Tag Archives: violence

School Shootings in the Lone Star State and the US of A

News, Politics, , , ,
Revolutions can sometimes look like this

There have been a few serious shootings in Texas recently. There have been a few serious shootings in the USA as well. To put it bluntly, there have been too many shootings in places there really shouldn’t be any shootings. And sadly, this probably doesn’t surprise a whole lot of people.

You see, we’re getting used to this sort of thing in the US of A. Random people kill random people for no reason. And we don’t bat an eye. We moan and we speak out and we offer thoughts and prayers. And then a few days later, someone does it again.

Do we change the laws to make it tougher for people to do it. No. We don’t even dare attempt to think about that. That would take away our freedoms…to kill random people, I guess.

But that got me thinking about this whole thing as it’s been happening a lot in Texas. You would think that people would sit down and then start to realize that something needs to happen. IN TEXAS. But no, the mindset is that this is a national thing, so the answer needs to somehow come from the national area, whatever that is. We could solve this sort of thing on a local level, and then perhaps the national level would start to get better as more and more local areas responded with the right legislation to make sure this stuff doesn’t happen. But we won’t.

So, that means we need to solve this on a national level (or a state level, if that really exists as well). But state level won’t happen because Texas is Texas, and as long as guns are involved, Bob with the gunrack in his pick-up is going to reject any such plans to make Texas safer. Instead, the answer is to arm more Texans with higher powered rifles, and then somehow that will solve the situation with a sense of a “good man with a gun is there to stop a bad man with a gun” that only ever works on television shows where writers decide who wins and loses in a showdown.

But we won’t do anything nationally because we kind of suck nationally. The NRA has managed to pay off enough people on one side of the house to do nothing long enough that another election will come along and then the NRA will pay a new group of people to make sure enough don’t do anything. Look, I’m all for the idea of guns and the 2nd Amendment, but right now we’re trying to counter children killing children because of perceived reasons and threats that none of us have any control over stopping.

Our country is kind of screwed up right now, and no one seems to want to address that. Our leaders don’t lead any more but respond to the other side as if people who believe differently than we do are dangerous and must be put down. I don’t remember it ever being like this before. When I was growing up, if you were liberal or conservative, you didn’t think the world would be a better place if all of the people on the other side of he aisle were dead. You came up with either better ideas than the other side, or you came up with compromises that would cause the other side to say “hey, that’s good enough for me” and then we all went home and watched Jeopardy or whatever show we liked at the time.

Today, the two sides don’t even have a friendly conversation any more. That’s bad.

If we want to solve our problems, we need to do a few things going forward:

  1. Stop thinking of the other side as the enemy. Progressives want to change things for the better, and conservatives like to keep things as they are or as they might have been at some period in the past. Historically, both sides were against fascism, communism and genuinely evil people. Now, both sides are convinced the other side is one of those negative things I jus mentioned.
  2. We need to remember what the purpose of this country was from its foundation. It was designed to be the shining light in the midst of darkness all around us. Becoming the darkness doesn’t somehow make America better or great. We seem to have forgotten that in lieu of short-term goals.
  3. The gun lobby needs to be put back in its place. It was never meant to become the overriding lobby to end all lobbies. It was meant to be one of many different ideas that people would consider whenever it came to legislation and directions for the country to take. As a lobbyist that has full control, all we’re ever going to see going forward is shootings that kill so many loved ones that we’re never going to stop going to funerals and wondering why Washington can’t put a stop to it. We need to pull back on this string and put America back on it proper course.

I say this with mixed thoughts because I’ve become so used to us doing nothing and hoping for miracles. The truth is that miracles don’t come unless you’re willing to put forth the work to make them happen. Sure, you can pray for one. But look where that’s gotten us so far.

