NOT POLITICAL OR RELIGIOUS!!!!!!!!! Why are people going to extremes?

[pbasswil]

Originally Posted by guy n. cognito

Wow. Confirms a whole society with fabricated stats!! Kudos.

:^D As it happens, before pressing "Post" I did do some quick Google searches, and corrected a few of the stats; a lot of them are pretty close.

But even if they had all been off by 50% (I don't think so), imho they still rough out a useful sketch of a people under heavy stresses of many kinds.

[spade2you]

Originally Posted by guy n. cognito

Wow. Confirms a whole society with fabricated stats!! Kudos.

Let's just assume they are correct for the sake of argument/debate.

A lot of these listed problems have solutions, except the sleep part. I just don't know how people could fix not getting enough sleep.

Actually a lot of those somehow have solutions.

[pbasswil]

Originally Posted by spade2you

Let's just assume they are correct for the sake of argument/debate.

A lot of these listed problems have solutions, except the sleep part. I just don't know how people could fix not getting enough sleep.

Actually a lot of those somehow have solutions.

I'm fully aware that my "conclusion" (love and care for one another) will seem airy-fairy and naïve.
These days, when we think of solutions to problems, we mean policies, laws, strategies, etc.

But I truly believe that the problems that underlie the regular eruptions of violence, are embedded way below the level of the specific structures and systems that make up ordered civic life.

You can "control" social behavior all you want -- regulate, legislate, delimit, prohibit etc.

But if individuals live in isolated and tortured inner worlds of personal frustration and delusion, no regulatory body is going to effect that.

Personal inner turmoil will regularly boil over and get acted out, sometimes in these horrific ways.

Access to modern, efficient killing machines merely amplifies the acting out (more deaths); it doesn't alter the root cause -- widespread inner frustration, isolation, delusion and emotional disturbance.

Governments will react to these tragedies by trying to better control the surface of society. (Often a good thing, if the wisdom is available.)

But as individuals, I say the biggest thing we can do is attempt to gather in the lost souls that live near us. Simple human contact can be the difference between them acting out their tortured mania, and finding other ways.

It's a bit like those folks who see oily ducks on TV during an oil spill, and go to the beaches and manually clean them with detergents.

You can say, "What a hopeless gesture; there are millions of oily creatures, you can't make a real difference."
Well ask one of those saved ducks -- the gesture sure made a difference to it!

Same with grass-roots efforts to contact the emotionally distraught and alienated loners.
(I'm not saying I know how to do that, just suggesting the general goal.)

[mlowe]

Attitude, misinterpretation, greed and selfishness.

[pbasswil]

Originally Posted by mlowe

Attitude, misinterpretation, greed and selfishness.

Those are traits that we all have, to some degree, and tendencies we're all somewhat guilty of!

But could you flesh out the point you're trying to make a bit?

[Steve]

Take a hard honest look at our society. Not your own, better than average environment, the whole ball of wax.

We reap what we sow.

[Bert Slide]

I blame Mt. Dew

[MJ5150]

It feels to me like this is too much of a "look at me" society.

-Mike

[fmoore200]

Originally Posted by MJ5150

It feels to me like this is too much of a "look at me" society.

-Mike

+1

[Bloodhammer]

Originally Posted by MJ5150

It feels to me like this is too much of a "look at me" society.

-Mike

What, like folks posting in an online forum?

Yes, I realize I'm doing it too.

[plankspanker13]

Originally Posted by Steve

1. We as a species are one hell of a lot closer to the jungle than we would like to admit.
2. Times are TOUGH for a great many people.
3. As options and opportuninty for a better tomorrow dwindle away, so does hope.
4. When you coddle your children and protect them from all the sadness, dificulty and expectations of the real world, you deprive them of developing coping mechanisms. When the cold hard realities of the real world inevitably weigh upon them, thewy don't bend, they break.
5. People expect to be able to pill every bit of bad and unhappiness away.
6. People are surrounded and soaked in all manner of violence and mayhem while society celebrates it as a conflict resolution tool rather than treating it as the horrific but sometimes necessary evil to be engaed in with great regret as a last resort only that it really is.
7. The holday season is tough on a great many people.
8. It's an excellent way to get all the attention you ever wanted but could never get before no matter how hard you tried.
9. Nobody wanted to pay for the ounce of prevention. Welcome to the pound of cure. It will get worse

SPOT-ON

[1958Bassman]

Originally Posted by Steve

1. We as a species are one hell of a lot closer to the jungle than we would like to admit.
2. Times are TOUGH for a great many people.
3. As options and opportuninty for a better tomorrow dwindle away, so does hope.
4. When you coddle your children and protect them from all the sadness, dificulty and expectations of the real world, you deprive them of developing coping mechanisms. When the cold hard realities of the real world inevitably weigh upon them, thewy don't bend, they break.
5. People expect to be able to pill every bit of bad and unhappiness away.
6. People are surrounded and soaked in all manner of violence and mayhem while society celebrates it as a conflict resolution tool rather than treating it as the horrific but sometimes necessary evil to be engaed in with great regret as a last resort only that it really is.
7. The holday season is tough on a great many people.
8. It's an excellent way to get all the attention you ever wanted but could never get before no matter how hard you tried.

