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Anyone notice a trend?

zensideofyinzensideofyin Posts: 5
edited September 2006 in A Moving Train
So, the violent crime rate has gone up 2.5% leading the way is murder up 3.4%. As we "progress" it seems more and more apparent that the U.S. is becoming a walled container. More and more resources are being used to prevent attacks from the outside, but as the numbers show our safety as individuals is compromised by interior threats.

Much of the resources this country has left are being use to fuel the war in Iraq in order to build a thriving nation. According to thenightly news the main profiteer in Iraq has been an Iraqi casket maker. Since the war he has been working day and night building caskets for the many dead civilians that we are supposed to be protecting.

I guess the bottom line is thus: our own back yard has more threats in it and is more likely to have something lurking in the shadows that will do us harm than that of the taliban, muslims what have you.

I'm interested in reading your thoughts be they in agreement or disagreement.
Have you ideas on how this life ends?
Checked your hands and studied the lines
Have you the belief that the road ahead, ascends off into the light?
Seems that needlessly it's getting harder
To find an approach and a way to live
Are we getting something out of this all-encompassing trip?
Post edited by Unknown User on
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Comments

  • FinsburyParkCarrotsFinsburyParkCarrots Posts: 12,223
    A very similar thing happened here in the UK in the late nineteenth century, at the height of the British Empire (just when it was on the turn). A lot of discourses popped up, about dealing with this, by "reforming the rabble". In these bits of polemic, local criminals were likened to "savages" or terrorists abroad.

    Check out a documentary sourcebook, called "Imperialism and Orientalism" (ed. Harlow and Carter), because one can see historical parallels that are pretty plausible. Well, I think so, anyway.
  • IrishJamIrishJam Posts: 307
    FinsburyParkCarrots wrote:
    A very similar thing happened here in the UK in the late nineteenth century, at the height of the British Empire (just when it was on the turn). A lot of discourses popped up, about dealing with this, by "reforming the rabble". In these bits of polemic, local criminals were likened to "savages" or terrorists abroad.

    Check out a documentary sourcebook, called "Imperialism and Orientalism" (ed. Harlow and Carter), because one can see historical parallels that are pretty plausible. Well, I think so, anyway.


    so if i lived say 100 years ago i would be classed as a savage or would i be one of the rabble.........

    joking of course
    Tír gan teanga, tír gan anam
  • zensideofyinzensideofyin Posts: 5
    It seems history will and always repeat itself. Mistakes were always something to learnn from and avoid performing the same action in the future, however it seems as though governments have become more or less like children with short memory spans playing around a hot stove. People have killed each, people are killing eachother, and people will continue killing eachother until we wipe ourselves out. Bleak outlook, but until elected officials and individuals learn that a stove is hot and not to touch it, things will continue on a downward spiral. There will be breakes here and there, but these situations are like being in the eye of a storm, it may be nice and clear one moment, but the next is a category 5....
    Have you ideas on how this life ends?
    Checked your hands and studied the lines
    Have you the belief that the road ahead, ascends off into the light?
    Seems that needlessly it's getting harder
    To find an approach and a way to live
    Are we getting something out of this all-encompassing trip?
  • FinsburyParkCarrotsFinsburyParkCarrots Posts: 12,223
    IrishJam wrote:
    so if i lived say 100 years ago i would be classed as a savage or would i be one of the rabble.........

    joking of course

    I'm Irish too. Yep, we were "the savages", of course. Um, the rabble would have been be the cockney layabouts, the pickpockets, whores, murderers, rapists, gangsters and ne'er-do-wells. Well, the ones who didn't get signed up to the Black and Tans, later on, anyway.
  • IrishJamIrishJam Posts: 307
    i have to say that the world is becoming a lot darker place to live in my view.
    We are surrounded by constant violence on every news channel we turn on.
    The things we hear about are becoming wilder by day..sex slaves/child abductions etc.
    Ireland is becoming are far more violent place with gangs etc ,which have been elsewhere i.e u.s for a long time but never really got roots set in in ireland as a lot of this would have been controlled by the IRA.
    Its the way these gangs operate now which is sheer ruthlessness.
    About 10 miles from where i live is a no go area now.
    What you would call a project.
    Last weekend a woman and her 2 kids were driving to a friends house
    when 3 teenagers stopped car looking for a ride to the court house.
    The woman refused and drve to her friends house 1 mile up the road.
    She got out to drop whatever it was into her friend.
    The 3 boys had followed her up the road,broke window in the car,doused the kids in petrol and set them alight.
    They survived just but a what cost.
    As a father of 3 i wonder what kind of society are going to leave to our kids.
    At this rate one not to be a bit proud of.

