A question about morality and media

[Ziltoid]

And furthermore, lumping me in with that caldoleelunctious fella , that was just low , low i say!

I'm not lumping you him with him. I just selectively replace my +1 by a +Calbodago when I feel like it

 

[bassinplace]

Try to foster good reading habits into the kids, if at all possible. TV is just plain toxic. That hasn't changed since it's advent.

 

[4dog]

I'm lumping you him with him. I just selectively replace my +1 by a +Calbodago when I feel like it

Im trying to wrap my brain around this bit it tickles a bit.

 

[fdeck]

And that begets the question, why is US culture more violent than others?

Good question. My observation is that quite a lot of people believe that they need to prepare themselves -- mentally and physically -- for some sort of future violent confrontation. Those are not necessarily bad people. But if you put a bunch of people under stress, there will be some conflicts. Some conflicts will escalate into violent confrontations. Once people reach a point where they think that they are in a "use it or lose it" situation, then the outcome will be driven by the efficacy of the weapons that are close at hand. There is a similar path from mental illness to murder or suicide.

Could parenting play a role? Sure. My neighborhood has a rate of violent crime that is probably no greater than a typical city in Canada or Europe. My neighbors either grew up in other cultures, or have opted out of the violent culture. I won't teach it to my kids. That's parenting. There's also evidence that intelligence and education reduce the rates of violence. That's parenting too. The sad thing is that a lot of people are stuck in lifestyles where they can't walk away from the violent culture due to socioeconomic circumstances such as poverty or lack of education.

 

[scorpionldr]

First, if the mods feel this should go the lounge I have no problem, but the question is far more about "general morality" than religion.

One of the things I've noticed growing up is how morally ambiguous our mass media's choice of stories has become. I remember as a grade school kid watching Twelve O'clock High, Rat Patrol, Daniel Boone, Gunsmoke, the Rifleman, and Combat. All of those shows were about war or serious physical conflict. And while it is true the violence was less graphic (everything was less graphic) their was still a lot of it. And yet thru-out society we didn't seem to have near as many deranged acts of senseless violence.

To me the difference was the nature of the stories themselves. Maybe I'm just longing for the "good old days", but there was rarely a doubt who the good guys and bad guys were on a network TV show back then. The Nazi's were bad guys, there were good and bad indians, if Daniel Boone had to shoot them, they were bad, the crooks in Dodge city were bad and Marshal Dillon dealt with them.

Now we have shows like the Soprano's, the Shield, Scandal, etc. Where in many cases the "good guys" are more morally conflicted than the bad guys. While I realize life is more nuanced than all Nazi's are bad (well come to think of it maybe it isn't). Is this type of media having a negative effect on those who are a) still forming their moral compass because of their age or b) have a malformed moral compass due to mental issues.

Just asking, while I suspect I know the answer, I'm in no way sure of it.

the answer is, how do you know daniel boone wasn't just some crazed pervert who opted to live in the woods because he couldn't hack it in the real world?

that is all.

 

[LiquidMidnight]

THIS...totally made my day.

Oh, Matticus, would you mind stopping by my Facebook and checking out my "Celebrity Crushes of 2012" Note? I was hoping that someone would comment on it, but I don't think people pay attention to Notes on FB anymore (not that they ever really did). I figured you would appreciate it.

 

[LiquidMidnight]

Try to foster good reading habits into the kids, if at all possible. TV is just plain toxic. That hasn't changed since it's advent.

While television has never been as good as literature, I'd argue that it wasn't always so...toxic. While Andy Griffith and Leave it to Beaver may have been corny and myopic with their portryal of real life, they're still nowhere near the mindless turdfest that's the average reality show today. *coughtherecomeshoneybooboocough*

 

[bassinplace]

And that begets the question, why is US culture more violent than [/QUOTE

Because American culture views sex as a dirty sin, so it sublimates it's shame with violence.

 

[bassinplace]

While television has never been as good as literature, I'd argue that it wasn't always so...toxic. While Andy Griffith and Leave it to Beaver may have been corny and myopic with their portryal of real life, they're still nowhere near the mindless turdfest that's the average reality show today. *coughtherecomeshoneybooboocough*

Yeah, it's definitely gotten exponentially worse with time, but they didn't start calling it the boob tube from early on for nuthin'.

