Plenty for all. What went wrong? |
Louis Shalako
In
the modern world, you can withdraw yourself, and spend your time eating,
sleeping and grooming for a mate that will never come. Or you can become
dominant. This is why the right-wingers are so intent on taking things away
from those whom they consider inferior. It is little better than an animal
response to a world that is increasingly crowded, where there are shrinking
resource bases, in an increasingly stressful world. They will tell you they
don't believe in science, but I think they do. They
know enough science to be dangerous. Here' s the real problem with Darwinism as
social policy--you deny Darwin to begin with. Worse, I'm bigger than you. My
arm is long and my sword is sharp. Is this where we are headed as a society?
This is the part the social Darwinists forget or
ignore--but that's why they have to have all the guns. That's why they have to
take away voting rights, take away public defenders from the courtrooms, and
build for-profit jails. They do not believe in the equality of man, even as they
scream 'Constitution!' at the top of their voices.
This is why we are forced to contend with the libels,
the slanders, the bigotry and the prejudice. My opinion is that we cannot let
them win.
…and this is why we fight.
I would
suggest that globalization and instantaneous and ubiquitous communications give
the illusion of overcrowding.
Famous rat studies:
“Among the
aberrations in behavior were the following: expulsion of young before weaning
was complete, wounding of young, inability of dominant males to maintain the
defense of their territory and females, aggressive behavior of females,
passivity of non-dominant males with increased attacks on each other which were
not defended against. After day 600, the social breakdown continued and the
population declined toward extinction. During this period females ceased to
reproduce. Their male counterparts withdrew completely, never engaging in
courtship or fighting. They ate, drank, slept, and groomed themselves – all
solitary pursuits. Sleek, healthy coats and an absence of scars characterized
these males. They were dubbed “the beautiful ones.” Breeding never resumed and
behavior patterns were permanently changed.” (John B. Calhoun.)
The loss of the frontier:
In
1890, the Census Bureau announced the end of the frontier, meaning there was no
longer a discernible frontier line in the west, nor any large tracts of land yet
unbroken by settlement.
This news had a terrific psychological impact on many
Americans. For the first time in history, America was without a frontier. The
frontier was a part of American national identity.
The ideal of an ever-pioneering spirit with eternally new wildernesses to conquer was the American heroic myth, felt by all and expressed in literature and art. With the end of the frontier, the romance of the West was over.
There
are no places for the spirit to roam free, free of social constraints, free of
aristocracy, free from mean, miserable inhibitions on behaviour, freedom from
interference in our daily lives.
Frederick Jackson Turner
found that the loss of the frontier had a profound
impact on the American collective psyche.
The
walls are really closing in now, aren’t they?
This
is why the over-surveillance of the population, and the over-enforcement of
societal norms simply doesn’t work. All it does is enable tyranny. It’s always
the same type of person or mindset that is an advocate of more cops, more laws,
more courts, stiffer sentences.
The
biology of violence.
Dr. Debra
Niehoff, P.H.D., author of ‘The
Biology of Violence,’ as well as other works, speaking here on Invisible
Scars.
“In
countries with high levels of violence,
economic growth can be slowed down, personal and collective security eroded,
and social development impeded. Families edging out of poverty and investing in
schooling their sons and daughters can be ruined through the violent death or
severe disability of the main breadwinner. Communities can be caught in poverty
traps where pervasive violence and deprivation form a vicious circle that
stifles economic growth. For societies, meeting the direct costs of health,
criminal justice, and social welfare responses to violence diverts many
billions of dollars from more constructive societal spending. The much larger
indirect costs of violence due to lost productivity and lost investment in
education work together to slow economic development, increase socioeconomic
inequality, and erode human and social capital.”
“Additionally,
communities with high levels of violence do not provide the level of stability
and predictability vital for a prospering business economy. Individuals will be
less likely to invest money and effort towards growth in such unstable and
violent conditions.”
In
her book, ‘The Biology of Violence,’ Dr. Niehoff shows that incarceration,
(removal of the violent rat from society,) doesn’t stop or prevent future
violence. If anything, isolated rats, when returned to the fold, either
continue or increase their violent behaviours.
When
people lobby for new and stiffer laws, they are obviously not lobbying for a
new law to control their own behaviour. They want to control the behaviour of
their neighbours. They find the behaviour, or simply the neighbour, to be
threatening or offensive in some way—note the French banning of the Burkha, and
other social phenomena clearly based on prejudice and yet clothed in
utilitarian terms, terms of ‘security,’ or ‘threat.’
A complex subject.
This
is a complex subject and this blog post is necessarily short. Dogma, ideology
and knee-jerk reactions do not serve us well.
While
opinions are important, and everyone has one, and everyone should have the
opportunity to speak their mind, the fact is that most opinions are uninformed.
These
are the opinions of parrots, repeating what they have been taught to say. They
don’t even care about truth. It’s all bigotry, ignorance and prejudice, clothed
as something more noble, which it ain’t.
As a society, we are eating our young. This does not bode well for the future.
The world is a big, scary place and that is why the simple must be simplistic in all things.
...and this is why I write.
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