    so i guess the backyard has so mant more threats nowadays apart from the global terrorist one...
    Tír gan teanga, tír gan anam
  • zensideofyinzensideofyin Posts: 5
    It seems like society is becoming very much like a zoo. If an animal feels confined, it will lash out most often out of fear. Mankind is a much different beast though. Granted we will fight back when cornered, but for some reason we also resort to this violence just for the hell of it. Is it that these people feel emotionally cornered, or is it for a sense of control in a world that is spiraling out of control? Maybe a sense of power? There are always reasons as to why people do things, it's just figuring out those reasons that is the difficult part. There is no reason why a person has to feel afraid when leaving their home, or when sitting in their home for that matter. Unfortunately, we live in a world where it is hard not to be. I'm lucky to live in an area that is very sparse when it comes to people, even though here to the news has become a constant reporter of discourse towards others. There used to be a time when the local news had strories on people dressing up their pets, now it has become a feast for murder, arson, burglary, drug bust. Keep in mind this is an area where the majority of the homes are owned by farmers and old people.
    Have you ideas on how this life ends?
    Checked your hands and studied the lines
    Have you the belief that the road ahead, ascends off into the light?
    Seems that needlessly it's getting harder
    To find an approach and a way to live
    Are we getting something out of this all-encompassing trip?
  • AhnimusAhnimus Posts: 10,560
    This always happens during war, crime goes up, civil unrest goes up. Just play a computer game like Civilizations, all that kind of stuff is in there.

    Charlie Manson and The Family were a product of war-time unrest.

    Pro-war, Pro-fear is bullshit!
    I necessarily have the passion for writing this, and you have the passion for condemning me; both of us are equally fools, equally the toys of destiny. Your nature is to do harm, mine is to love truth, and to make it public in spite of you. - Voltaire
  • El_KabongEl_Kabong Posts: 4,141
    of course, we're a nation of scared consumers...we're raised relating material possesions as status...we don't care how bad off our neighbor is, we just want to have more and better things than him.

    then you add in the tiny spending on social programs which creates problems...poor living conditions, poor nutrition, poor education...no way to get to places to better yourself on your own...lots of ppl are trapped, crime or a job at mcdonalds? we don't have money for health care, the headstart program, body armor, education...but there's always billions for wars <terrorism, drugs, which receives more $ than dept of education...>, no-bid contracts for freinds/investors, bonuses for them, not being able to account for $9 billion in iraq, $2.3 TRILLION <1/4 of the budget is commonly 'lost'> at the pentagon.....

    obviously this is not true for 100% of the crime, but i think it's a very big factor and something we could easily choose to fix...but we won't b/c social spending is demonized
    standin above the crowd
    he had a voice that was strong and loud and
    i swallowed his facade cos i'm so
    eager to identify with
    someone above the crowd
    someone who seemed to feel the same
    someone prepared to lead the way
  • macgyver06macgyver06 Posts: 2,500
    zensideofyin wrote:
    So, the violent crime rate has gone up 2.5% leading the way is murder up 3.4%. As we "progress" it seems more and more apparent that the U.S. is becoming a walled container. More and more resources are being used to prevent attacks from the outside, but as the numbers show our safety as individuals is compromised by interior threats.

    Much of the resources this country has left are being use to fuel the war in Iraq in order to build a thriving nation. According to thenightly news the main profiteer in Iraq has been an Iraqi casket maker. Since the war he has been working day and night building caskets for the many dead civilians that we are supposed to be protecting.