Tomorrow’s Protests May Not Be So Easily Contained…Or Ignored

Politics, Relationships, , , , , , , , , , , ,

Not so long ago, when the Occupy Wall Street protests were happening, it was suggested by not a few people that the movement may have more legs than people expected, meaning that the protests had the potential of spiraling out of control and gaining steam and momentum. But elections happened, and people thought they were getting their concerns addressed in that process. And then the protest was quickly forgotten, co-opted by other movements (like conspiracy theorists) and quickly shelved.

A little time before that, we had the infamous Rodney King riots, which threatened to spiral out of control, as the protests moved from Los Angeles to places like San Francisco and Chicago. But they eventually died out, little was done to change the reasons for the riots, and we all went back to our usual way of doing things.

There’s a certain Mancur Olson (The Logic of Collective Action) and Piven/Cloward (Poor Peoples’ Movements) going on here in which people tend to rally together long enough to get some kind of payout and then quit the movement which has always managed to keep the U.S. from turning into something it keeps kicking the can down an uncertain road. You see, eventually we’re going to hit a point where people aren’t going to just give up on the realization that they can’t get what they want and then go home, but that eventually they’re going to hit a point where the spiral unravels the whole ball of yarn.

Fortunately, we’ve just never reached that point.

Yesterday, Baltimore turned into one of those spirals again, where fed up people took to the streets to protest another police-caused tragedy. People protested, others rioted, police cars burned, and we’re shaking our heads yet again, wondering how something like this could possibly happen. And instead of actually doing something to fix the situation, we’re kicking the can down the road again, hoping that there’s still some road to travel before we come to some kind of impenetrable wall.

What we should be asking ourselves is how much more can the institution stand before we can’t return back to normality again. Unfortunately, no one actually has that answers, and even worse, no one is even paying any attention to the possibility that someone needs to be asking that question. If you look to previous civilizations that had events spin out of control, what has generally been the spark that has lit the fire is the ability for the message to travel from one powder keg to the next. In the U.S. history examples, we’ve been lucky by the mere fact that most incidents of powder kegs going up have been contained in geographical areas that did not spread to others. The Rodney King example was probably one of our closest incidents of spilling over because it erupted in numerous areas before quickly being contained. Occupy Wall Street is also similar in the location problem, but it was quickly contained and forgotten because other things happened immediately after.

What people aren’t acknowledging is that the problems causing many of these powder keg issues are identical, and they haven’t changed any over the years, meaning that the chances of a multiple powder keg incident occurring is not a matter of “if” but a matter of “when”. Racism is still an issue that has never been dealt with. Income equality is an issue we’re never going to deal with. As long as we keep sweeping these types of issues under the rug, they’re going to explode on us and when that happens, there’s no amount of “clear thinking” that is going to cause those kegs to return back to normal.

The French Revolution should have been an example we held close to the chest because it showed us that when the incidents finally erupt, they don’t end until people who are angry enact some type of violence, or are killed themselves. Since then, we’ve had world revolutions happen over and over, where the violence has been absolute and devastating. What did we learn from ANY of these circumstances? People are real shit heads to each other when out of control and when given the opportunity, people will do horrible things to each other before common sense prevails (if it ever does).

So, how about dealing with some of these issues now, instead of waiting until after we tally up how many horrific things we can do to people we don’t like for “reasons”?

 

Why Has the World Gone Downhill? An Analysis of Violence

News, Politics, Religion, Technology, Writing, , , , ,

 

One of the common tropes in storylines, especially for fantastical fiction, is the idea of returning to a period of time when things were “the old ways”, kind of like a time travel journey to the 1950s, or even a trip to the ancient past. The main character is seen as a fish out of water as he or she tries to use his or her knowledge of that time (and his or her future time) to get through such an experience. Now, part of me was thinking of focusing this post just on the writing aspects of this sort of speculation, but while I was thinking this through, I started to wonder something, and specifically I was wondering why we became what we are today rather than having continued the way things were “back in the day.”

This was prompted by an article covering a shooting that took place in Denmark and how that community (and that country) is now having to do things to make sure that such a tragedy doesn’t happen again. In other words, they are going to become a lot like other places around the world where violence is somewhat expected. I mean, no one wants to be caught off guard, right?

