to do it.
Is fear of getting caught the only thing that makes you obey the law?
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Quote:
Originally posted by rue:
The US murder rate is anywhere between 200% and 750% the rate of other western developed nations. I think the onus is on you to show the conviction rates of ALL other countries are a small fraction of the US. (Which on the face of it doesn't seem likely.)
I expressed myself poorly.
What fraction of murderers are convicted? In the US, and in the rest of the West.
Bluntly, if Americans are more likely to get away with criminal behaviour, it would hardly be a surprise if they performed more criminal behaviour.
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