Society is becoming increasingly violent, and we have more access to hear about violence via 24 hour news, and the Internet, I think younger lads are becoming desensitised to it.
The evidence is that society - here and in the wider world - is getting less violent and has been steadily doing so for millenia. Perceptions of violence - your second point - is a separate phenomena which is always reliably uncoupled from the facts.
Good point of reference:
The Better Angels of Our Nature - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Have a skim, very persuasive.
I see the roots of violence as much in the comments posted here which call for harsh sentences - and even hanging - as I do in the feral acts of barbarity that bring them about. Mascarading under the banners of justice and fairness, people are really just seeking revenge. Pinker (author of above linked book) lists those impulses as our 'inner demons of aggression:'
- Revenge – The “moralistic urge toward retribution, punishment, and justice.”
- Sadism – The "deliberate infliction of pain for no purpose but to enjoy a persons suffering..."[SUP][/SUP]
This is what people really seek when they want to see the perps dangling from the gallows. Not the righting of a wrong. The impulse that drive those desires are as one with the impulses of the deranged ape that murdered the child with his car. The answer can't be more of the same.
I love this place. It's full of decent people who are utterly decent to the core. There's no pretence or loftiness, it won't be tolerated. But the second there is a discussion on something like this the replies all turn into the Daily Mail comment section. It's all "lock 'em up for life" and "throw away the key." Nobody seems much interested in what went wrong in the preceeding 18 years of that monster's life to bring this about. Whatever he is currently like: He must be unlucky to be like it. It is unfortunate, for him as well as everyone else.
But it's all plumbers here. Plumbers are predominantly working class. The British working class are predominantly socially conservative (and also patriotic, something i've never understood. why is it that the people who have the least and are compelled to work the hardest are the most proud of the country they live in, whereas those who take the most from it couldn't give two ****ts about it.) They subcribe to everything from the basics of greater social responsibility, up through tougher and longer sentences and all the way up to corporal and capital punishment.
I'm afraid I'm a devout lefty. Writhing in an agony of attempts at forgiveness and understanding and justification. I get more lefty as I get older. Every morning I wake up finding it harder to blame anyone for anything. I've probably got it all arse about face.
What were we talking about again?
This beer is good.