And that got me to thinking about that infamous line that used to happen in the United States whenever something tragic occurred. If this was the 1950s, the response would be something along the lines of “I can’t believe such a thing like that could happen here.” Or my other favorite: “I can’t believe Bob did that because he always seemed like such a nice guy. That sort of thing just doesn’t happen here.” I think you might be getting the picture.

In the 1970s, that message, while still happening in areas where you wouldn’t expect to hear it (part of the response to gun shootings that were happening in rural areas rather than urban settings) slowly changed to “I can’t believe that happened here. I mean, it’s not like we live in Chicago/New York/Detroit.” In other words, it was starting to happen in urban environments, so we were starting to expect stories like that, but it shouldn’t happen in a place like Wheatfield, Wyoming (if that was a real place). But now, it’s happening all over the United States, so that every new story that happens is treated as a one-off case of an almost expectant event, even if where that event took place might have been speculation before it happened. It’s happened so much in the United States that we’re now starting to be surprised by these stories happening in other countries, rather than by ones that happen in the United States.

So, because of the way these trends work, we’re going to be seeing more and more of this violence happening around the world in places where we’d last expect to see it. And then we’ll have to be surprised by something worse, like the level of violence, the perpetrators of the violence, or some other factor we haven’t considered yet.

Which leaves one important question:

Why?

Why are we seeing this sort of thing becoming a norm for our communities? Are we desensitized to violence so we now accept it as a part of our natural order? Is the human species evolving into a much more violent, chaotic creature that holds little regard for fellow humans? Is that creature devolving into the types of people we used to be before we took the Hobbesian path and developed government around us to protect us from each other? Is it because our means of hurting each other have become much more convenient and useable? Or are there other factors that cause us to do the sorts of things we do to each other these days?

Desensitization

There’s a lot of theory that addresses this possibility, mainly making the point that as people are exposed to more and more sensations of a certain type, they no longer find themselves affected by it and either no longer seek such sensations or have to increase the type of exposure to reach that level of influence again. We see this all of the time with the drugs we take, from cigarettes to alcohol to both legal and illegal substances. Most of the time, the first exposure to the item causes an initial positive reaction which is then transferred into a loss that needs that input again. Continuous exposure acts as a certain punctuated equilibrium, which means we get used to a higher level of usage and continue to have to increase the dosage to provide the same “high” that we had before.

For violence, there’s no reason this wouldn’t work the same way as well. We become comfortable with the amount of violence we’re exposed to and then seek out higher levels of violence. As exposure theory goes, it makes sense.

Or does it? The problem with exposure theory is that the influence might increase for an individual, and it would take more and more violence to affect that person, but why would this somehow translate to people in other areas now experiencing violence where they didn’t have it before? The theory doesn’t explain that, unless the idea of violence is that it’s more of a virus that spreads rather than something that occurs in pockets and then spreads out, affecting those previously exposed to it.

Another possibility involving that theory is the types of violence inherent in the system. An argument is often made about video games, television and movies that might be desensitizing people, and unlike the virus affects of spreading violence, these would feed on subsequent communities just by the appearance to where people would consume these types of media. Again, that’s assuming these activities to be a causal factor rather than as a recognition of the violence (meaning no causal effect at all, or very little at least).

But I don’t want to just ignore the possibility because from first hand experience, I remember being a fan of horror movies when I was growing up. I remember watching the very first Nightmare on Elm Street with a bunch of military coworkers, and I was shocked at the violence in that movie, and it was extremely scary (at that time). Having watched many horror movies during that period of time, I remember watching that original movie again years later and thinking how tame it was in comparison to “real” horror movies. I certainly didn’t feel that way the first time I watched it. So, there’s a bit of desensitization going on there, or it may just be a stimuli adjustment. Or it may have no connection at all to violence because if one sees it as “reaction to being scared” rather than “reaction to violence” there may be absolutely no ties whatsoever. Again, something to keep in mind when analyzing such phenomena.

