shakran

The thread about the 11 year old killing the step mom degenerated somewhat quickly into a "it's the gun's fault / no it's not dammit" festival.

Let's ignore guns for now, and focus on what the root causes of such heinous violence in our society are.

I have a few ideas myself, but would like to get the unprejudiced reactions of some of you before I go shooting (heh heh) off my mouth.

dippin

From a purely "rational choice" theory point of view, you have 3 key factors: payoff, opportunity, and penalty. This does explain a lot of the crime and points to why more unequal societies do face a lot more crime. But that is a partial explanation at best and does not explain how certain very unequal societies do not have much crime.

So there are structural/cultural factors that also apply. As strain theory posits, frustrations that arise out of unmet expectations also lead to an increase in crime. That is, as expectations of equal opportunity, meritocracy and freedom are not met, people lash out at society. I.e., an Indian of a lower caste when castes were more relevant was poor and had no expectations of social mobility. But an American teen who grows up expecting opportunity and reward for hard work might lash out when they notice that his opportunities are limited.

Of course, these are over simplifications, but I do think they capture the gist of it.

powerclown

I find it helpful to reference child psychology and particularly the "death instinct" when contemplating the propensity human beings have for violence. Observing very young children, one can see how violent they can get, particularly toddlers. It is the very first example of raw, unrestrained aggression...and they all show signs of it at one time or another.

Erich Fromm and Sigmund Freud have labelled this 'urge to destroy' the "death instinct" (or opposite Eros: the loving, nurturing instinct); it could be trying to strangle a spoon, crush a banana, tear the head off a doll, knock over another's pile of blocks, uncontrolled biting, attacking a pet, destructive temper tantrums, etc. They lose total control and literally want to destroy something, anything.

Things get more complicated as one gets older, but I believe human beings are born innately violent and in varying degrees, which eventually leads to societal violence.

shakran

Interesting that you should snap to that so quickly in the discussion. I was thinking along those lines myself. We really aren't that far away, evolutionarily speaking, from the apes. Yeah, we're smarter, but that's (this is a gross oversimplification, but I don't want to get into the finer points of neuroanatomy) mainly because we have a "thinking brain" wrapped around a much more primitive core brain.

Watch a troop of monkeys at work and you'll see that they're quite smart (macaques can figure out just about any lock, which makes keeping them in cages a royal bitch), but they're also incredibly driven by what we would call base emotions. They get pissed off at you, they beat the hell out of you. Something makes them happy, they go (ahem) apeshit with joy.

Anyway, I think it's definitely a factor that we have primitive "destroy it!" instincts that we have to fight against.


However, I think it's a bit more than that, too. After all, 100 years ago you didn't have kids killing each other, their parents, other people, mowing down a school, etc with the regularity that we have it today. Look a little farther back and you have a world in which guns were completely unregulated (I refer to the pioneer days), just about everyone was packing, and kids did have guns because they were expected to put food on the table just like dad. Now, I'm sure there were accidents - kids screwing up with the gun and accidentally shooting someone, but from what I've been able to discover, you either didn't have, or very rarely had, kids sneaking in and blowing people away while they slept.

There are several factors in our modern environment that did not exist back then. Violent media is the obvious scapegoat, but it's not the only one. In fact, violent media was quite common in the olden days as well. Hell, go read a book of fairy tales as they were told before the Brothers Grimm got hold of them. The three bears raped and then ripped apart and ate Goldilocks, the prince woke Sleeping Beauty up not by kissing her, but by raping her, and the wolf tricks Little Red Riding Hood into eating her grandmother, then makes her get naked and join him in bed. Kids grew up reading and hearing those tales, yet didn't run around killing, cannibalizing, or raping people.

But, we're also a whole lot more crowded today than we were years ago. And, there's a whole lot more pollutants in the air, including neurotoxins such as mercury and, especially, tetraethyl lead, which was used in gasoline despite it being fully known that lead is a severe neurotoxin.