    I guess the bottom line is thus: our own back yard has more threats in it and is more likely to have something lurking in the shadows that will do us harm than that of the taliban, muslims what have you.

    I'm interested in reading your thoughts be they in agreement or disagreement.


    are these statistics in correlation with the population growth?
  • PilatesBettermanPilatesBetterman Posts: 306
    IrishJam wrote:
    i have to say that the world is becoming a lot darker place to live in my view.
    We are surrounded by constant violence on every news channel we turn on.
    The things we hear about are becoming wilder by day..sex slaves/child abductions etc.
    Ireland is becoming are far more violent place with gangs etc ,which have been elsewhere i.e u.s for a long time but never really got roots set in in ireland as a lot of this would have been controlled by the IRA.
    Its the way these gangs operate now which is sheer ruthlessness.
    About 10 miles from where i live is a no go area now.
    What you would call a project.
    Last weekend a woman and her 2 kids were driving to a friends house
    when 3 teenagers stopped car looking for a ride to the court house.
    The woman refused and drve to her friends house 1 mile up the road.
    She got out to drop whatever it was into her friend.
    The 3 boys had followed her up the road,broke window in the car,doused the kids in petrol and set them alight.
    They survived just but a what cost.
    As a father of 3 i wonder what kind of society are going to leave to our kids.
    At this rate one not to be a bit proud of.

    so i guess the backyard has so mant more threats nowadays apart from the global terrorist one...

    Are these threats more dangerous than before or are we just made more aware of them today?
    "So forget the other boys because my love is real.
    Come off your battlefield."
  • AbuskedtiAbuskedti Posts: 1,917
    zensideofyin wrote:
    So, the violent crime rate has gone up 2.5% leading the way is murder up 3.4%. As we "progress" it seems more and more apparent that the U.S. is becoming a walled container. More and more resources are being used to prevent attacks from the outside, but as the numbers show our safety as individuals is compromised by interior threats.

    Much of the resources this country has left are being use to fuel the war in Iraq in order to build a thriving nation. According to thenightly news the main profiteer in Iraq has been an Iraqi casket maker. Since the war he has been working day and night building caskets for the many dead civilians that we are supposed to be protecting.

    I guess the bottom line is thus: our own back yard has more threats in it and is more likely to have something lurking in the shadows that will do us harm than that of the taliban, muslims what have you.

    I'm interested in reading your thoughts be they in agreement or disagreement.

    I have said it before.. It is my opinion, that the United State has shown a willing decrease in respect for human life as a nation - both in its policies toward its own poor - but most significantly toward Iraqis.. and this has had an overall effect on our culture.. in our attitudes toward other races - towards understanding each other and towards violence. The cost of these actions are even bigger than the direct and obvious results.
  • PaperPlatesPaperPlates Posts: 1,745
    FinsburyParkCarrots wrote:
    I'm Irish too. Yep, we were "the savages", of course. Um, the rabble would have been be the cockney layabouts, the pickpockets, whores, murderers, rapists, gangsters and ne'er-do-wells. Well, the ones who didn't get signed up to the Black and Tans, later on, anyway.
    those pesky ne'er-do-wells are the ones you gotta watch
    Why go home

    www.myspace.com/jensvad
  • spongersponger Posts: 3,159
    Even though we have more of a chance to die at the hands of a home-grown criminal than at the hands of a terrorist, we perceive the former as being something we have more control over. We remind ourselves that everything will be safe as long as we lock our doors, stay out of bad neighborhoods after sunset, learn karate...etc. It's the blatant randomness of terrorism that makes it so threatening. And that's the effect that terrorism is supposed to have, of course. Terrorists want us to feel that death is just around the corner regardless of how carefully we live our lives.

