Posted on 03/27/2017 6:24:23 AM PDT by pabianice
... “Direct violence cannot happen and does not happen because of a genetic disposition. It is the exact opposite,” Perez said. “We look into culture and we look into society to help us explain why violence is tolerated and used so effectively by so many different groups as a mechanism for maintaining social control and order.”
Perez spoke at great lengths on the forms that violence may take and how it often manifests itself in society without being entirely recognized. He found direct violence, the physical or verbal abuse of individuals, may lead to structural violence, in which a sociopolitical system may proliferate further as direct violence. From there, cultural violence may emerge to make structural violence “look and feel O.K.” to those engaged in its execution.
“The study of policy through the lens of violence…experienced or propagated by those engaged in its production, can be used to deepen or curb economic, political, and social inequality,” Perez continued.
He provided the example of a controversial immigration law, ICE 287(g), which gives local law enforcement officers the ability to engage in immigration enforcement within their jurisdiction. While the intent of the law is stated to be a means for maintaining national security in the United States, Perez contends that its powers are often used to target communities of color.
Further examples of marginalizing political action provided by Perez were instances of politicians in Arizona and Florida who were discovered to have made up stories about violence on the part of immigrants to inspire further anti-immigrant legislation...
(Excerpt) Read more at dailycollegian.com ...
How about the effect of a violent ideology on its members? One that justifies the abuse of children by their parents? One that promotes a violent reaction to every disagreement, no matter how slight? One that promises wonderful rewards for killing non-members?
I would be talking about i*slam, in case you hadn’t realized it.
Violence is a curious human behavior. Only the sociopath sees himself as emerging from a violent encounter as gaining anything. Interesting experiment I saw recently. Position two volunteers with one choking the other and ask folks “How would you deal with this situation?” Invariably they all respond FROM THE PERSPECTIVE OF THE GUY BEING CHOKED. Sociopaths don’t. A normal person will respond with a way to break the choke hold. A sociopath will respond with a way to escalate to a knee to the groin of the person being choked. They immediately understand that they place to be in a violent encounter IS BY BEING THE ONE THAT IS MOST VIOLENT.
Sad fact. In any human endeavor it must be remembered, there is no substitute for victory. Predators and prey. When confronted with violence one has to have a mindset that you will not be a victim and that is a decision you have to are BEFOREHAND. If you don’t realize this until you are IN the situation you have already lost.
This is just another discredited “noble savage” attempt.
Man is violent by nature. Culture tends to tamp down the violence.
Christians know it as original sin.
The idea that man is peaceful by nature simply is not true.
I suggest reading “War before Civilization”.
https://www.amazon.com/War-Before-Civilization-Peaceful-Savage/dp/0195119126
Professor Ventura Perez, you’re a professor of Anthropology, nothing more. These “â€Lectures on anything else are a total waste.
Read history. War, mayhem, death, conflict ... all occur far more frequently than peace. We are a murderous bunch. Something has to keep us in check or we would gleefully annihilate ourselves.
That “something” is God.
Curious paradox. We think we are violent but we are not. Since at least the civil war folks have been baffled. I remember reading about a Civil War General who could not understand how his men could “miss” so many shots. He put up a sheet and had the entire regiment fire at it and there were 500 holes in the sheet but when that regiment fired at the enemy only a handful of them dropped.
Fact is, we AREN’T killers. Even soldiers have to be TRAINED to kill. Only sociopaths can kill without blinking. The problem we have with violence, IMHO, is we abhor it, which is a good thing in a sense, but it turns us into victims. What we need to do is distinguish between the sociopaths and the rest of us. We let the sociopaths have a monopoly on violence. We would have LESS violence, ironically, if we “normal” folks learned to use violence appropriately (I.e. “More Guns, Less Crime”) but we just have “other things to do”.
one of my co-workers has a daughter who is attending college and decided to major in anthropology instead of marketing or engineering.
they are barely scraping by to pay for college as her husband has been out of work for over a year (he’s a chemical/geological engineer)
my co-worker is NOT happy about her daughter’s new major. basically akin to having a degree in the fine arts. Do you want cheese on that?
I don’t know that I can accept that. The history of every civilization I’ve studied, from Egypt to Mongolia, is a history of war, conflict, and conquest. Even primitive tribes battled each other constantly. And a lot of that warfare was conducted up close, face to face. You looked your enemy in the eye and watched him die when you rammed a spear into his guts.
And then there was the oppression of one’s own fellow citizens, whether in the form of feudal tyranny or outright slavery. The Roman practice of decimation, the Terror of the French Revolution, the Holocaust, Attila, Genghis, the Shoguns ...
