Yeah, I've figured it out.

[DVSentinel]

I've concluded that we, as a society, are simply not rational or sane. We can't cope with reality and respond in a delusional, neurotic way.

Something terrible happens, like this Charleston shooting. The REAL reasons such things happen are complicated and very difficult to fix, so society flinches away from that and focuses on the tool (weapon), or a symbol (flag), or some book/movie/game/hobby/etc associated with the crime or the killer and blames THAT. When they've banned their chosen scapegoat from the public venue, they heave a sigh of relief thinking they've Slain The Dragon... until the next incident.... when in fact all we've done is dodge the truth and avoid the difficult question of how can we really stop such things.


Insanity.

Leave the guns where they are. If we take away the guns, then these idiots might actually learn to use more lethal methods. Be grateful these idiots are stupid enough to use a gun.

 

[Lutherf]

I've concluded that we, as a society, are simply not rational or sane. We can't cope with reality and respond in a delusional, neurotic way.

Something terrible happens, like this Charleston shooting. The REAL reasons such things happen are complicated and very difficult to fix, so society flinches away from that and focuses on the tool (weapon), or a symbol (flag), or some book/movie/game/hobby/etc associated with the crime or the killer and blames THAT. When they've banned their chosen scapegoat from the public venue, they heave a sigh of relief thinking they've Slain The Dragon... until the next incident.... when in fact all we've done is dodge the truth and avoid the difficult question of how can we really stop such things.


Insanity.

Absolutely. We have become a society where everything has to be fully explained in 140 characters or less or in a half hour TV show or in a newspaper column of not more than 7".

 

[Simon W. Moon]

I've concluded that we, as a society, are simply not rational or sane. We can't cope with reality and respond in a delusional, neurotic way.
Something terrible happens, like this Charleston shooting. The REAL reasons such things happen are complicated and very difficult to fix, so society flinches away from that and focuses on the tool (weapon), or a symbol (flag), or some book/movie/game/hobby/etc associated with the crime or the killer and blames THAT. When they've banned their chosen scapegoat from the public venue, they heave a sigh of relief thinking they've Slain The Dragon... until the next incident.... when in fact all we've done is dodge the truth and avoid the difficult question of how can we really stop such things.
Insanity.

The theory is that we operate rationally inside of the confines of our unique spheres of influence and that leads to decisions which are irrational when viewed from outside that sphere. Where we cannot hope to make actual changes we are free to take opinions that get us the most bang for our buck in our social circles.

Here're a couple of leads to some interesting reading, imho.

Rational Ignorance

Rational Irrationality

 

[Thoreau72]

I agree the shooting had nothing to do with the flag. But taking the flag down will hopefully allow many in the black community of those states to feel a bit more like their state government represents them and their interests as well. It is sad it takes something tragic, and only tangentially related, like a mass shooting, to develop some empathy.

I don't know if we are full out insane as a society. We are definitely schizophrenic, though.

Well if the flag is removed from society, and blacks DID feel a bit more like their state government represents them and their interests, would it be possible that those feelings would be somewhat delusional? Would those feelings be anything more than feelings, out of touch with reality?

 

[Thoreau72]

The theory is that we operate rationally inside of the confines of our unique spheres of influence and that leads to decisions which are irrational when viewed from outside that sphere. Where we cannot hope to make actual changes we are free to take opinions that get us the most bang for our buck in our social circles.

Here're a couple of leads to some interesting reading, imho.

Rational Ignorance

Rational Irrationality

RATIONALIZED ignorance? Whatever, it is ignorance nonetheless. Wilful ignorance.

 

[Kurmugeon]

Take a look at the Emmanuel Church killer's manifesto. The Confederate flag is prominently featured.

Taking down the racist, divisive Confederate flag won't end racism in the USA. But it's one thing that we can and should do.




Every long journey starts with small steps. If you don't take those steps you'll never get where you want to go.

WRONG!

And your "Solution" is horrid Anti-White RACISTS WRONG!

You're dealing with less than 1/2 of the Racist symbolism. And you're being an Anti-White RACIST in how you're doing it!

1] Only a very small percentage of the American white populace sees the CF as a symbol of Anti-Black Racism, MOST White Southerns see it as a source of solidarity of culture, region, and the land, not RACE! It taking the symbol away to harm more innocent whites than you punish guilty whites by a factor of 100X+.


