I hear so many times in the media and from academics that we live in a violent society. They try to pinpoint the blame of this on television, video games, music, and culture.
Fact of the matter is I would argue that we live in one of the least violent societies in recorded history. Yes there is gang violence, there is war, there are serial killers, but statistically speaking I am sure you were much more likely to be murdered or attack in previous ages. Just think of biblical times or ancient greece and rome, those were some brutal violent times, murder was common and much much easier to get away with. Nowadays we have forensics and extensive legal systems that make murder much harder to commit. Back then you could drop a body in a ditch and no one would know better.
I am not arguig that our violent tendancies and desires have been lost. But I think when people try to blame violence on TV we must ask is the TV violence causing us to be violent or is our innate violent tendencies causing our TV to be violent. I would argue the latter.
The same thing goes for sex, the TV and internet do not cause us to be obsessed with sex, we just happened to be obsessed with sex and therefore our media outlets portray this.
Denying these basic innate human tendancies is what really gets us into trouble.
America is violent. Violence in America is often the result of ego and individualism. Orientals don’t walk around thinking they’re tough, you can’t disrespect an Oriental or provoke him in the same way that a slight against an American’s ego will set him off. I disagree with your thesis; Western society is very violent; Detroit is more violent than Manila, Chicago is more violent than Bangkok, Los Angeles is more violent than Seoul, Milwaukee than Phnom Penh and so on. You’d be a fool to walk around many neighborhoods in New York day or night, whereas you can walk anywhere in Saigon without much worry. This isn’t because Westerners are racially more violent. (Nor is it about race division, Kuala Lumpur is as if not more racially divided than large American cities but is far safer.)
The huge ego is from the unfulfilled need for security.
I have not spent time out of this country, I have also not been attacked anywhere in this country. Are your assertions about violence here anecdotal or based on reported crime? Do you think there is a correlation between people who live in cities being more violent than rural dwellers?
I couldn’t find any stats on the cities you mentioned, but I looked up violent crime rates in america compared to international countries and America is in the middle of the pack. We are more violent than European countries, but much less violent than South America and Russia. Couldn’t find anything on Asian countries, but I assume cities like Saigon and Manila are much more violent than you think. Also when you speak of cities like Detroit, Chicago, and Los Angeles you are talking about three of the most violent cities in our country and do not represent our society as a whole. Like you said there are definitely neighborhoods you wouldn’t want to walk through, but many times these threats are exaggerated, I live in chicago and have never feared for my life.
You’re right though, america is definitely not the least violent society today.
I think I stated it wrong in my original post, what I am really trying to say is that we live in some of the least violent time in recorded history.
Just having a quick peek at the statistics on wikipedia:
Thailand 8.47
United States 5.9
Philippines 4.31
Malaysia 2.39
South Korea 2.18
Japan 0.5
Singapore 0.49
But,
Russia 19.8
Ukraine 7.42
and,
EU 2.37
Canada 2.01
Or in pictures,
So my impressions don’t exactly match the statistics about violence in the East and the West. And interestingly, and contrary to what one might guess, there doesn’t look to be any correlation between wealth of nations and violence either?
It’s obviously very complex, the mini-civil wars going on in the south of Thailand and the Philippines would drive up the murder rate a good deal in those East-Asian countries.
And can we really believe that the murder rate in Morocco is a fraction of the rate in Spain, Morocco seems like a rough place; maybe accurate reporting is a factor in the statistics too? Or maybe Muslim countries are quite safe? the statistics on wikipedia suggest this.
Another timely point to consider is guns, Finland, the USA and the Philippines all have big gun cultures. Finland is per capita the wealthiest but has the lowest murder rate, the Philippines is by far the poorest but has an internationally average murder rate…
Not sure about every day life, and also not sure about war. If we can believe Herodotus and Plutarch at all, ancient wars must have been very bloody; but then so is modern warfare.
It might be difficult to collect acecdotal or statistical evidence on this.
Having thought about this a bit more, I think I wanna pass for now on saying whether or not modern society is more violent than past society.
You see, violence is not reduced but evolved. In 1993, there were, in the UK alone, four active serial killers undetected at least. Serial murder is one of the hidden, evolved forms of violence.
Of course, those statistics are on reported crime. I would venture to say that far more crime is not reported in countries where corruption is more rampant than the US or EU.
Anyway, society in general is not criminal minded or violently intended. It is media attention that makes us believe that crime is rampant and all pervasive when in fact it is elusive and rare.
Why else would the news stations have to go hundreds or thousands of miles to find these stories?
If crime were as prevasive as they make it appear they should be able to just walk out their door to get a story.
This is so true. I live in Chicago and you probably see a murder or two a night. 400 murders a year in a city of 3 million makes for a very peaceful society and Chicago I believe only ranks behind Detroit and LA in terms of murder rate. Not to mention 75% of these murders occur in specific places because of negative social and economic factors. But you turn on the news and you’ll think “damn we live in a violent society”.
Also serial killers and mass murders make news but are extremely rare. I would also argue that they are influenced by the media as many serial killers are motivated by desire for fame and to make a name for themselves.
Oh great , Murex you just made a storyline for a movie of the week. Like there isn’t enough things to worry people over. Now you are going to get folks to look at reporters with fear not trust. Thats terrible, now the Gov’t will have to start all over. Jeez, one misplaced thought and things go awry.
Societies have becoming less and less violent for a long long time, tribal warfare which all tribes engaged in killed massive amounts of people in terms of % of male population, enough for it to be considered a constant state of genocide, other than that theres a statistical decrease in crime as time goes on, as civilizaations everyone b ecome less barbaric for a variety of reasons. Theres jumps in crime-rates as more people enter the crime-commiting age group (statistically speaking) and other factors, but in geneal its true.
Theres an article about it on Steven Pinker’s website that fills in the scientific details if anyone’s interested.
I would argue that economic specialization has had a dramatic impact on global violence. The closer you get to subsistence the mroe important raw economic materials, IE land and the fruits thereof make good causes for war.
Secondly, in terms of specialization, the potential for power becomes greater as individual segmentation of specific skills increases the opportunity for one to become powerful in a given field.
This is not to discount other impacts such as cultural identity, basic economics etc. but I think economic specialization has a significant impact on violence.
Thinking about statistics…I just got David Wilson’s book about serial killers, and in it, he uses really shitty stats in his “argument,” beginning with the ridiculous claim that there have been only 19 serial killers in the UK since 1960, and also saying that of the 300-odd victims they have killed, over 260 of them are elderly. He uses this as an argument that apparently proves his point, ignoring one fact - the reason so many elderly people have been victims of SKs is because over 250 of them in his stats were killed by Shipman alone!
Statistics prove nothing. 43% of people know that.