If man is not by nature murderous, it sure doesn’t seem to take much to make him so.
What you are seeing is a product of Christian civilization, not human nature.
Man by nature has no problem killing other humans.
Therein lies the paradox. We see history, as you have posted, and conclude what you have. OTOH how do you explain things like this, of the muskets recovered on the battlefield, of fallen soldiers during the Civil War, most were loaded 5 or 6 times but never fired. The rifles of soldiers killed in the Battle of the Bulge were found to have NOT BEEN FIRED. I can give example after example of the fact that Joe Six Pack is NOT a killer. He just ain’t.
I had that exact situation when my kid declared a desire to major in Art. I said "Try again. If you want ANY financial assistance from me, then you WILL major in something in which you can earn a living". Now has a Masters in Engineering.
What it takes is a parent willing to say "No" and being fine with being called a meanie.
Most people don't kill as a daily occurrence. It's possible to condition people to kill without hesitation. Why do you think ISIS starts conditioning their kids to be acclimated to violence and killing?
As a follower of Christ, myself, I understand when Christ says, “Evil comes from the heart of man (actually, I know he didn’t say this specifically).” I understand and agree. There is plenty of “non-human violence” in the world. “Every morning every lion in the Serengeti knows he must run faster than the slowest gazelle...”
This, obviously, is not the violence we are talking about but a question that cannot be ignored. Every other animal on this planet deals with violence every day as part of survival. Why do we think we should be protected from this? Yet we do expect it. Still, just a distraction to consider this but at the same time it should establish a baseline for us to consider going forward.
The problem is this, we don’t have ENOUGH sociopaths to make violence a daily event in most people’s lives. Thank God. What we need is to be willing to spend the time in the dojos to learn how to fight with an empty hand where the gummint requires that and the range time to gain skill with arms where allowed. When the sociopath has to consider the possibility HE will be a victim we will have less violence. And there in is the hope. The sociopath doesn’t train. He doesn’t have to. He STARTS with the “mindset” that gives him the leg up from square one.
As I understand it from learning from people smarter than me, in groups, people will do literally ANYTHING to comply with what they perceive to be the expectations of the group. So they will go to the rally and enlist and put on a uniform and learn to drill with and shoot a weapon. Right up to the point of actually pointing that weapon and pulling the trigger they will be the biggest, baddest MFer in the Valley. At that moment, most will not kill, even with extensive training.
Watch the videos at Active Self Protection. The proportion of folks who walk around with a situational awareness of complete “head up ass” is astronomical. Then you have this small subset who take the effort to try to be aware, try to make a difference, and even then the proportion who can successfully draw on and put down a human predator is much, MUCH less than unity. Go to the website and watch. You can literally spend hours watching people who tried to make a difference die for their effort.
Really, we humans are fortunate violence is such a rare problem, when you think about it. I know I taught my children Situational Awareness until they were tired of hearing it. I carry. I would like to think I could make a difference. Thank God I have never been called to do so. I think the reason we have such a “PTSD” awareness is because these guys have trouble with dealing with killing. Now that they have become killers they have trouble dealing with it. Worse, that guilt is tied up with survivor guilt and blended in with a generous helping of being “shot at to no effect” which is said to have more kick than Crack. So the killing isn’t all of it but a good part of it, for sure.
And I can cite a thousand where he is not only a killer, he relishes it.
Maybe the rifleman didn’t fire his weapon as often as we expected him to, but the cannoneers and cavalry and — in latter days — the bombers and strafers didn’t seem to have much of a problem dealing out death wholesale. Look at Dresden or Hiroshima.
Technology has allowed us to be more detached from the slaughter, but that just makes it easier for us to be murderous.
Sorry, man, but I’m not buying it. Even Joe 6 is constrained only by a thin veil of civilization. Underneath is fang and claw.
I do believe you can train people to shoot without hesitation. I don’t think you can train a “normal, non sociopath” to kill without hesitation. I think the folks who have been training our shooters for generations know that and so we have the “combined arms” approach to combat we do. Find ‘em, pin them down, and kill them with mortars or artillery or even air support. No one has to come to grips with that “look him in the face” and kill him. I do believe the folks that train our warriors that DO have to do CQB, the SEALS, the Rangers, etc. understand this and that is why their training is so much more involved. It ain’t the learning to tie knots or field medical care or communications that takes so long. It is the “training to shoot with little hesitation” (one always needs SOME hesitation to avoid friendly fire if nothing else.)
my co worker is somewhat enmeshed with her daughter (BFF type) so she wouldn’t say no to her. Practically flushing away thousands. She’d be better off going in for cosmetology.
Or nursing, being a lab tech, or any of the other skilled professions which can be done with a Bachelors.
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