Societal sickness

[Felonious Monk/Fignozzle]

I am saddened to the core.

I just watched the last 9 minutes of an episode of CSI: Crime Scene Investigation (a show I do NOT regularly watch).

In those 9 minutes, they managed to have 6 different investigators  each of which took a 3 foot galvanized pipe and hammer the sh!t out of the head of a lifelike dummy, while wearing a white sweater so as to show the splatter stains as they wailed away at the mannequin.

Turns out, a 10 or 12 year old kid expressed his rage at someone (NO idea.  Mom? Dad? Sis? step-parent?) in this fashion, and left the object of his rage dead and in the grave.

I totally understand...poetic license, shock for effect, and so on.

And yet...

What seeds are planted in the minds of a little guy whose mom and dad are going through an ugly divorce...and he's sitting, un-monitored, watching this very show?

It just makes me sad, most of all.

I'm not a Pollyanna.  I'm not uninformed, or shocked by the soft, white underbelly of society.  

Heck, I was in the military for a couple of years (as a combat medic, no less), and lived in a major college town for 4 years.

But there is a level of sensitivities to which it is not in any way constructive for humans to be exposed to.

What do you all think?

[Preacherman]

I couldn't agree more, Figgy - but the networks don't give a damn about such considerations.  Ratings are the thing, and shocking shows go up in the ratings.

[zahc]

See, I don't know what you are talking about, because I do not watch TV. I suggest you do the same. It I don't listen to the radio either. Societal isolation might not actually change anything, but you will feel better and not be part of the problem yourself.

[Strings]

Heh... we just recently got cable again. If I'm in front of the TV (a VERY rare occassion), it's on History (once in awhile SciFi). However, I see a corsening of human nature, and it's getting worse as time goes on. I fear Preacherman is right: the ONLY thing TPTB care about is ratings, and they'll push the envelope as far as they can in search of better ratings, with no sense of decency or decorum...

[Fjolnirsson]

I was thinking about this very thing, just the other day. Over the last several years, I've noticed a dramatic rise in the level of violence in movies and such. Perhaps that's not quite right. Coarseness , simple, shocking brutality, that's it. It's the in your face quality of it that I'm seeing as new. It troubles me. While I don't believe movies and such can "make" people do things, I do think it has a desensitizing effect. I was actually wondering about the corelation between this increase, and the rise in overall crime levels.

[Headless Thompson Gunner]

Lie down with dogs, rise up with fleas.  Go outside in the rain, you get wet.  Watch TV, you see filth.

If you expected decency your should never have turned on a television.

[Nightfall]

I dont buy it.

Since I was probably 5, Ive been playing those eeevvilll violent video games. Started out with stuff like Duck Hunt on the NES. Kill the ducks with the handgun you plug into the console! Shot, stabbed, and exploded my way through innumerable digital representations of living beings over the course of going on two decades. Millions of victims. Sometimes these victims were even controlled by real live people elsewhere on the planet during online play. Ran over them with cars. Tore them apart with chainsaws. Burned them alive. Pushed them into pits of lava, pits of sharp spikes. Cut their heads off with swords. You name it, be it realistic, physically improbable, or just plain impossible, I did it. Since I was 5. Oh, and dont forget I saw the same kind of stuff in the movies and on the dummy box, portrayed even more realistically.

Yet, here I sit, and I find Im not desensitized to violence in the world. Im kind to animals. I dont even squish bugs, I catch and release. I feel guilt and sadness when I do accidentally squish em. Ive never hurt anybody maliciously. But most pertinent to this discussion, I remember in my early teens, I stumbled upon some war crime footage. People being brutally murdered in real life. It disturbed me to no end. My reaction was far from indifference, trust me. After millions of deaths on the tube, in the movies, in video games, etc. I was no less shocked or disturbed by real brutality. I still maintained a strong, undiminished respect for life.

