Interesting reply, I enjoyed reading it, but I am still unconvinvced
about a few things...
"Joe E. Dees" wrote:
> > >
> > All the schoolyard Rambos so far have been white males attending
> > suburban or rural schools, and all have been outcast, persecuted
> > and picked upon, for being bright, nonathletic or otherwise different.
> >
> > I would check on this fact before making a sweeping generalization like
> > this. It is not in fact correct. The number of mass slayings in the past
> > 15 years has been predominantly carreid out in inner city schools by ethnic
> > youth living in ghetto conditions. The difficult conditions of ghetto life
> > have demonstratively hight co-respondence with violence than being a white
> > kid from suburbia.
> >
> I _did_ check it out. Of the eight mass slayings in the pasttwo
> years, ALL of them share the attributes I listed above. Reality has
> a funny way of shattering our culturally colored preconceptions
> that; it doesn't care what the "conventional wisdom" about black
> gang members and inner city schools is, it just happens as it
> does, anyway.
> >
I mean no offence here, but your "eight" samples have a few flaws - first of all they are 8 incidences of violence out of literally thousands in the continenetal US. A life is lost ot a gunshot wound every 3.2 seconds in the US! The second problem with the samples is that they are not stratified. They are only those incidences grabbed on by the Media because they meet certain demographic profiles and allow the "sale of product" to a largely "White Middle Class Male With Compulsive Emotional Reaction" population. Hmmm... Sound familar? Mass Media sampling is a very poor basis to make generalizations. When the object is selling Air Jordans, you don't give a rat's patooty whether a story is true or not, only if it sells copy. I think that the media saturation has started to penetrate all of our guards. I actually found myself in a starbucks this morning - terrifying.....
> > > In the past, jocks and bullies could get away with this kind of
> > > behavior, but with the internet providing access to knowledge of
> > > how to build weapons and opportunities to illicitly purchase them,
> >
> > The Internet does not do these things. In fact it does nothing but allow
> > comuters to communicate with each other. It can however provide a medium
> > where like minded individuals can communicate ideas via web-sites,
> > discussion groups like this one, etc...
> > The Internet cannot arm you. That takes a mind, hands, and a brain.
By the
> > way, I found four copies of the anarchists cookbook at my local library
> > during a research project this last September. It took twelve minutes. I
> > couldn't find a copy online, and I looked actively for four hours....
> > Hmmmmm.......... Again, actually looking this stuff up is highly
> > revealing....
> >
> I went to Yahoo, typed in Anarchist's Cookbook, pressed Search,
> and Voila! multiple copies for sale, $30.00 each! In 5 seconds! If
> ya couldn't do that in 4 hours, methinks yer surfing skills need
> work...
> >
We were talking about "free access to material"... I don't know many 15 year olds who qualify for a VISA, but I can;t think of one who can't get a library card..... I finally did find a free copy online, but it took a total of 6.25 hours. The free copies in the library were only a few seconds.....
I agree that if you spend money for it, you can find anything you want.... But my searching skills definitely need some work anyhow... I still can't seem to find my car keys today....
> > and with violent media, from movies to television to gaming, not
> > only inuring and desensitizing youth to the horror of violence, but
> > also training them in paramilitary assault strategies, this is no
> > longer possible, nor can the information access rabbit be stuffed
> > back into the hat.
> >
> > Really, you learned how to be a commando from TV? I wish I had been
> > watching those shows....
> >
> Rambo I, II & III, Predator I & II, Universal Soldier, Commando,
> Sniper, Navy SEALS, the list goes on and on and on...
> >
I see your point, but as someone who actually has been through real combat training, I can assure you that the stuff you see on TV has literally nothing to do with reality. Ask anyone who has ever been in the reg. forces and see how many of them believe you can learn tactics and weapon familiarity from TV.... I think the looks you get will reveal quite a bit about the subject...
> > I am only joking, but I think that you can see my
> > point. Every study attempting to link exposure to TV violence to realy
> > world violence has failed to demonstrait a clear co-respondence. In fact
> > there is some vauge evidence to suggest that TV and Media violence may be
> > associaed with though disorders such as schitzophrenia, but that
evidence is
> > still largely anecdotal. The Media violence causing real violence myth is
> > another meme passed along because it has an emotioanl truth to it, but not
> > because it has factual truth. Again, it is worth looking this stuff up.
> >
> I have a hard time believing that watching 15,000 murders doesn't
> reduce my tendency to flinch for the 15,001st. B.F. Skinner wasn't
> totally right, but he wasn't totally wrong, either; otherwise, what are
> commercials for?
> >
I agree with you absolutely. The problem I have with this is that
desensitization is not the same as illiciting behavior. Lowering a
resistance to a behavior does not illicit the behavior. Alcohol lowered
my resistance to approaching my current girlfriend, but Hormones are
what made me actually ask her out... Although I think common sense
would also agree with your point, the truth is that in literally
hundereds of studies so far, no clear co-relation between media violence
and real world violence has emerged. Our emotional reaction to media
violence is irrelevant. The only way to approach the issue is
scientifically.
I do agree however that TV is a dangerous toy. As I said before, it
appears to inspire a certain level of though disorder, and that in turn
may lead to homicidal tendancies... I wonder if any studies have
centered on that. Anyone know?
Anyhow, my emotional reation to stupidity like "Universal Soldier" is
not to different from yours. I choose not to have a TV for that reason
and my life is great without one, but I don't think my choice will
necessarily be good for anyone else.
> > However I do agree that the emerging inforamtion society - for lack of a
> > better term - has provided us with a new reinessance. The sheer volume of
> > data and media that a citizen of North America is expected to devour each
> > day has had a paradoxically liberating effect on the instinct to question
> > authority, and it is no longer possible to "stuff it back into the hat".