2] You take the CHOICE to be racist or not racist away from those who are exhibiting the bad behavior, and try to FORCE them to your idea of Multi-Culturalism, by BANS and social intimidation. You will NEVER change someone's heart, by forcing them to only act in ways you approve. A thief doesn't stop becoming a thief, just because you cut his hand off!



3] You ignore the other elements of Racist Symbolism against Whites:










Why are we allowing THESE symbols of Anti-White Violence and Racial Hatred to continue to be displayed openly in the Public Square?


4] You PreJudge All White People, as horrible, violent Racists, by assuming that we cannot look at a symbol, what ever it is supposed to mean, and still control our behavior to stay within civilized, peaceful limits.

Whatever the WORST American White feel and think about Blacks, 99.9999% of those who hold anti-Black racial hatred in their hearts, which is very small percentage of all White Americans.....

Whatever most White American Racists Feel, MOST, by a very large margin, do not turn to violence!


5] You Ignore the massively growing problem of Black->White Racial Hatred, fostered by the likes of Al Sharpton, Louis Farrakhan, Eric Holder, and President Obama, and being displayed in the Black Flash Mobs, Polar Bear Hunting - Knock Out Game, and other bizarre openly anti-white violence such as dousing people with gasoline or beating them to death with hammers.



You cannot resolve with a Race Conflict by blaming only one side of the conflict, and giving excuses, exemptions, honors and laurels to the other side.

Yours is the path of the RACIST!

Just an Anti-White RACIST, rather than an Anti-Black Racist!

The KLAN with a TAN!


-

 

[eohrnberger]

. . .

View attachment 67186252

Why are we allowing THESE symbols of Anti-White Violence and Racial Hatred to continue to be displayed openly in the Public Square?
. . .

On this one I think you are off a bit. That's actually Joe Louis' fist and has nothing to do with the racist salute and everything to do with a boxing great.

It's just down the block from where I work.

 

[Simon W. Moon]

A lot of it is simple stupidity. Many people aren't able to follow complex issues and in order to feel satisfied need a dumbed down (to the point of missing the point) argument or symbol.

I think that many people are not capable.
I think that an even larger number of people are not willing.

What's in it for someone who spends hours, days or longer researching the issue / an issue?
Not much really.
What will the person who does invest this time be able to change?
Not much really.
For most of us, there's little reward for being informed, little reward for being right, and little impact for being wrong.
Why not just adopt the opinion which will satisfy our social needs at the moment?

Why not join the team with the cool slogans?

 

[Simon W. Moon]

RATIONALIZED ignorance? Whatever, it is ignorance nonetheless. Wilful ignorance.

I don't think it is willful.
At least not in the sense that people make a conscious decision.

 

[fmw]

We have to talk about guns and flags because we've already decided not to actually deal with the attitudes in our society that create this kind of horrible violence.

How do we deal with attitudes?

 

[Mithrae]

Yes, that's true. The causes are complex and deeply rooted both in American culture, and in human nature itself.

We're only a few centuries out of the tribal state, where the words for "other" and "enemy" are often one and the same. Our brains are hardwired to only really deal with 30 to maybe 300 individuals as individual living persons... everybody else kind of blurs into "them".

Between 15 and 25 young men go through a time when their exploratory, sexual and aggressive urges are overwhelmingly powerful, and need to be directed into constructive outlets that will safety vent those drives until they start to calm down and master self-control. Medical fact, the "impulse control" center of the brain doesn't fully mature until you're about 21-23yo. This goes along with the fact that 15-25yo males commit a lot of the crime.

Poverty, income inequality and limited opportunity to change that (or in some cases a PERCIEVED lack of opportunity is just as damaging even if not real) drive a lot of people into blaming some group labeled "other". Hate is contagious, and we have organizations (smaller and far more marginalized than once was, but still they do exist) who perpetrate and teach these things, and it damn sure doesn't help.

Our near total lack of anything like a coherent mental health care system, or one that identifies the "dangerous minds" and takes necessary action to prevent them from harming society (ie isolation and treatment).

People lacking the wisdom or fortitude to draw the attention of the authorities to individuals who are exhibiting (or in this case BROADCASTING) that they are likely to do something awful. In this case several people admit to having seen strong signs that Dylann was at risk of something like this, but no one took decisive action.

The frequent inability of authorities, even when forewarned, to even TAKE decisive action before the individual has done something heinous.

The frequent inability of police to stop such acts before they are completed. The frequent lack among the public of individuals prepared and ready to stop such actions when they take place nearby.