Crowding is an interesting factor, and could go to your point about animal instincts. A couple of monkeys hanging out in a field probably won't do much to each other. Stuff 4 monkeys into a small cage and they'll kill each other. We obviously aren't to that level yet, but we are pretty crowded, and we're all fighting for limited resources.

It's the chemical side that I've been interested in for some time, however. With all these pollutants, are some people just cracking due to the neurological damage they cause? What do you guys think?

mixedmedia

I think this is a very difficult question to answer. There are many reasons that are multifold and complex. I don't really have the time to address all of my thoughts about this question - but I do have many, many thoughts on the subject - all of which play into the manifesto I plan to write when I am old, lol.

I believe all of the ideas purported thus far likely play into the causes of, specifically, American displays of spontaneous violence - not only play into them, but are both causative and symptomatic - like I said, multifold and complex. And American violence does need to be isolated from much of the violence in the world because much of the violence in the world happens for political and cultural reasons that are unique to the particular region they are occurring in. And in many places that are similar to America in political and cultural lifestyle, you don't see violence occurring to the same extent. Something is going on here that is different.

I just want to put out two suggestions and I'll try to expound on them when I have the time.

1. Rampant narcissism. Personally, I think this is the one, the most important factor contributing to the ease so many people have with killing and brutalizing others in our society.

2. Our divorcement from any sort of natural order to daily living to live in servitude to the consumer-corporate culture. It's just not natural. And I think it perverts our society and causes a lot of dissociation - because it doesn't make any fucking sense. It's irrational.

On another thread (I think it's the same one that prompted this thread) I wrote that I thought personality disorders are like assholes...every American's got one? Even though I framed it that way, I don't really think it's a joke - I think it's true. I believe we have dissociated ourselves with earthly living (basic survival) to such an extent that we are out of touch with what it means to be human beings and as a result we are a bunch of insular ticking time bombs. In fact, one could say that it's truly a testament to the strength of the human psyche that it's not happening more often.

But, if we keep heading down the same path, I think it's very possible that the violence will continue to escalate.

__________________
Most people go through life dreading they'll have a traumatic experience. Freaks were born with their trauma. They've already passed their test in life. They're aristocrats. - Diane Arbus
PESSIMISM, n. A philosophy forced upon the convictions of the observer by the disheartening prevalence of the optimist with his scarecrow hope and his unsightly smile. - Ambrose Bierce

Xerxys

Hmmmm, nature & nurture ... interesting. We speak of society here right? When I read the heading of this thread Major Pain immidiately screamed in my head, "YOU WANNA KNOW WHAT CAUSES IT HUH, THE FUCKIN' PARENTS IS WHAT CAUSES IT!!!".

But being as I am not very well versed in sociology, I'm gonna have to go with ...

Dippin, these actually paint the picture perfectly.

Who can clearly explain why career criminals, yes, career, like it's something you grow up aspiring to become, think the way they do. They live for the moment, and they live long. Their main job and task at hand is to spread and unite under discourse. Their mentality is actually so well er.. ingrained in that the way you plan to get a job and make money so you can go to the grocery store is the same way they think out their next hit.

A personality comes into play when one doesn't need to rationalize something, they just do it. They know it's wrong, but it got to the point it doesnt bother them anymore. Hence we have steady recruits to gangs and cliques turning into gangs.

I hereby venture that the cause of societal violence is in fact so complex that everyone who posts here with a different theory will be not only right, but such a theory linked to others will be so intricate.

powerclown

About the chemicals shakran, I do not know enough about the matter specifically so I would say "maybe". Obviously mercury and other toxic stuff that people put into their systems can't be good, but do they make one violent, and not depressed or ill or tired or obese? I know that some people put a lot into it, that ingested chemicals in our food, water, plants etc are responsible for much of the criminal behavior in America. I don't know.

