Kindness may be random, while violence erupts in grid-lock-step with Culture & Media

[RascalPuff]

Over 40 states of the United States issue non-criminal, responsible citizen's permits to carry concealed firearms. This subject and its contingencies is a predictably controversial issue.

The following url delivers the Reader to Michael Hammerschlag's review of Loren Coleman's documentary book - The CopyCat Effect: How the Media and Popular Culture Trigger the Mayhem in Tomorrow’s Headlines, an increasingly familiar history of berserked gunmen and randomly murderous public massacres.

http://hammernews.com/copycateffect.htm

This post simply asks how the majority of historically reviewed scenarios may have been alleviated, minimized or avoided altogether, had there been intervention by one or more law abiding armed citizens.

Please feel free to express your views regarding causes effects and possible remedies.

Best regards,
- RP

[labelwench]

Some disturbing patterns in the statistics and information at the link you posted, Kai.

We have a 'black humor' conversation making the rounds at the workplace, contemplating just when someone is going to 'lose it' due to the compounding effects of Christmas rush on top of all of the usual challenges in life, made more precarious by the current national and international economic situation.

In the past, crimes of violence at the workplace etc. were referred to as 'going Postal', after incidents related to USPS starting in 1983. It has been suggested that soon we may be able to apply a corporate name for such action, the perceived frustrations are that obvious.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Going_postal

It has been observed that if an individual conducted their personal affairs in the manner of most large corporations, that they would be perceived as being psychotic.

How then, has society allowed this state of affairs to come about, where it is corporations setting the agenda and not the elected individuals?

The inter-net with it's interactive games, at least a number of which are combat and violence related, is another potential concern.

The greatest current threat, IMO, is the problems which will come if the economy remains recessed for longer than forecast. Employed people are busy, going places and doing things. Without such avenues for the utilization of healthy energy, people can become depressed, fearful and unpredictable.

The old saying that 'Idle hands are the tool of the devil', has less to do with the existence or not of such individual, as it is a metaphor for negative energy potential.

[Mikal]

Although I imagine this is a stark book to read and an accumulation of quite sad facts about mass events in our societies, I would not exactly agree with the idea of the theory of CopyCat.

Here is a quote by Cultural Historian Joseph Chilton Pearce quite relevant to the subject matter:
“A culture’s violence directed against neighboring cultures acts as a cultural emetic; purgative and restorative. Nothing pulls together a disparate and dangerously enculturated group into a cohesive unit as quickly as a good war. Baile and Girard analyze and describe the cycles of periodic warfare and murder through which culture has sustained itself for untold millennium. Having a clear enemy to demonize provides a clarified target for free-floating anxiety and its accompanying fear and rage that enculturation brings. But when that restorative solution of war begins to break down, no longer delivering the necessary fix, as it has in our time, the violence bred by culture begins to turn inward leading to self-destruction.”

Also:
“Cultural anthropologist Leslie White proposed that cultures are born into history to run through their cycle and die. Further he pointed out that they all die by their own hand. Through demonizing our enemies, we stave off cultural suicide.”

Is their evidence that our culture has outplayed its cycle and is dying? It was in the 1930s that Big Corp began investment and takeover of National Media and all its outlets. It was in the early 1950s the Office of Scientific Intelligence united with the state for mind-control projects and human experimentation. Here in Canada that project was run by Dr. I. Cameron in Montreal Canada. It was a joint military/science/gov. undertaking.

The death of a culture affects us because we are ‘culture’--myraid brain structures born into it and shaped in conformity with it. Our culture has been slowly dying by covert goings on like the Media takeover, hidden mind control projects, the social engineering of infecting the whole of society with psychological and psychiatric practices of Behavior Modification that has destroyed governing style, family, our social institutions, our economy and job market, our educational system and has destroyed those pillars which held up our culture being trust, privacy, moral justice and ethical conscience.

In the book Sinister Forces by Peter Levenda it is fully documented how mass killer Charles Manson was a victim of military experimentation in a project of mind-control. He was a ‘created killer.’ There are many others and it is also documented between this book and the book November of the Soul by George Howe Colt, a research tool into young mass suicide that clearly reveals later investigations not covered by Corporational Media that most of these highschool mass tragedies of killings/suicides were carried out by young people on very strong, pharmaceutical drugs in the narcotics classification.

Although I would read the book to gather research facts, I would not agree with a theory of Copycat simply because it leaves to the wayside many hidden events that are going on and strangely affecting this point in our history.

I place a lot of blame on Corporational Media as they have robbed us of joy in life by feeding a daily meal of dismal human doings because in compliance with the Global need for an International Worldwide, Securitization Agenda and the effecting of society with fear they saw it as necessary and beneficial that as a mass we must know and live daily with the false knowledge that the ‘limits of human nature are frighteningly broad for willing degradation, for agony and for pleasurable brutality.’

We could do our best effort by throwing those TVs and newspapers out the window….


Regards Mikal

[jag]

Humans only learn wisdom by experiencing tribulation.

If the search for wisdom is philosophy, then the lack of moral self discipline by a few will lead to growth in our philosophical acceptance of life as a society and we can use that experience to continue working toward a lessening of the violence against ourselves and others. We have come a long way, but we still have a way to go.

"The greatest affliction of the cosmos is never to have been afflicted"

jag

[RascalPuff]

Humans only learn wisdom by experiencing tribulation.

