This is what that attitude looks like when we can see the victim and the world actually gives a damn about him.
So, "I have the right to kill the fetus because it's a trespasser" folks -- look in the mirror:
God only knows what the inside looks like.
.
Christina - were these good Church going folk?
ReplyDeleteI have been reading that there is a lot of "Guns & Religion" thing going on in America. What do u think about it?
Their main religion evidently was "Me me me". Which you see inside and outside the church.
ReplyDeleteI grew up in a gun culture (schools closed for opening day of deer season), and the main character trait that seems to be tied to that is self-reliance, not paranoia or selfishness.
"I grew up in a gun culture (schools closed for opening day of deer season), and the main character trait that seems to be tied to that is self-reliance, not paranoia or selfishness"
ReplyDeleteI'm sure that's how it all started - how/why do you think it all went wrong?
I don't think it's the gun culture that went wrong. I think it's two f***ed up human beings that went wrong, and incorporated guns into their f***ed-upedness. People can make a horrendous evil mess out of anything they put their minds to.
ReplyDeleteMy husband is from WV. He grew up in a culture that sounds a lot like yours, Christina. The vast majority of people up there would never just shoot at people for "trespassing". They might go have a few words but they wouldn't be at gunpoint or anything. Up there, guns are for hunting and hunting is for food (OK, the antlers are a bonus, but the deer are eaten). That being said, there are always folks that you have to be careful of. Crotchety jerks who don't care about anyone but themselves are in any culture. Any socioeconomic class. Even sometimes in the church. However, this type of attitude (heck with anyone else's well-being, all I care about is ME and MY PROPERTY) is directly contrary to church teaching, and any church that condones/accepts this without correcting the people who are in the wrong is no church at all - this church would be going directly against God and everything He stands for.
ReplyDeleteThese people were just plain messed up. This is what happens when people just look out for themselves and care less and less about other people until they don't care at all. The very thing that drives all sorts of social evils.
Hope you don't mind that I chimed in.
"These people were just plain messed up. This is what happens when people just look out for themselves and care less and less about other people until they don't care at all. The very thing that drives all sorts of social evils."
ReplyDeleteExcellent point. What do you guy's think makes people turn out like that?
If I had the answer to that I'd be rich!
ReplyDeleteI do know part of it is social expectations. People generally fail to live up to expectations, regardless of how high or low they are. If you expect, say, total honesty to the point where somebody would go all Abe Lincoln and walk a mile to return a penny, then people will be generally very honest but will wait for you to come claim your penny if you forgot it. If you expect people to steal just about anything that's not nailed down, they'll steal everything that's not nailed down and pry up some nailed-down things with a crowbar and steal them, too.
Our society has developed the tendency to keep lowering the bar to where people's current behavior is. And since people as a whole tend to fail to live up to expectations, the behavior becomes worse. Then the expectation becomes lower. Then the behavior becomes worse. We need to recognize that human beings will fail to live up to standards, and that therefore you need to RAISE the bar.
Excellent point Christina but lets try and put it in psychological terms. If a a child grows up in an atmosphere where there is violence, people are untrustworthy and he has to fight for everything he needs - thats what he is going to think everybody is like. So when he grows up he won't be able to trust, he will bully to get what he wants and he will resort to violence as he knows no other means of expressing his anger. Its this cycle that we have to break.
ReplyDeleteI'm not arguing that those things aren't a factor as well.
ReplyDeleteWatch an episode of Seconds from Disaster or Air Crash Investigation. You'll learn very quickly that in order for there to be a major disaster, there has to be a chain of failures. Remove any one link from the chain, and the disaster is averted. A typical plane crash involves a number of factors, including several of the following (sometimes more than one in any given category):
- Design failure
- Maintenance failure
- Ground crew error/oversight
- Flight crew error/oversight
- instrument mishap
- Bad weather
- Unforeseen circumstance
So we can say, "What causes plane crashes?" And we'll be right on the money when we say, "Pilot error is often a strong factor." But that doesn't mean that there wasn't an instrument failure or an engineering factor as well.
In order to prevent the crash, each person in the chain needs to be very conscientious about doing what he or she needs to do. That includes passengers not bringing forbidden items (say, lighters and matches or bottles of camp stove fuel) in their checked bags.
To prevent things like crime, the entire community needs to be vigilant about areas where they might be a contributing factor. And what's called "defining deviancy down" is a HUGE factor in human misbehavior. You don't prevent plane crashes by saying, "Well, everybody makes mistakes so we need to cut the pilots and mechanics some slack." You don't prevent murder by saying, "Well, everybody gets angry and lashes out so we need to cut people some slack."
Thank you for that excellent concept - defining deviancy down - I really enjoyed reading about it.
ReplyDeleteI'm not talking about cutting people slack though - I'm talking about getting to the root of criminality and mental health so we can decrease it in a humane manner.