    Anywho, our tendency to prioritize the taliban in afghanistan over the los angeles crips results from a psychological phenomenon known as psychological distancing. When a person possesses a trait that we think is negative, we immediately begin to rationalize our differences in order to create "distance" between them and us.

    http://www.psych.ualberta.ca/~jschimel/PersonalTemplate/schimel2000runningfromshadow.pdf

    So, when we read about a person being a victim of a crime, we use psychological distancing to convince ourselves of why that crime could not happen to us. We conclude that there must've been something that the victim did to invite that misfortune.

    It's not as easy to psychologically distance ourselves from the victims of terrorist activities because we know that terrorists purposely practice randomness.
    reigning champion

    http://forums.pearljam.com/showthread.php?t=272825
  • AbuskedtiAbuskedti Posts: 1,917
    sponger wrote:
    Even though we have more of a chance to die at the hands of a home-grown criminal than at the hands of a terrorist, we perceive the former as being something we have more control over. We remind ourselves that everything will be safe as long as we lock our doors, stay out of bad neighborhoods after sunset, learn karate...etc. It's the blatant randomness of terrorism that makes it so threatening. And that's the effect that terrorism is supposed to have, of course. Terrorists want us to feel that death is just around the corner regardless of how carefully we live our lives.

    Anywho, our tendency to prioritize the taliban in afghanistan over the los angeles crips results from a psychological phenomenon known as psychological distancing. When a person possesses a trait that we think is negative, we immediately begin to rationalize our differences in order to create "distance" between them and us.

    http://www.psych.ualberta.ca/~jschimel/PersonalTemplate/schimel2000runningfromshadow.pdf

    So, when we read about a person being a victim of a crime, we use psychological distancing to convince ourselves of why that crime could not happen to us. We conclude that there must've been something that the victim did to invite that misfortune.

    It's not as easy to psychologically distance ourselves from the victims of terrorist activities because we know that terrorists purposely practice randomness.

    That makes perfect sence.. yet our government and the media feed this irrational thinking - rather than provide information to assist in more useful thinging. We are fed information with a purpose rather than for education. That is what we should fear most.
  • spongersponger Posts: 3,159
    Abuskedti wrote:
    That makes perfect sence.. yet our government and the media feed this irrational thinking - rather than provide information to assist in more useful thinging. We are fed information with a purpose rather than for education. That is what we should fear most.

    The government has its wide spectrum of ulterior motives. But, the media is in it to sell newspapers and increase its viewer ratings. They are only telling us what we want to hear. When different networks compete with each other, have to think of ways to make the news entertaining and interesting - hence sensationalism.
    reigning champion

    http://forums.pearljam.com/showthread.php?t=272825
  • AbuskedtiAbuskedti Posts: 1,917
    sponger wrote:
    The government has its wide spectrum of ulterior motives. But, the media is in it to sell newspapers and increase its viewer ratings. They are only telling us what we want to hear. When different networks compete with each other, have to think of ways to make the news entertaining and interesting - hence sensationalism.

    Capitalism is the devil's wet dream - and America's admission that it is incapable of managing things.
  • PaperPlatesPaperPlates Posts: 1,745
    Abuskedti wrote:
    Capitalism is the devil's wet dream - and America's admission that it is incapable of managing things.


    Then get rid of all your posessions. Dont be a hypocrite. Denounce all your worldly possessions. Starting with your computer. C'mon, lead by example. Who needs actions when you got words?
    Why go home

    www.myspace.com/jensvad
  • AbuskedtiAbuskedti Posts: 1,917
    PaperPlates wrote:
    Then get rid of all your posessions. Dont be a hypocrite. Denounce all your worldly possessions. Starting with your computer. C'mon, lead by example. Who needs actions when you got words?

    Thats cute.. but how will that help? I use my possessions to trade for tuition for my son. Maybe he can help.
  • spongersponger Posts: 3,159
    What is capitalism other than a parallel to darwinism? It's natural selection by way of the invisible hand. Those who get left behind will always hate the system.
    reigning champion

    http://forums.pearljam.com/showthread.php?t=272825
  • JackhammerJackhammer Posts: 122
    well, if it's left on its own, it'll *again* lead to oppresion of the minority by the majority.