If the search for wisdom is philosophy, then the lack of moral self discipline by a few will lead to growth in our philosophical acceptance of life as a society and we can use that experience to continue working toward a lessening of the violence against ourselves and others. We have come a long way, but we still have a way to go.

"The greatest affliction of the cosmos is never to have been afflicted"

jag

Hi jag!
Not sure if there's a parallel with your venerably contributed post or not, but it sorta reminds me of the former Tonight Show host, Johnny Carson, defining a political liberal as being 'Someone who's never been violently mugged'.

: )

[jag]

My daughter and son in law were robbed at gun point outside of a club in Nashville and I might feel differently on this issue if they had been shot but I don''t think so.

Less guns should be the goal not more guns. The NRA (National Rifle Association) would like to see grandma strap on a 45 when she goes down to play bingo...they want to make you afraid so they can sell more guns and ammo.

Disarming the public would be a good start leaving the only legally armed citizens, the police, to root out the illegal "underground" arms trade. I don't think it is helpful to have a bunch of, self appointed, vigilance committees running around shooting at people.

Eventually, when society becomes moral enough, we can disarm the police and melt down all of the guns. At that point we will have a new NRA (National Rototiller Association) who's aim it would be to put a rototiller in every garage.

I guess the point of my previous post was that there will be tribulations along the path toward a moral society and all we can do is learn from them and move ahead.

"It's just a ride and we can change it anytime we want.
It's only a choice. No effort, no work, no job, no savings
and money, a choice, right now, between fear and love.
The eyes of fear want you to put a bigger lock on your
door, buy guns, close yourself off.
The eyes of love instead see all of us as one."

jag

[labelwench]

Hello jag.

What a dreadful experience for your daughter and son-in-law, and a relief that they were not harmed by the perpetrator.

I quite understand your sentiment around guns, and I live in a country where gun control through legislation and registration is a miserable experiment at best, and has been on the books to be repealed for several elections now, yet not accomplished because of minority governments elected and greater concerns around the economy.

The registry itself has utilized copious sums of money, and is a farce, making criminals of citizens who fall awry of the inaccurate paperwork, while not beginning to address the many people who did not register their guns when it was first implemented, as it was a voluntary compliance and not enforced by house to house polling.

Technically and legally, these people are all now 'criminals' yet no one has followed up with the suggested polling, which is standard procedure for voter registry prior to election and could have been done at the same time, IMO.

One question: Are there any firearms in your household?

If the answer was yes, this could be flagged for follow-up by the proper gun registry personnel, to assist with the unwieldy forms, questions and fees, and to educate on proper storage now required by an ever changing law. My first husband was a Master Firearms Instructor, and so I kept current with the laws during the introduction of this controversial legislation.

The problem is not the guns, and never has been.

People are the problem, and the reasons are too many to list. 'Free-riders', some by choice, some by genetics or conditioning, and others by circumstance have ever been with us, and it remains ever the challenge of a civilized society in deciding how best to deal with these individuals.

Some can be helped through love and provision of education and opportunity, and the disparate division of resources between and within nations is a problem that has long gone unattended.

There are some that will not respond to such measures, and for those individuals who willfully harm others beyond mere appropriation of worldly goods, there is no easy answer if one is a person of conscience.

Turning the other cheek when persons are harmed or killed is not the answer, IMO.

[jag]

Hello jag.

One question: Are there any firearms in your household?

The problem is not the guns, and never has been.

P.

It might seem hypocritical on my part but the answer to your question is yes I have a few guns.

Growing up I remember always having BB guns and pellet guns around. I think it was the christmas of 1962 that I found a 303 British under the tree with my name on it...I was 12 years old! This meant that I would be allowed to go deer hunting with my dad and uncles. Anyway the point is that I was raised around guns and hunting. When I got married and left home (1970) I left all that behind and have not gone hunting since.

I succumbed to paranoia somewhere in the '90s and purchased a 12 gauge shotgun, a 223, and couple of 22 rifles so I could protect my castle against my paranoid fantasy.

I agree with you that the guns are not the root of the problem...."...quemadmodum gladius neminem occidit, occidentis telum est." [...a sword never kills anybody; it's a tool in the killers hand] Lucius Annaeus (4BC-65AD)....they just take all the work out of killing.

jag

[labelwench]

Living in the urban interface, my reasons for owning guns relate to protection of livestock from wildlife, and being able to dispatch a horse should it break a leg etc. When we used to raise rabbits for meat and market, a .22 was used to be certain that the dear animal not know any lengthy suffering.

I also used to hunt small game, and when I guided people into the wilderness overnight, it was comforting to have a gun in camp in case a bear wandered through.

As humans continue to expand into wilderness habitat, there may come a time when there is no longer any game, large or small to hunt, and so government would have justification to disallow the manufacture or sale of firearms.

As long as one human may bear arms against another, individually or as a nation, firearms will remain a contentious issue.

No matter.

In large part we remain primitives, and when corned or threatened, will defend our home hearth and young with tooth and nail if we have naught else.

If we can evolve past our fear of scarcity, and each other, this issue and many others would cease to exist.

[labelwench]

This video is from one year ago, yet there are still troops in Afghanistan, and I pause to reflect upon the circumstances that bring us into conflict with our fellow man.

Some thought provoking words in the song, obviously original, and well crafted.

Young men ..........

.........strangers in a strange land...........

..........in a conflict not of their own making.........

How many times has this scene been replayed in our history?

Will we ever evolve beyond this?