From: Michael S. Lorrey (retroman@turbont.net)
Date: Wed Sep 22 1999 - 22:09:24 MDT
Bryan Moss wrote:
>
> Michael S. Lorrey wrote:
>
> > > Violence isn't the problem - it's just another way of conveying
> > > information - our attitude towards violence is the problem.
> >
> > My personal take is that we are in the bread and circuses stage of our
> > civilization's development, that the wrestling on TV, the violent
> > movies, and the urban crime are consistent with the feeding christians
> > to lions stage that Rome went through. It can't be helped.
>
> Perhaps increased violence is directly related to better health care. Just
> as promiscious sex was (no doubt) increased by the introduction of
> contraceptives. However, because you don't (usually) want to get hurt
> whereas you do (usually) want to get laid, we prefer to watch fictional or
> consensual acts of violence.
Actually, IMHO, people got laid a lot more and talked about it less back
then than now. The whole myth of 'saving' one's self for marriage was
only expected of daughters of aristocratic families, most other people
got married with one already in the oven.
The increased violence is a backlash against the way in which the
societal drift toward a matriarchal society manifests itself as a
fascism of politial correctness toward mens traditional recreational
activities.
>
> > Man is a wild animal and must vent his need to hunt and prowl in a
> > wilderness setting or he will take it out on his fellow man.
>
> Modern society is created by wild animals for wild animals. I don't buy the
> whole mans 'true nature' vs. civilisation thing. Once you've got a big
> general problem solver (and I'd say the brain fits this description) it's
> difficult to put specialised code into it. It's unlikely that my brain even
> knows what concepts such as 'hunt' and 'prowel' are, but it probably knows
> what hungry is and can figure out how to put an end to hungry. I doubt it
> could care less whether this be by 'supermarket' or 'hunting'.
>From my experience it has little to do with being hungry. Its a matter
of working the brain in its natural environment, giving it a complex
problem of tracking and stalking another creature that has been evolved
to avoid your best efforts. Making the kill at that point may or may not
be necessary. A centralized agricultural society may have been developed
to work in such a way as to allow a hunting recreation, but industrial
society is not built for man or to permit him to fulfill his need for
the hunt, as illustrated by the prevalence of serial killers in the
urban environment, etc., much of it tries to force man into the most
economically efficient box.
>
> > This is statistically supported by studies that have shown that active
> > hunters have the lowest incidence of criminal behavior of any segment of
> > the population.
>
> I bet active hunters tend to live in areas that have low incidences of
> criminal behaviour to begin with.
Actually, its irrelevant whether the hunters come from urban or rural
settings.
Mike Lorrey
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