9. Nobody wanted to pay for the ounce of prevention. Welcome to the pound of cure. It will get worse

If I had a dollar for every time I said this and had people tell me that I'm wrong, I could be hanging out with the guy in AZ who won the Powerball. Thanks for making me think I have a clue.

[1958Bassman]

Originally Posted by jasper383

I don't think there's any question that there is mental illness associated with the kind of mass, anonymous shooting we had in CT. As far as the others, I'm not sure.

There's no reason to think that there is more mental illness now than there has been before.

There are countries with just as many guns/person as the US, it's just for some reason we have a lot higher incidence of this kind of extreme behavior. Could be differences in treatment/reporting of mental illness/screening/social stigma..... The list goes on.

The crime rate in the US has been steadily decreasing for 20+ years now, for reasons that are for the most part unclear. Lots of competing theories, though.

We have more people- statistically, we HAVE to have more mentally ill people.

[1958Bassman]

Originally Posted by HeavyDuty

Do you really have to ask this question about a thread in TBOT? We already have enough closed threads and infracted posts.

Theoretically, it should stay open if the religious/political aspect are left out. Those are the two that get people riled up the most easily. In the words of Bugs Bunny, "Ironic, ain't it?"

[Sequimite]

From a 2003 Roger Ebert review:

Let me tell you a story. The day after Columbine, I was interviewed for the Tom Brokaw news program. The reporter had been assigned a theory and was seeking sound bites to support it. "Wouldn't you say," she asked, "that killings like this are influenced by violent movies?" No, I said, I wouldn't say that. "But what about 'Basketball Diaries'?" she asked. "Doesn't that have a scene of a boy walking into a school with a machine gun?" The obscure 1995 Leonardo Di Caprio movie did indeed have a brief fantasy scene of that nature, I said, but the movie failed at the box office (it grossed only $2.5 million), and it's unlikely the Columbine killers saw it.

The reporter looked disappointed, so I offered her my theory. "Events like this," I said, "if they are influenced by anything, are influenced by news programs like your own. When an unbalanced kid walks into a school and starts shooting, it becomes a major media event. Cable news drops ordinary programming and goes around the clock with it. The story is assigned a logo and a theme song; these two kids were packaged as the Trench Coat Mafia. The message is clear to other disturbed kids around the country: If I shoot up my school, I can be famous. The TV will talk about nothing else but me. Experts will try to figure out what I was thinking. The kids and teachers at school will see they shouldn't have messed with me. I'll go out in a blaze of glory."

In short, I said, events like Columbine are influenced far less by violent movies than by CNN, the NBC Nightly News and all the other news media, who glorify the killers in the guise of "explaining" them. I commended the policy at the Sun-Times, where our editor said the paper would no longer feature school killings on Page 1. The reporter thanked me and turned off the camera. Of course the interview was never used. They found plenty of talking heads to condemn violent movies, and everybody was happy.

[Indiana Mike]

I would say that society has isolated itself ,In a way that people have small groups of contacts but don't give a stranger a second look .

I grew up in a neighborhood where everybody talked and was ,well ,neighborly.

The neighborhood i live in now is ,well , full of self centered highfalutin people .

Society has changed from when i was younger .

it has gone to **** for many ....

[king_biscuit]

Originally Posted by Steve

1. We as a species are one hell of a lot closer to the jungle than we would like to admit.
2. Times are TOUGH for a great many people.
3. As options and opportuninty for a better tomorrow dwindle away, so does hope.
4. When you coddle your children and protect them from all the sadness, dificulty and expectations of the real world, you deprive them of developing coping mechanisms. When the cold hard realities of the real world inevitably weigh upon them, thewy don't bend, they break.
5. People expect to be able to pill every bit of bad and unhappiness away.
6. People are surrounded and soaked in all manner of violence and mayhem while society celebrates it as a conflict resolution tool rather than treating it as the horrific but sometimes necessary evil to be engaed in with great regret as a last resort only that it really is.
7. The holday season is tough on a great many people.
8. It's an excellent way to get all the attention you ever wanted but could never get before no matter how hard you tried.

9. Nobody wanted to pay for the ounce of prevention. Welcome to the pound of cure. It will get worse

Plus parents are not doing a very good job of teaching their kids to be nice people with respect for others -- that, IMO, is the biggest parenting problem we face.

[MJ5150]

Originally Posted by Bloodhammer

What, like folks posting in an online forum?

Yes, I realize I'm doing it too.

No, not at all. I don't post here as a way to draw attention to myself.

-Mike

[1958Bassman]

If we were trying to get attention by posting in a forum like this, we'd use our real name.

[spade2you]

Originally Posted by MJ5150

No, not at all. I don't post here as a way to draw attention to myself.

-Mike

Some do. Some don't. Ones that do tend to play in a Wisconsin cover band.