 

[Musiclogic]

Society today is the land of zero parenting, pandering to every whim and want, and apathy toward anything that might truly have a real impact. Television reinforces these traits along with the "if it feels good do it" attitude, and trash whore mentality of todays youth. Garbage begets garbage.

 

[two fingers]

Society today is the land of zero parenting, pandering to every whim and want, and apathy toward anything that might truly have a real impact. Television reinforces these traits along with the "if it feels good do it" attitude, and trash whore mentality of todays youth. Garbage begets garbage.

Tell it!

 

[bigboy_78]

We're generally way ahead of most western countries in stabbings, beatings, and all other forms of killing also.

The US culture is just more violent in general than others.

You'd think that, given all the bad press the US gets. You have some BIG NEWS mass killings, but as far as homicide per head go, the US is way down the list. About 5 per 100,000.

Africa & South American nations top the list. Not too many violent video games there, but plenty of poverty.

This is from Wikipedia so could be BS.

 

[burk48237]

I'm going to leave the morality discussion to the threads in the lobby, but I wanted to comment here. It depends a lot on what you mean by "safest era." Life expectancies are certainly higher now, we're a lot less likely to starve to death or die of disease. But the issues at stake in this thread would mean death caused by human agency - violence.

The problem is that it's darn near impossible to get reliable statistics on crime in premodern societies because no one was keeping anything like modern records, and much of the records that were kept have not survived the ravages of time. I teach a course on medieval violence, and actually some studies have been done trying to get usable statistics out of medieval English court records. I don't have the numbers at hand, but the overall conclusion was that you were about as likely to be murdered in medieval England (based on the limited snapshots that are possible) as you are in the modern US (which, if I remember right, is more than in modern England). So by that measure, we actually aren't much less violent than we used to be.

On the other hand, medieval would-be murderers had to rely on swords, knives and poisons, not guns, so the failure rate of attempted murders (which we have no way to measure) was probably higher in the Middle Ages. If that assumption is valid, then there probably was a higher proportion of would-be murderers in the medieval population than there is today. For what it's worth. So I guess, yeah, we probably are somewhat safer from human violence today -but not hugely, off-the-chart safer.

Sam Harris made a great point on his blog about guns. A world without guns wasn't necessarily a "safer world". It was a world ruled by young, aggressive men who could organize like minded aggressive young men into gangs. Women or the elderly had little recourse against the young and aggressive. The famous slogan from the turn of the century "God made all men but Sam Colt made them equal" is certainly a truism.

One other great point Harris made was that Prison guards have been know to watch in fear while another prison guard was getting murdered by a make shift knife. The reality is the best way to stop a aggressive man with a knife or club(both knives and clubs kill far more in our society than all rifles) is a firearm. We don't really want to go back to a world ruled by those whose only advantage is that they are young and physically stronger.

As far as violence there was plenty of violence before the gun, and before the violent video game for that matter. When Islam invaded India there were single day death tolls in some villages approaching a 100,000.

 

[burk48237]

A 13 year old should not be playing Grand Theft Auto. It's rated "M" for "Mature" and this is clearly printed on the box, visible before purchase.

Video games don't magically float in through open windows, people (usually adults) are responsible for purchasing them, selling them and allowing them to stay in the house.

Allowing your kid to play an M-rated game is like allowing them to drink alcohol. They're not ready for it.



Do you really want to live in a world where the only media available is sanitized to the point where the most broken, deranged individual on the planet can consume it without their mental state changing for the worse? OK, that's an extreme position but if not, then we have to talk tradeoffs and risk management.

Censorship is (IMO) bad not only because "it's like demanding that grown men live on skim milk because the baby can't eat steak" (Heinlein) but because it harms healthy discussion and self-examination. I learned a lot about myself and the world from my, erm, "less mainstream" experiences and I'm sure the same is true for many others.

On top of that, you have the whole "forbidden fruit" side of things - censorship itself is not without negative effect.

So, to your question - yes, I can see cases where someone is borderline and some piece of media they consume acting as a catalyst to push them over the edge. Whether that actually happened in any of the recent cases, who knows? There's so much finger-pointing going on. But what would the price be to totally eliminate this possibility? Even though 90% of current media is worthless, disposable **** what would we lose and what alternative harms would we be exchanging for the ones we have?

