General Discussion
Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsTraditional Societies are Repressive; But Modern Societies Can't Handle Deranged Individuals
In a traditional society you are assigned a place and people know who you are. There's no estrangement as such, but it's dull as hell because nothing ever changes.
Modern societies are beset by individuals who don't fit in and are effectively cast out of society. Alienation is a common experience in a modern society, and it begets social problems such as family breakdown, drug addiction, the isolation of whole sectors of society, and finally, the lone nut syndrome.
There's no going back to a traditional society from a modern society, esp. in places where a traditional society never existed. Aurora, Colorado might have been a mining town at one time. Now it's full of strangers - people who don't know each other and like it that way - whose idea of community is to attend one of sixteen separate theaters in a cineplex.
There are no modern equivalents to the social controls of traditional societies. You can't "drop a dime" on an individual who doesn't fit in; there are thousands of them. Random violence is here to stay, unless we figure out a way to include people who actually don't belong in our society anymore. They know it, and we know it. Devices such as limiting access to guns aren't going to affect the underlying problem.
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Arthur Bremer, Lone Nut
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Lionessa
(3,894 posts)And you have some sort of historical misconception if you think the mass murders of today are terribly different than those dating back in history forever.
SoDesuKa
(3,173 posts)There's nothing ahistorical about using Weberian insights into modern problems except of course that Weber himself died in 1920. My analysis follows his breakdown of how a traditional society changes into a modern society, and doesn't turn back again despite the difficulties.
http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/weber/#RatTheUni
Individual estrangement is an inherent part of the problem. Indeed,
Weber, of course, didn't see the the way the machine gun revolutionized modern warfare and could not have anticipated its use against civilians. We're seeing that now, and we're fishing around for answers. The machine gun is having the same impact on social relations that it once had on warfare, esp. at Gallipoli. However, as Weber noted in another context, this is only going in one direction.
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Gallipoli
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xchrom
(108,903 posts)SoDesuKa
(3,173 posts)Modern cultures gobble up traditional cultures. You can almost write a history of our own times in terms of that dynamic. Are we doing anything important in Afghanistan except bringing machine guns to the young males we are displacing from their traditional places in society? We did the same thing in Iraq, essentially bringing smallpox blankets to their Indians.
Weber says it's a one way street. Once a society goes modern, there's no turning back.
XemaSab
(60,212 posts)Traditional culture along the lines of the noble savage may be a romantic idea, but when given a choice, most of humanity has chosen a modern way of life.
SoDesuKa
(3,173 posts)Traditional societies usually become modern when they are conquered by modern societies. You can trace this back to Julius Caesar if you like. Tribesmen and their military organization are generally no match for the organized tactics of the modern military.
It's an interesting hypothesis whether counter-insurgency warfare is traditional as opposed to modern. We weren't supposed to lose the Vietnam War, but we did. Bigger'n shit.
LAGC
(5,330 posts)There is no way we can prevent all acts of mass-violence short of instituting a total police state and/or surveillance state.
At some point we just have to realize that this is one of the costs of living in a free society, the occasional random act of mass-violence.
SoDesuKa
(3,173 posts)We've flooded the world with machine guns, and now just about any nut with a grudge can get one. We wrote off Columbine, we wrote off Virginia Tech, and now we're writing off Aurora as the cost of doing business. The horror could have been much worse. Holmes didn't know enough about the AR-15 to prevent it from jamming . . . a fact that saved many lives.
Call this the "Lone Nut With a Machine Gun" problem. The fact that it's insoluble makes it intolerable. We need to think big. Is world disarmament a possibility?
Zalatix
(8,994 posts)Oh and sterilize the air, too.
SoDesuKa
(3,173 posts)There are too many machine guns in circulation. They are qualitatively different from knives, explosives and chemicals because they don't require any expertise. We're whistling in the dark if we think there aren't already a couple of lone nuts just waiting to get their hands on an AK-47.
As it happened, Holmes's AR-15 jammed on him, probably because he didn't clean it properly. But simpler machine guns are out there, just waiting for a buyer with cash to come along and claim them. For instance, we have no idea how many AK-47's are in private hands as we speak.[center]
AK-47 . . . . Simple to Use, and Very Deadly[/center]
LAGC
(5,330 posts)Try to detect psychopathy and intervene before people go off the deep end...
But the bottom-line is: some people are always going to be able to "fly under the radar."
I mean, how many of these past several spree killers had no criminal record? You can pass all the laws you want, but if these people don't break them until they REALLY break them, there's just no way to stop it.
Chorophyll
(5,179 posts)They seem to affect it pretty well in other modern societies, like, I dunno... England? Yeah, there are screwed-up people everywhere, and there is crime, but not so many situations in which you might get gunned down going out for pizza.
SoDesuKa
(3,173 posts)You're talking about England, right? They've had more problems with organized bombing campaigns than we've had. Theirs is a different society, however. And the fact that they haven't had problems with Breivik type shooters doesn't mean that they will continue that way. There was a time when Norway didn't have that problem either.
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Lone Nut With a Machine Gun Anders Breivik
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Lex
(34,108 posts)Do you think that other "modern societies" who have low gun deaths haven't limited access to guns?
SoDesuKa
(3,173 posts)The country is awash in machine guns; it's probably too late to try to restrict access to them now. This is a different viewpoint from that of the 2nd Amendment enthusiasts . . . I think the damage has been done. Flood control won't do any good at this stage.
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There are too many guns to try and stop the flood now[/center]
Speck Tater
(10,618 posts)I keep hoping that by exposing people to freedom they will finally "grow up", but sometimes I think it's just not going to happen between now and extinction.
Maybe we'll get lucky and some alien race from outer space will arrive and make us a colony of their dictatorial empire. That's not the worst possible destiny for the species, and it may be among the best alternative futures.