That's not even an exhaustive list.


All of these things are factors involved in the causality of the carnage in such incidents as the Charleston shootings. All of them are complex; none have simple solutions. The question of whether "solving" them would leave us with a "free society" is another migraine-headache question.

All in all, it's no wonder people (collectively) tend to run away screaming for a scapegoat, rather than deal with the actual causes and seek difficult, complicated and perhaps impossible fixes for them.

All good points, and in particular the need for more comprehensive and accessible mental health services should be among the most obvious and pressing areas in which government could respond (in many countries, including Australia). I'd also suggest that encouraging people to spend more time in nature, including funding for school trips and planning/developing cities towards substantial patches of wilderness throughout, would be a worthwhile endeavour. Poverty is a problem, but it's not just that; our societies have unmistakable tendencies towards competition, materialism and atomisation which potentially enhance the tribe-like mentality you mentioned. I think a good case might be made that encouraging an appreciation for nature could both help keep concerns like ambition and consumerism in perspective as relatively petty in the grand scheme of things and, perhaps more importantly, help cultivate an appreciation for life and living creatures without all the baggage that's dredged up in interactions between human beings.

But like you say, and as a number of responses to the thread show, people tend to find it more exciting to squabble over the same old hackneyed partisan talking points.

 

[Paschendale]

How do we deal with attitudes?

Education and a strong discussion, primarily. We need to loudly condemn the ideas that are responsible for this kind of violence until they are no longer acceptable in society. It's the same process that made civil rights a reality, got women the vote, and has helped gays attain the right to marry. Twenty years ago, homophobia wasn't even a thing, and now it's something to be ashamed of.

 

[fmw]

Education and a strong discussion, primarily. We need to loudly condemn the ideas that are responsible for this kind of violence until they are no longer acceptable in society. It's the same process that made civil rights a reality, got women the vote, and has helped gays attain the right to marry. Twenty years ago, homophobia wasn't even a thing, and now it's something to be ashamed of.

And what does that have to do with guns and flags?

 

[Kurmugeon]

On this one I think you are off a bit. That's actually Joe Louis' fist and has nothing to do with the racist salute and everything to do with a boxing great.

It's just down the block from where I work.

I knew exactly what it is, and what it represents to MOST when I posted it.

I chose it to prove a point!

And just like the Confederate Flag, it means Boxing to MOST people, but there is a subset of Black Supremacists who have chosen to interpret this statue as about Black Power and violence against whites...

Should we remove it? Just because to a very few, it means something ugly?

This is EXACTLY what is being done with the Confederate Flag.

-

 

[eohrnberger]

I knew exactly what it is, and what it represents to MOST when I posted it.

I chose it to prove a point!

And just like the Confederate Flag, it means Boxing to MOST people, but there is a subset of Black Supremacists who have chosen to interpret this statue as about Black Power and violence against whites...

Should we remove it? Just because to a very few, it means something ugly?

This is EXACTLY what is being done with the Confederate Flag.

-

OK. Fair enough.

 

[Risky Thicket]

I heard a black preacher on the radio yesterday and what he said made the most sense I have heard on the racism/flag controversy. He said the state should drop the flag and the black community should from the African prefix.

The maturation of a sub-culture is often in part represented by culture naming. Sub-cultures are named by the dominant culture until a given sub-culture begins the process of exerting its independence. Self-identity is a healthy indication of progress toward independence which must occur before the sub-culture can be fully blended into the mainstream.

While the African-American preacher calls for African-Americans to drop the hyphenated name, those of us who are not African-American must understand that his statement and his arguments are part of the process the African-American culture is experiencing. There are and will be African-Americans who agree or disagree with the African-American preacher. This is something that African-Americans will decide and they will decide it for themselves. It is not something to be negotiated with the white people. As it is a process it is important to understand the cultural significance.

It is part of this healthy process that African-Americans use the n-word to refer to themselves and each other. It is a healthy part of the process that the President recently used the word. Doing so within the black community however does NOT mean it is culturally permissible for people outside of the black community. When a white person excuses himself for using the n-word by saying "black people do it" that person is demonstrating his/her cultural ignorance - at best. Non-black people are no longer permitted to name African-Americans. African-Americans have established their own self-identity and the process rightfully belongs to them.

 

[blaxshep]

The maturation of a sub-culture is often in part represented by culture naming. Sub-cultures are named by the dominant culture until a given sub-culture begins the process of exerting its independence. Self-identity is a healthy indication of progress toward independence which must occur before the sub-culture can be fully blended into the mainstream.