First, I'm not calling for censorship, although age ratings should be far more strictly enforced with some civil penalties for violations. But that's not truly censorship, adults should have access to pretty much any video games, movies, etc. they want to check out.

But to me at some point our media moguls need to answer for some of this stuff. Why is it nearly impossible to find any drama in prime time TV and most popular movies where there is any "moral" to the story except that there is no moral to the story?

I also agree with the earlier comments about the pablum of "self esteem" and not celebrating excellence in anything as being counter productive. I do believe we are producing a generation of narcissistic monsters who are literally offended at the slightest meager "dis".

With the exception of the message that white rednecks are bad (they aren't a protected group) what other moral messages does hollywood provide?

hbearcatWith this new reality, a need for stronger parenting emerges. When children are surrounded by strong role models who teach good character by practicing it, they grow up to emulate this behavior. They are more influenced by the strong role models who take an active interest in the child's development than in the amoral sludge that comes out of their TV or computer. In the absence of influence from strong role modeks, the values from the video games and from other popular entertainment become instilled by default. Sadly, this happens too often because it's so easy to let the boob tube babysit for you.

I couldn't agree more. I can't imagine how hard it is to be the parent of a pre teen or young teen these days. Especially with sex being sold routinely to such young kids.

 

[UncleFluffy]

Why is it nearly impossible to find any drama in prime time TV and most popular movies where there is any "moral" to the story except that there is no moral to the story?

What did you think of "The Dark Knight" ? In particular the ferry scene?

I also agree with the earlier comments about the pablum of "self esteem" and not celebrating excellence in anything as being counter productive. I do believe we are producing a generation of narcissistic monsters who are literally offended at the slightest meager "dis".

No disagreement from me here

 

[Ziltoid]

I like anti-heros myself. While most of them are not suited for younger people I often find shows with them entertaining. I don't see it as a problem...

 

[Stewie26]

This may sound a little chessy, but when I was growing up we had legitimate role models to look up to. There are vey few famous role models today for kids to admire. I am sure they are out there but they don't get the reconigition from the media so we don't know who they are. The only one I can come up with in recent years is Captain Sully. (Miracle on the Hudson)

 

[mellowinman]

Television is loaded with graphic gun violence shown as entertainment. Same is true with the violent video games. A steady diet of this stuff has pushed mentally ill teenagers into committing acts of violence.

It is ironic many of the same Hollywood actors making a living shooting people on TV are also ardent anti-gun nuts outside of film.

This is a very quaint viewpoint. Can you name some? I think you'll find that a lot of people interested in regulating firearm sales and possession can hardly be categorized as "anti-gun nuts."

They are people for RESPONSIBLE gun ownership, and RESPONSIBLE gun sales. Categorizing someone as a "nut" just because they hold a different belief from you is just another example of black and white thinking, and I'm afraid it instantly politicized the thread.

 

[burk48237]

What did you think of "The Dark Knight" ? In particular the ferry scene?



No disagreement from me here

I saw the movie once on video, and don't recall the scene you were talking about.

Stewie26This may sound a little chessy, but when I was growing up we had legitimate role models to look up to. There are vey few famous role models today for kids to admire. I am sure they are out there but they don't get the reconigition from the media so we don't know who they are. The only one I can come up with in recent years is Captain Sully. (Miracle on the Hudson)

I think you're on to something with this. I remember reviewers complaining about the movie "act of valor" because the stars were to one dimmensional. As if they would have liked the movie if the Seals would have burned some native village or killed some children too.

Try to find any modern war movie (post Viet Nam) that portrays war as a good vs. evil proposition. Even movies using some clearly good v. Evil subjects like WW II. Hint: Nazi's evil.

 

[Ziltoid]

I saw the movie once on video, and don't recall the scene you were talking about.



I think you're on to something with this. I remember reviewers complaining about the movie "act of valor" because the stars were to one dimmensional. As if they would have liked the movie if the Seals would have burned some native village or killed some children too.

Try to find any modern war movie (post Viet Nam) that portrays war as a good vs. evil proposition. Even movies using some clearly good v. Evil subjects like WW II. Hint: Nazi's evil.

There's nothing black and white about war, why should it be depicted that way in movies