    Capitalism DEFINITLY don't work.
    Reality isn't what it used to be.
  • UKDaveUKDave Posts: 5,557
    Jackhammer wrote:
    well, if it's left on its own, it'll *again* lead to oppresion of the minority by the majority.

    Capitalism DEFINITLY don't work.

    None of the recognised "systems" work because people always find a way around them or to corrupt them, it's human nature, not the system...
    Astoria Crew
    Troubled souls unite, we got ourselves tonight...
    Astoria, Dublin, Reading 06
    Katowice, Wembley 07
    SBE, Manchester, O2 09
    Hyde Park 10
    Manchester 1&2 12
    This is just g'bye for now...
  • spongersponger Posts: 3,159
    UKDave wrote:
    None of the recognised "systems" work because people always find a way around them or to corrupt them, it's human nature, not the system...

    Now there's a stmt that I cannot disagree with.
    reigning champion

    http://forums.pearljam.com/showthread.php?t=272825
  • spongersponger Posts: 3,159
    Jackhammer wrote:
    well, if it's left on its own, it'll *again* lead to oppresion of the minority by the majority.

    Capitalism DEFINITLY don't work.

    I think you mean to say oppression of the majority by the minority.
    reigning champion

    http://forums.pearljam.com/showthread.php?t=272825
  • Vedderlution_BabyVedderlution_Baby Posts: 2,535
    Just because you're within your definition of "progress" don't mean you're ahead.
  • JackhammerJackhammer Posts: 122
    edited, cause posted in the wrong place ;)
    Reality isn't what it used to be.
  • AbuskedtiAbuskedti Posts: 1,917
    UKDave wrote:
    None of the recognised "systems" work because people always find a way around them or to corrupt them, it's human nature, not the system...

    this I agree with. which is why we need constant improvement.. constant analysis and adjustment.. which is why religious conservatism is a curse.

    We can do it, if we are not afraid to work at it.. but we ARE afraid of losing some of what we got.. which is why we are letting the whole crash.
  • JackhammerJackhammer Posts: 122
    Agree.

    Maybe we should start working on a super computer which could rule us?

    Hmmmm... on ssecond tought, nope
    Reality isn't what it used to be.
  • UKDaveUKDave Posts: 5,557
    Abuskedti wrote:
    this I agree with. which is why we need constant improvement.. constant analysis and adjustment.. which is why religious conservatism is a curse.

    We can do it, if we are not afraid to work at it.. but we ARE afraid of losing some of what we got.. which is why we are letting the whole crash.

    For me it's about ownership, the sooner we accept the problems of the world are created by ourselves and our imperfections the sooner we'll come with some improvements... :o

    And yeah IMHO religion of any form is not the answer... :o
    Astoria Crew
    Troubled souls unite, we got ourselves tonight...
    Astoria, Dublin, Reading 06
    Katowice, Wembley 07
    SBE, Manchester, O2 09
    Hyde Park 10
    Manchester 1&2 12
    This is just g'bye for now...
  • JackhammerJackhammer Posts: 122
    Hum, after looking at the recent election results in a bunch of european countries, it seems people are more willing to blame their neightboors for all what's going wrong in the world rather than blame themselves and get to work to work together for a better future.

    Hmmm I almost sounds like a hippie this way ^^
    Reality isn't what it used to be.
  • UKDaveUKDave Posts: 5,557
    Jackhammer wrote:
    Hum, after looking at the recent election results in a bunch of european countries, it seems people are more willing to blame their neightboors for all what's going wrong in the world rather than blame themselves and get to work to work together for a better future.

    Hmmm I almost sounds like a hippie this way ^^

    Yeah it does :D Imagine...

    Oh and why the comment on europe?? that seems a bit strange? it's endemic, it's everywhere... :eek:
    Astoria Crew
    Troubled souls unite, we got ourselves tonight...
    Astoria, Dublin, Reading 06
    Katowice, Wembley 07
    SBE, Manchester, O2 09
    Hyde Park 10
    Manchester 1&2 12
    This is just g'bye for now...
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