I reckon thats because ma and pa taught me the difference between TV and the world. I never had a problem differentiating the two, and watching the former never made me misbehave in the later. Violence on the tube will desensitize you to& violence on the tube. If little Johnny puts a pipe in somebodys skull because he saw it on CSI, it aint CSIs fault. Its mommy and daddys for failing in their duties as parents. Youre not gonna turn little Johnny into an upstanding citizen by keeping violent entertainment away from him if he doesn't have good parental guidance in his life.

Fighting coarseness in entertainment is a band-aid solution to the real problem, which is parents who arent being parents.

[Felonious Monk/Fignozzle]

Thanks for the replies, all.

Nightfall-- I don't disagree that for a WELL-GROUNDED individual, the differentiation between reality and fantasy is clear cut.  I respectfully submit that you're not looking beyond the perspective of your own experience, to the society as a whole.

If you're a libertarian anarchist, then it doesn't matter.  Screw 'em all, do what you want, just don't mess with me and mine.

I think we had grown beyond that as a country when we were founded, knowing that there WAS a line between right and wrong.  Now, I'm not so sure.

[Lo.Com.Denom]

I think that Nightfall is absolutely right.

Look at Japan if you want an example of a society, rather than an individual, Fig.

Take "Manga", for example. Even the stuff aimed at kids is brutal, bloody, degrading stuff -- enough to give some people nightmares. And it has been that way since it really took-off after WW2 (that's after everyone had largely decided that "war is baaad, m'kay?").

Let's not even mention Anime and movies -- stuffed to the brim with sex, violence and scatology...

So Japan should be a blood-bath of violence, shouldn't it?

It would be nice to have a villain to blame, it really would. We could all join together in excorcising it from society and drive it back into the sea. But there isn't a villain. There never has been. Only human nature, and that's far more complex than any TV show or videogame.

So don't get too stressed about it, folks. Just turn off the TV and think of Japanese school kids watching something far worse, at that very moment.

[Iain]

Saw a bit of the Daily Show the other day, no it didn't desensitise me to Jon Stewart. But my point is that he was discussing some congressional investigation into violent video games, here is a quote from Rep. Joseph Pitts (R - Pennsylvania)

It's safe to say that a wealthy kid from the suburbs can play Grand Theft Auto or similar games without turning to a life of crime, but a poor kid who lives in a neighbourhood where people really do steal cars or do drugs or shoot cops might not be so fortunate.

That is a fairly amazing quote, which we didn't get to hear all of. Either Pitts went on to make my point or he made my point and still went on to blame video games. Not sure. Suspect the latter. Call me a cynic. Probably don't need to say any more. What came first - grand theft auto or Grand Theft Auto?

[Antibubba]

HUHHHH!  Ooooh baby I got the fever baby, ooooooh yeah, I got the sickness yeah, ooooh momma I got societal sickness, I wanna be sick with you!!!! (sound of electric guitar being smashed into concrete wall).


It's "Clockwork Orange".  People are sick and violent because society is sick and violent-and vice versa.  And about the only effective (albeit temporary) solution is for the violence-hating people to reach a breaking point, eliminate the sick and twisted, and then go back to their lives believing the whole situation was an abberation, and setting the groundwork for Next Time.

The problem with deviancy is, once it is acceptable, it is no longer deviant.  And some people will always revel in being reviled.

We haven't found the balance point yet.

The gun-owning (ideal) society (I'll call it Heinleinian) is a culture that metes out swift, effective, and often fatal justice when someone innocent is hurt or society is threatened, but is otherwise completely indifferent to eccentricities, kinks and desires that don't harm anyone but the willing participants.  The difficult line for many of us is agreeing on the line between self-imposed potential harm and societal sickness that infects everyone, and in this respect, the Right is as guilty as the Left.  As a whole, we here (THR-types) seem to understand the "Armed Polite Society" part.  A lot can't handle the "Live and Let Live" part.  You know what?  If it weren't the theme of so many political campaigns and evangelical sweeps, eventually "Gay Culture" in America would be as undistinctive (and as controversial) as "Serbo-Latvian* Culture"-some strange practices, true, but unless you are Serbo-Latvian, barely noticeable.  Gay theatres and bookshops would close as the once-ostracized members simply go to Borders and Loews.  Two men kissing simply does not affect me, even as a man who likes to kiss women.  Who does it hurt?