Evolution of the Species

This is one of those possibilities that truly scares me because with evolution, you have the whole survival of the fittest thing going on, and if the fittest is the most violent, then we’re in for some really bad problems. But what if our dilemma is that the human condition is now one that is favored through violence rather than through cooperation? There’s a strong believe that through our evolution, we have reached a point where social communities are what propel us forward beyond the previous adaptations and around other species that didn’t achieve this level of evolutionary maturity. Okay, if that’s the case, why is violence becoming more and more a response to how we handle these social encounters instead of community and broad cooperation? If our evolutionary process made sense, there would be a strong possibility that people would find ways to get along in diverse circumstances (instead of taking a gun to work and killing the boss during an altercation) and on an even higher level, we should probably see fewer wars and regional conflicts.

But we don’t. Instead, after several wars to end all wars, we’re still as violent towards each other as we’ve ever been. Right now, our Congress is meeting to figure out how to give our president more authority to attack people we don’t get along with. For some reason, no money is being discussed for allocation that will be spent to foster peace with the people we don’t get along with. The response to this criticism is “it would be a waste of money because they don’t want peace”. And we know this why? Because we’re currently trying to kill them while they’re trying to kill us (or at least allies of us). In our present sense, we see what we’re doing as justified, yet we’re still doing the same violent things we were doing in the past, and now we just have more efficient ways of doing it.

So, the question is asked, are continuing to become a more violent people? And I don’t mean just the United States, or the west, or anything like that. I mean humans as a whole. Are we just becoming more violent?

Or were we always this violent? Except we had governments that were capable of keeping us from killing each other (except during national campaigns where they got to send people out to kill in their names)? If you’ve ever been to war, it’s a pretty brutal experience. Oh, we like to fluff it up with 21st century technology and act like we’re doing something much different than how our forefathers fought, but when it comes down to it, you still have people out in the middle of some place they don’t want to be trying to kill a bunch of other people who don’t really want to be out there doing that either. And we pin medals on the ones that come back alive (and sometimes those who didn’t), and then create celebrations for the sacrifices they made. But in the end, we’re rewarding a bunch of people who are doing things that civilized people probably shouldn’t be doing any way.

But of course, someone will say that the others guys MADE us do it, that they were out there doing atrocities. And I’m sure the other guys will say that those of us attacking them were doing all sorts of affronts to humankind, like sleeping with each other on the wrong days of religious texts, eating something that someone’s interpretation of God says people shouldn’t be eating for arbitrary reasons that someone else will defend to the death, and all such other reasons (some good, some ridiculous, and some just straight out confusing, even to the people following them).

Which kind of pushes the whole Hobbesian argument that maybe we’ve been comfortable and safe from the mannerisms of our fellow humans by a simple agreement to follow some arbitrarily chosen noble whose real purpose is to make sure that people don’t go around killing each other all in return for a promise to make sure that those who DO kill each other will be held responsible for such actions (so that might keep them from doing so). If our only reason for avoiding violent tendencies is because of some agreement our ancestors made with each other, then it might not be surprising why a civilization that tends to teeter closer to anarchy might not feel the need to follow preordained orders of a monarchical society that leads for the simple reason that those in charge just feel they should be in charge.

Think of it this way. If you’re a citizen of an order that you don’t believe in any more, because few in that society do, and lump that in with a belief that there’s no reason to live the life that your ancestors did because that’s only going to provide a lifetime of hardship and destitution, there are people in your life (or on the edge of it) you don’t like, and you see violence as an option rather than something to avoid, I wonder if that would explain why a lot of these events are becoming a norm rather than the anomaly they used to be.

I mean, let’s be honest. I don’t have the answers. But I do have a lot of questions, and I’m starting to suspect that people aren’t really asking questions any more but are just pontificating about what they think are the answers to a whole lot of questions that people stopped asking.