While the African-American preacher calls for African-Americans to drop the hyphenated name, those of us who are not African-American must understand that his statement and his arguments are part of the process the African-American culture is experiencing. There are and will be African-Americans who agree or disagree with the African-American preacher. This is something that African-Americans will decide and they will decide it for themselves. It is not something to be negotiated with the white people. As it is a process it is important to understand the cultural significance.

It is part of this healthy process that African-Americans use the n-word to refer to themselves and each other. It is a healthy part of the process that the President recently used the word. Doing so within the black community however is NOT culturally permissible for people outside of the black community. When a white person excuses himself for using the n-word by saying "black people do it" that person is demonstrating his/her cultural ignorance - at best. Non-black people are no longer permitted to name African-Americans. African-Americans have established their own self-identity and the process rightfully belongs to them.

Non-sense, the "African-Americans" have been here just as long as the rest of us.

 

[US Conservative]

I've concluded that we, as a society, are simply not rational or sane. We can't cope with reality and respond in a delusional, neurotic way.

Something terrible happens, like this Charleston shooting. The REAL reasons such things happen are complicated and very difficult to fix, so society flinches away from that and focuses on the tool (weapon), or a symbol (flag), or some book/movie/game/hobby/etc associated with the crime or the killer and blames THAT. When they've banned their chosen scapegoat from the public venue, they heave a sigh of relief thinking they've Slain The Dragon... until the next incident.... when in fact all we've done is dodge the truth and avoid the difficult question of how can we really stop such things.


Insanity.

Its the race to the bottom. Ignorant eager to be entertained Americans wanting to clap like seals at television.

Theres a quote I cant recall precisely at the moment, but trends in humanity are cyclical, where tough times tend to make hard working people, who tend to make intelligent people, to tend to make comfortable, entitled people-which leads to tough times where the cycle repeats.

I think theres something to it, we went from the WW2 generation (tough and intelligent) to the comfy and entitled boomers-who gave us millennials that can't be made uncomfortable.

 

[DVSentinel]

Non-sense, the "African-Americans" have been here just as long as the rest of us.

Which are they, Africans or Americans?

 

[Thoreau72]

The maturation of a sub-culture is often in part represented by culture naming. Sub-cultures are named by the dominant culture until a given sub-culture begins the process of exerting its independence. Self-identity is a healthy indication of progress toward independence which must occur before the sub-culture can be fully blended into the mainstream.

While the African-American preacher calls for African-Americans to drop the hyphenated name, those of us who are not African-American must understand that his statement and his arguments are part of the process the African-American culture is experiencing. There are and will be African-Americans who agree or disagree with the African-American preacher. This is something that African-Americans will decide and they will decide it for themselves. It is not something to be negotiated with the white people. As it is a process it is important to understand the cultural significance.

It is part of this healthy process that African-Americans use the n-word to refer to themselves and each other. It is a healthy part of the process that the President recently used the word. Doing so within the black community however does NOT mean it is culturally permissible for people outside of the black community. When a white person excuses himself for using the n-word by saying "black people do it" that person is demonstrating his/her cultural ignorance - at best. Non-black people are no longer permitted to name African-Americans. African-Americans have established their own self-identity and the process rightfully belongs to them.

So does this mean that certain words in the language are intended to be uttered by only certain people? By only certain races?

Egads, words are race specific, it turns out. I never knew. :doh

 

[Real Korimyr #9]

It'd be nice if African-Americans could drop the "African-" prefix and just be Americans, but that's not going to happen until they're treated like Americans.

And I think that rather goes hand-in-hand with not having streets and government buildings named after Confederate "heroes".

We need to stop romanticizing that part of our past and recognize the Confederacy as the brutal, oppressive police state that it was-- and its destructive anti-liberty policies against Whites and Blacks alike.

 

[blaxshep]

Which are they, Africans or Americans?

Americans

 

[blaxshep]

It'd be nice if African-Americans could drop the "African-" prefix and just be Americans, but that's not going to happen until they're treated like Americans.

And I think that rather goes hand-in-hand with not having streets and government buildings named after Confederate "heroes".

We need to stop romanticizing that part of our past and recognize the Confederacy as the brutal, oppressive police state that it was-- and its destructive anti-liberty policies against Whites and Blacks alike.

That's almost a chicken or the egg argument.