But watching for myself the behavior of young human children, right out of the womb before anything has had a chance to leave its mark, tells me something is up on a very basic, fundamental level. Further reading into child psychology has reinforced what I've observed. A baby with its new little teeth will bite your finger and laugh...what does that say? And its not only humans...take birds for example. Young birds commonly kill off their weaker siblings and toss their bodies out of the nest. Lions are obviously extremely territorial; they'll simply kill any outside lions who enter a certain space. Fish...another extremely territorial animal that will defend its eggs and territory to the death. Ants are the Genghis Khans of the animal world - they form huge armies and wipe out anything in their path. Maybe its competition over scarcity of resources?

mixedmedia...all I will say about America as somehow intrinsically more violent than the rest of the world: look at the numbers. America has a lot of crime, because it has a huge population, a lot of inner cities (we have many, many more big cities than most other nations) and poverty. But per capita, there are many countries more violent than America. New Zealand, Denmark, Finland, Columbia, even Britain has a higher rate of crime than does America.

But I am curious: what do you think is going on here that is unique to America?

ametc

People have goals and different ways of obtaining those goals. The majority of the time it's a selfish goal.


People know what consequences violence has, but people remain violent anyways.

We have to teach young ones that there is more than one way to obtain a goal and that others' feelings and lives matter.

Stress also plays a big part. We need to teach children better stress control techniques.

Plan9

What's that old saying? You can take the animal out of the jungle, but you can't take the jungle out of the animal.

...

__________________
Whatever you can carry.

"You should not drink... and bake."

Cynthetiq

I vote for PAGGLES as the cause of societal violence.

Pride, Anger, Gluttony, Greed, Lust, Envy, Sloth, all of them are rooted in the core of every human being. All of them must be overcome so that we are accepting of ourselves and of other people.

__________________
I don't care if you are black, white, purple, green, Chinese, Japanese, Korean, hippie, cop, bum, admin, user, English, Irish, French, Catholic, Protestant, Jewish, Buddhist, Muslim, indian, cowboy, tall, short, fat, skinny, emo, punk, mod, rocker, straight, gay, lesbian, jock, nerd, geek, Democrat, Republican, Libertarian, Independent, driver, pedestrian, or bicyclist, either you're an asshole or you're not.

JamesB

Bad parenting. Mostly.

__________________
-- apt-get install spare_time --

mixedmedia

Those statistics are misleading in regards to the question at hand here. We're not just talking about crime, we are talking about violent crime.

# of murders in the US 16,204 (no. 8 on the list) US population 303,824,640 (that comes out to one in every 18,749 people)

# murders in the UK 1201 (no. 6 on the list) UK population 60,943,912 (that comes out to one in every 50,744 people)

I have to get ready for work so I don't have a lot a lot of time to get into your question. Suffice it to say that I believe the two items I touched on previously are particularly extreme in the US...not to say that it isn't happening in other places and that things will not get worse in other places as a result.

__________________
Most people go through life dreading they'll have a traumatic experience. Freaks were born with their trauma. They've already passed their test in life. They're aristocrats. - Diane Arbus
PESSIMISM, n. A philosophy forced upon the convictions of the observer by the disheartening prevalence of the optimist with his scarecrow hope and his unsightly smile. - Ambrose Bierce

Baraka_Guru

This is a loaded question. A few causes off of the top of my head:

• child abuse
• untreated mental health issues
• a false sense of individualism
• poverty
• a lack of dietary omega-3 fatty acids

__________________
Knowing that death is certain and that the time of death is uncertain, what's the most important thing?
—Bhikkhuni Pema Chödrön

Humankind cannot bear very much reality.
—From "Burnt Norton," Four Quartets (1936), T. S. Eliot

mixedmedia

But where are the bad parents coming from? When did it start? What has caused people so many people to become bad parents? I think explanations like this are far too simplistic and they shrug off the responsibility that we all have for perpetuating it. We being Americans because Americans are what I am referring to specifically on this thread.

But like I said, I don't think it is necessarily limited to America...we just invented it.