> >
> > > Unlike Japan, the US is a relatively extroverted
> > > and individualistic society.
> >
> > Ummm.... Been to Tokyo lately? The stereotype that you are using is a
> > little dated. Tokyo reminds one of nothing so much as New York with more
> > rain and fewer taxi's.... The global culture has been emerging, and all
> > the world people are becomming more homogenous. Look it up... Better yet -
> > take a vacation to Japan. It is really cool, and the industrial gothic
> > scene there is amazing.... Check out the Geiger bar especially.....
> >
> Kew, I'd love to, but those folks have already survived their
> schooldaze, haven't they?
> >
(Laugh) Some of 'em have, but like any bar there are a few young 'uns kicking around. (smile)...
> > > Whereas in Japan the teased,
> > > harassed and bedeviled outcasts and pariahs commit suicide, here
> > > they cold-bloodedly plan and commit mass homicide upon their
> > > tormenters.
> >
> > Where are you getting this stuff from?
> >
> An hourlong report on CNN on an epidemic of suicides in the
> Japanese public school system, circa 2 years or so ago. Suits
> were filed against schools and bullies, and laws were passed to
> deal with the problem.
> >
> >Japaneese people commit sucide for
> > the same reason Americans do - depression, isolation, feelings of
> > inadequacy, etc. The Japaneese have their mass murderers too... Anybody
> > remember a littel incident involving a subway and some rather
unpleasant gas
> > a couple of years ago? If not, you can look it up....
> >
> I remember Aum Shinryu...it was an aberrational blip in that
> culture. With our plethora of militias and our surplus of Dahmers,
> Gacys, Bundys, McVeighs, etc., I think the statistics are pretty
> lopsided.
> >
Actually Japan is a bad example altogether... It has the higest number of mass murders and serial killers per capita of any country in the world. The US is actually pretty far down the list. (My grilfreind is a criminologist so she has some pretty interesting books on abberant acts...). As far as the Militia thing goes, it might be really interesting for you to look up a poet named Mishyamaya (I think my spelling is wrong) who led a sword wielding unit into the government buildings and held off the army/police for 16 hours before killing himself. Some of his poetry is really amazing, but quite dark.... Anyhow, the militia thingy is pretty well universal. The US just has a better armed and prepared lot than most countries... (M16-A1 rifles are more efficient than swords in general combat).
> > > To minimize the continued burgeoning of this trend, a
> > > policy must be set that harassment of any student by any other
> > > must be reported, and a "zero tolerance" policy must be
> > > implemented to deal with such harassment.
> >
> > This "trend" is not a reatction to typical schoolyard bullying which has
> > been going on since the dawn of civilization. This "trend" isn't even a
> > trend. To all apparent criminology reports on the phenomena of mass murder,
> > there appears to be no connection between incidents, that when averaged
over
> > the size of the population that experiences such events (namely the global,
> > or even the US population alone) amounts to almost nothing. I think that to
> > be a trend, mass murderers would have to account for more than 0.000002
> > percent of the population.
> >
> >
> Eight gun and/or bomb mass murders by schoolchildren, in half the
> cases acting as a group, against their peers as a whole, in two
> years, when such a thing had not happened once in the three
> years prior, has to be a significant uptick. They're certainly
> outstripping post office employee rampages now.
> >
Agreed... And I also agree that the conditon of our schools must be looked at quite carefully, but I am certain that economics have more to do with violence than bullying. Hell, I got picked on a lot (there were No Goths to hang out with in the early 80's - just a few punks that though were were *&%#@'ed). I ended up in Karate classes, and then off to learn how to scream "yes sir!" to some guy wearing a green jacket (yeah even goths join paramilitary organizations - gotta pay that tuition somehow), but I never waded into a school and let loose with an assault rifle... I may have wanted to had it ever occured to me (laugh) but I don't think that it was too likely.... I am pretty certain that the causes of this behavior are more likely centered in the home lives or biochemichal state of the kids....
> > The disturbing trend that we have is the rampant replecement of emotional
> > reaction for resoned discourse in a hypermediated culture. It is excellent
> > to express youe hunches or inclinations to beleif about a subject, but it
> > can be highly destructive, and counter productive to express hunches, and
> > third party ideas as fact without evidence or at least experience. If we
> > are to understand how memetics work, we need to become resopnsible for our
> > own tendancy to pass them on. Know your own self. I'm pretty certain that
> > everything else will just work out by itself. Of that last statement, I
> > have no proof...
> >
> >
> I, OTOH, checked mine out...
Kewl....
> I Like MM (although I think his mentor Trent Reznor does it better),
> and nowhere did I mention Goths.
You're right, but I was responding to a larger audience, I think I irresponsibly let you get caught in the flak.... Sorry.... An yeah, I think Trent R. is way better - still not my cup'o tea though - I like that brit sound..... (smile).
> In fact, in at least one of the
> cases, the perps were rednecked, 4-H NRA-trained Good Young
> Boys.
Yeah that I can see a little easier, but I think that there we are really dealing with a home condition issue. I mean what kinda dad makes his kids run around the outback with guns? I think hockey or baseball might be more fun (and apparently they pay not badly either!).
> Methinks that your reaction was a defensive projection
> (does this mean that Goths are paranoid? Naah...the Moral
> Majority, Focus on the Family and others of that ilk really ARE out
> to getcha!).
I probably am paranoid... Too many chemicals from 15 years of hair dye no doubt....
> Goths are People, Too, and while they should not be singled out for
> self-righteous persecution, neither should they be a priori excluded.
> We're All in the Mix...
Definitely.... And sometimes I'm not so sure about that people thing (laugh). I'm one of 'em and I still think they're wierd...