But as someone who needs to impose your own values on others (CHRISTIAN!!!  There!  I said it, even if you aren't the only ones), you cannot let it go, and you must try to eliminate all other options as unnatural or against G-d (as if lifelong monagamy, for instance, were somehow natural).  You create the conflict, because you create an imbalance between societal harm and personal behavior by trying to deny and eliminate the difference.

Frank Zappa said, "Freedom means putting up with stuff that pisses you off".   Frank is right.









*No offense was intended to Serbo-Latvians; it was a random choice.  Please return to whatever twisted unnatural Godhating rituals you may have been conducting.

[Nightfall]

I respectfully submit that you're not looking beyond the perspective of your own experience, to the society as a whole.

You may well be right. I admit I'm fairly... self-centered when it comes to these matters. I'm much more concerned with my life being limited than I am with the perceived health of 'society'.

But are so many people really so weak minded as to be effected so much by these things? Even if they are, what should be done? Trying to engineer society with laws is immoral, IMHO. Otherwise, you'd be looking at pressure on providers of entertainment to curb violence levels, brought by consumers. But what do you think the odds are that the millions of Americans consuming this stuff are going to start protesting it? Its on the TV because it gets ratings, and it gets ratings because people tune in to see it. Nobody is forcing them to. Can they be convinced to stop?

Even if you're convinced there is a problem here, how do you solve it?

[Felonious Monk/Fignozzle]

I respectfully submit that you're not looking beyond the perspective of your own experience, to the society as a whole.

You may well be right. I admit I'm fairly... self-centered when it comes to these matters. I'm much more concerned with my life being limited than I am with the perceived health of 'society'.

First of all, thanks for taking the high road.  I was concerned my reply might take this down to ad hominem stuff.  You're a class act!

But are so many people really so weak minded as to be effected so much by these things?

Sadly, I believe there are.  We are surrounded by idiots, and mentally/emotionally crippled people.

what should be done? Trying to engineer society with laws is immoral, IMHO.  Even if you're convinced there is a problem here, how do you solve it?

I agree that it is VERY undesirable to have a Nanny state.  Wish I had a brilliant solution, but I don't.  

It really comes back to where YOU started: what's right/okay for me and mine?  That's where we really have influence.  That's where we should attempt to teach, influence, and affect the future.

[roo_ster]

I respectfully submit that you're not looking beyond the perspective of your own experience, to the society as a whole.

But are so many people really so weak minded as to be effected so much by these things? Even if they are, what should be done? Trying to engineer society with laws is immoral, IMHO. Otherwise, you'd be looking at pressure on providers of entertainment to curb violence levels, brought by consumers. But what do you think the odds are that the millions of Americans consuming this stuff are going to start protesting it? Its on the TV because it gets ratings, and it gets ratings because people tune in to see it. Nobody is forcing them to. Can they be convinced to stop?

Even if you're convinced there is a problem here, how do you solve it?

Yes, there is an alarming proportion of folks in this society who are just so weak minded.

During high school & college, I worked with quite a few of them in landscaping, tree removal, and similar such jobs.  Folks who would have a personality clash & let it get out of hand...if I wasn't there to use my techniques of gentle suasion. :/  One time, I witnessed an injury auto wreck & had to give a statement to Jonny Law & was 2 hours late getting materials to the job site.  By the time I got there, "white-trash meth-head" (hardest worker on the crew*) & "the white man's a mother *expletive deleted*er...can I borrow $20 until payday, jfruser?" (man least likely--other than your humble author--to kill self or others running a Ditch Witch**) were duleing with flat-nosed shovels, swearing up a storm,  & scaring the customer near to pissing himself.




* Spent time in prison for killing his brother in law, dealing MJ, and breaking a narc's nose with his forehead

** Spent time in prison for dealing crack and beating his woman to a pulp.