__________________
Most people go through life dreading they'll have a traumatic experience. Freaks were born with their trauma. They've already passed their test in life. They're aristocrats. - Diane Arbus
PESSIMISM, n. A philosophy forced upon the convictions of the observer by the disheartening prevalence of the optimist with his scarecrow hope and his unsightly smile. - Ambrose Bierce

Charlatan

Didn't the Freakonomics guys suggest that the drop in crime in the 80s and 90s, after it had been very high, was a result of Roe v. Wade? In other words, few unwanted children resulted in less crime.

I am sure there is a lot more to it BUT there is something to be said for being raised in a good environment (notice I didn't say parenting alone).

__________________
"My hands are on fire. Hands are on fire. Ain't got no more time for all you charlatans and liars."
- Old Man Luedecke

little_tippler

I think if we went back to medieval times, we'd be surprised the things people did. Violence was a part of life. The current violence bracket is way less open.

There are also more of us and that makes it so that more of us want the same things. The 'glamour' of western culture also helps to create very individualistic, self-serving people, who all want to be the best at something, or have the most. It creates competition and pressure, more than ever before.

Looking at what is deemed 'violent' these days, and the gratuitousness of many occurrences, I agree the problem has something to do with bad parenting, and also the environment you are in, like Charlatan says.

Where are the bad parents coming from? Apart from the other factors I have mentioned, that have slowly crept up on us, it's all the permissiveness, the fact that people no longer discipline their kids as much, and the belief that they must be allowed to freely express themselves and that they are capable of making certain judgement calls on their own. Over the last decades, we have gained many personal freedoms we did not have before. Now we think they are also our right. Also, the fact that every mental and physical ailment now has a name and everyone has some condition or other makes it so we are constantly paranoid about ourselves, about how we were traumatised, and about how we don't want to traumatise our children.

__________________
Whether we write or speak or do but look
We are ever unapparent. What we are
Cannot be transfused into word or book.
Our soul from us is infinitely far.
However much we give our thoughts the will
To be our soul and gesture it abroad,
Our hearts are incommunicable still.
In what we show ourselves we are ignored.
The abyss from soul to soul cannot be bridged
By any skill of thought or trick of seeming.
Unto our very selves we are abridged
When we would utter to our thought our being.
We are our dreams of ourselves, souls by gleams,
And each to each other dreams of others' dreams.

Fernando Pessoa, 1918

Plan9

__________________
Whatever you can carry.

"You should not drink... and bake."

shakran

Running out the door, so I don't have time for a full reply. I'll answer your question once I get a few seconds.

But I wanted to point out that the babies get doses of whatever chemicals mom is exposed to in the womb. That's why pregnant women can't drink, and why they have to do things like avoid even touching those anti-baldness pills.

---------- Post added at 11:50 AM ---------- Previous post was at 10:15 AM ----------

Societal values. in the words of Pirsig, ours is a "hyped-up, fuck-you, supermodern, ego style of life that thinks it owns this country." The drive of this society is a capitalistic free-for-all grabfest in which everyone's trying to get as much as they possibly can for themselves, whether they can use it or not, and not caring a whit about the people who aren't getting enough. It's like a wolf bolting as much food as he can get to, and then having to vomit it up later because he can't digest it all.

We are so hyperfocused on "me, me, me" that we fail to do things for the good of others or society at large, unless there's an obvious payout for us personally. And in that mad scramble for wealth and. . .Things. . . we forget to do important things like teach children that being an asshole is not a good way of life. We therefore teach each succeeding generation to be ever more greedy and callous toward their fellow man. And really, what difference is it if I kill you by blowing your head off with a shot gun, or I kill you by signing the refusal-to-pay letter from your health insurance company which means you won't get treatment for your fatal illness? You're just as dead, and the cause of it was just as much a casual disregard for human life on my part.

But in our society, if I shoot you it's a terrible thing and I go to jail for a very long time, and I'm never allowed to own a gun again. But if I kill you by refusing to honor my agreement to pay for your medical care in exchange for you giving me money for decades, that helps my company's stock price edge upward and therefore I am lauded and possibly promoted to a position where I can wield even more denial-of-payment forms, the instrument of your death.

