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SoDesuKa

(3,173 posts)
Sun Jul 22, 2012, 10:39 PM Jul 2012

Traditional 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.
[center]


Arthur Bremer, Lone Nut
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Lionessa

(3,894 posts)
1. Complete BS.. Repression isn't "boring," it's used to advance bigotry and hatred.
Sun Jul 22, 2012, 10:48 PM
Jul 2012

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)
3. Max Weber Tackles the "Lone Nut With a Machine Gun" Problem
Sun Jul 22, 2012, 11:38 PM
Jul 2012

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.

. . . modern capitalism is a rational mode of economic life because it depends on a calculable process of production. This search for exact calculability underpins such institutional innovations as monetary accounting (especially double-entry bookkeeping), centralization of production control, separation of workers from the means of production, supply of formally free labour, disciplined control on the factory floor, and other features that make modern capitalism qualitatively different from all other forms of economic life. The enhanced calculability of the production process is also buttressed by that in non-economic spheres such as law and administration. Legal formalism and bureaucratic management reinforce the elements of predictability in the sociopolitical environment that encumbers industrial capitalism by means of introducing formal equality of citizenship, a rule-bound legislation of legal norms, an autonomous judiciary, and a depoliticized professional bureaucracy. All this calculability and predictability in political, social, and economic spheres was not possible without changes of values in ethics, religion, psychology, and culture. Institutional rationalization was, in other words, predicated upon the rise of a peculiarly rational type of personality, or a “person of vocation” (Berufsmensch) as outlined in the Protestant Ethic. The outcome of this complex interplay of ideas and interests was modern rational Western civilization with its enormous material and cultural capacity for relentless world-mastery.

http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/weber/#RatTheUni


Individual estrangement is an inherent part of the problem. Indeed,

Industrial capitalism, for one, reduces workers to sheer numbers in an accounting book, completely free from the fetters of tradition and non-economic considerations, as the market relationships do vis-à-vis buyers and sellers. For another, having abandoned the principle of Khadi justice (i.e., personalized ad hoc adjudication), modern law and administration also rule in strict accordance with the systematic formal codes and sine ira et studio, that is, “without regard to person.” Again, Weber found the seed of objectification not in material interests alone, but in the Puritan vocational ethic (Berufsethik) and the life conduct that it inspired, which was predicated upon a disenchanted monotheistic theodicy that reduced humans to mere tools of God's providence. Ironically, for Weber, modern inward subjectivity was born once we lost any inherent value qua humans and became thoroughly objectified vis-à-vis God in the course of the Reformation. Modern individuals are subjectified and objectified all at once.

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.
[center]


Gallipoli
[/center]

SoDesuKa

(3,173 posts)
4. When We See a Traditional Culture, We Attack
Sun Jul 22, 2012, 11:50 PM
Jul 2012

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.

For Weber, nevertheless, modern science is a deeply nihilistic enterprise in which any scientific achievement worthy of the name must “ask to be surpassed and made obsolete” in a process “that is in principle ad infinitum,” at which point, “we come to the problem of the meaning of science.” He went on to ask: “For it is simply not self-evident that something which is subject to such a law is in itself meaningful and rational. Why should one do something which in reality never comes to an end and never can?” .

XemaSab

(60,212 posts)
10. Isn't implying that traditional cultures have no agency sort of racist?
Mon Jul 23, 2012, 12:23 AM
Jul 2012

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)
15. Given a Choice . . .
Mon Jul 23, 2012, 01:01 AM
Jul 2012

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)
5. Yep, we just need to learn to deal with it.
Sun Jul 22, 2012, 11:54 PM
Jul 2012

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)
6. No, It's Already Intolerable
Mon Jul 23, 2012, 12:14 AM
Jul 2012

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)
8. No. Unless you make knives, explosives and dangerous chemicals go away.
Mon Jul 23, 2012, 12:19 AM
Jul 2012

Oh and sterilize the air, too.

SoDesuKa

(3,173 posts)
14. Machine Guns Are Different
Mon Jul 23, 2012, 12:51 AM
Jul 2012

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)
9. I do think there's more we could do in the mental health arena...
Mon Jul 23, 2012, 12:20 AM
Jul 2012

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)
7. "Devices such as limiting access to guns aren't going to affect the underlying problem."
Mon Jul 23, 2012, 12:17 AM
Jul 2012

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)
12. Correlation Is Not Causality
Mon Jul 23, 2012, 12:29 AM
Jul 2012

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
[/center]

Lex

(34,108 posts)
11. Friend, if Holmes access to guns was limited, it would definitely caused a different outcome.
Mon Jul 23, 2012, 12:26 AM
Jul 2012

Do you think that other "modern societies" who have low gun deaths haven't limited access to guns?

SoDesuKa

(3,173 posts)
13. It's Probably Too Late
Mon Jul 23, 2012, 12:38 AM
Jul 2012

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.
[center]


There are too many guns to try and stop the flood now[/center]

 

Speck Tater

(10,618 posts)
16. The human species is not yet ready for freedom.
Mon Jul 23, 2012, 01:44 AM
Jul 2012

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.

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