Ours is a society in which money is God, to be worshiped and sought above all other considerations. Those who do not worship at the Altar of the Dollar are looked upon, sometimes benevolently, as kind of strange. The man who devotes his life to the Peace Corps, making damn near nothing so that he can help others is a weird hippie peacenik.

With such a callous attitude toward human life, rights, and dignity, vigorously defended by industry, corporations, and government alike, I really don't find it strange that people run around shooting each other.

I'm not saying in the case of this 11 year old kid who shot his step mom, the case that inspired this thread, that the kid was carefully taught by dad to not care if other people live or die as long as the kid gets what he wants, but society does indeed teach us that from a very early age. Even seemingly innocuous children's cartoons hammer that message home. Remember the Transformers? (oh boy. . i'm about to reveal the extent of my nerdishness here. . ) The Autobots and the Decepticons are fighting, constantly, over what? Energon Cubes. There's apparently plenty of them to go around, else one side or the other would constantly have to deal with disabled robots due to lack of energy. But they fight over them nonetheless. The message at its core is "It's OK to hurt people as long as you're hurting them in order to gain more (energon cubes) (things) (money) (whatever is important to you) for yourself.


In any capitalistic society, you're going to have the people who greedily suck up as many resources as they can, and you're going to have the people who, as a result, miss out on resources that they need and therefore get angry, if not desperate, about it. Capitalism is by definition a fight for limited resources. Someone's gonna get rich, but in order for that to happen, someone else has to be poor.

It seems to me that the root causes of all violent crime can be looked at from this admittedly oversimplified point of view. The gangbanger who murders the other gangbanger is trying to defend what little resources he sees himself as possessing (his turf, his pride, his car, whatever). The mafia don who orders a hit is trying to use fear to gather even more resources for himself (Pay me protection money or I send people to beat the hell out of you). The little boy who shoots his stepmother is trying to prevent someone else from coming in and taking away the resource of time with dad.

It really goes back to Powerclown's animalistic theory. Go up to a gorilla and snatch away its food, and see how long it takes before the gorilla beats the hell out of you. It's our instinct to protect that which we value, and to gather that which we value, by whatever means necessary, including violence.

And thinking about it, it's been with us since we came here. Indians taking up the space you want to use to grow food? Kill 'em, stuff the survivors into concentration camps that you call reservations, and hope they disappear.

The question becomes, then, how do we fix a problem that is caused by instinct and required by capitalism?

Plan9

Randomly...

Faith in humanity: The news media doesn't help by sensationalizing everything. 72% of news stories lead with a violent crime (Wietzer & Kubrin, 2004).

Are such stories merely a reflection of how we are in the world or are we accepting of violence because we see it on TeeVee 24/7 because it boosts ratings?

...

World War II, John Wayne, Grand Theft Auto, Columbine, gangsta rap... oh my. What a violent world.

__________________
Whatever you can carry.

"You should not drink... and bake."

ngdawg

Simply put, somewhere along the line we became a society of the haves and have nots with a huge dose of entitlement. Add to the mix our increasing dependency on keyboards and touchpads for our socializing and you start witnessing a society of sociopathic "Gimme it" attitudes with anticipation of immediate gratification.
"Work for it? Huh?"

__________________
Don't blame me. I didn't vote for either of'em.

PonyPotato

Toxoplasmosis?

I think it's a combination of changing environments, socially and physically, as well as cultural conditioning. We don't live the way humans evolved to live, and as a result our parents and/or the media have FAR more influence on our psyches than a cultural group or a society at large.

We live far more in our heads than we do in our bodies or environments these days.

__________________
"Without passion man is a mere latent force and possibility, like the flint which awaits the shock of the iron before it can give forth its spark."
— Henri-Frédéric Amiel

ring

If you really believe this,
I have a book you might be interested in reading:
The Gate to Women's Country - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Plan9

Time to cull the herd, huh?

...

Pfft! I refuse to use touchpads. I require immediate tactile gratification.

Nice book. I do believe it. According to the really dry anthropology books I've read, that's how we started... and that's what we'll revert back to when we don't have a couple thousand years of social programming to bolster the cloud castles of what it is to be civilized. Most of what we are as a race is intangible brain exhaust of superfluous behaviors and modern campfire stories. We breathe in the ideas of the past, process them in our current environment with our current belief systems, and attempt to exhale them to the next generation as we depart or are destroyed. A clean break in the chain would put us back to day one. All the useless crap that I have filling my head is mostly applicable to this one intricate reality we've created. There are no innate instincts to be found in our cunning-yet-fragile species, only learned behaviors acquired through endless repetition or blunt force trauma.

__________________
Whatever you can carry.

"You should not drink... and bake."

ring

Yeah, I thinks it's great book.
I've been accused of being an over the top feminist and a eugenics freak for liking it, by some folk,
but oh well.

powerclown

Good point about chemicals in the womb.

About the corporate health care: Aren't you using exceptions to the rule, as the rule? Corporations really don't have it in their charters to kill off their employees by denying them health care, I'm fairly certain. There are exceptions to the rule, and thats what they are: exceptions. No less important, but we're talking in broad strokes here.

When you say that in our society money is god, doesn't that imply a wish for everything to be free? ngdawg touched upon it. That one is entitled - just by their very existence - to life's amenities?

In open societies people are free to do what they wish: they can go to graduate school just about as readily as they can join the Peace Corps. And there are economic ramifications to such decisions: radiologists make more money than social workers. In the end, nobody is forcing them to do one or the other. As they say, life is a series of choices. If people prosper as a result of their own decisions, isn't that a fair arrangement? If people suffer as a result of their own decisions, isn't that a fair arrangement?

World's King

Well, in my life...


Over-priced hookers.
Too much cocaine.
Girlfriend that needed a talking to.
Gravy stain on my favorite pants.

__________________
heavy is the head that wears the crown

shakran

corporations don't manage their own health insurance programs. They pay a health insurance company to do it. And even if they didn't, it's much cheaper to train a new worker than to pay a $100,000 hospital bill.

That's the whole problem, isn't it? Greed-motivation leads to unsavory things, but humans are biologically programmed, as are all animals, to be greed-motivated. That's why communism wouldn't work on a large scale - if everyone gets an equal share of everything no matter what they do, then there will be lots of people who aren't motivated to do anything productive. Capitalism sucks, but what do you replace it with?


Let's go ahead and acknowledge the bullshit that pervades this very popular belief. Life is full of choices for those that have the resources to be able to make the choice. If you don't have money to pay for food, you can't go to school unless you get a full ride scholarship somewhere, which is very, very unlikely. So it's entirely possible that you do not have the option of becoming a radiologist. Additionally, my point was that he joined the peace corps to make the world a better place, and was willing to sacrifice his own wealth potential in order to do so, hence, he's thought of as a bit odd.


You're taking the idealistic, and patently false, view that America is the "land of opportunity" for /everyone./ That simply isn't true. There are plenty of people out there, especially now, who bust their ass at work and are rewarded either by low pay or layoffs. How do you justify their suffering? They certainly didn't decide to fire themselves, and they did all the right things when they were employed.

mixedmedia

Even though I would have used different words, I throw the weight of my opinion behind shakran. He captured the essence of my thoughts as did a few others.

powerclown - your premise rests on the assumption that the system that is in place is good and that all effects and occurrences that result from living in it are sane, healthy and productive if one simply makes the right choices. I beg to differ. So your questions about what is 'fair' are unanswerable as far as I am concerned.

And now I have to study for an algebra test I am taking later. This conversation deserves a lot more than I am giving it...

__________________
Most people go through life dreading they'll have a traumatic experience. Freaks were born with their trauma. They've already passed their test in life. They're aristocrats. - Diane Arbus
PESSIMISM, n. A philosophy forced upon the convictions of the observer by the disheartening prevalence of the optimist with his scarecrow hope and his unsightly smile. - Ambrose Bierce

powerclown

We should all have so much fun...