How Can We Prevent Societal Rifts From Expanding into Violence

We have kids growing up in a secular environment because spirituality has been mocked and demonized nearly out of existence. They are being raised in fatherless homes for the above reason and by design of the welfare rules. Kids are brought up in a rudderless environment in which moral turpitude has won the day. Many are isolated, made to feel inferior by peers who are gifted at selling a mythical life of prosperity. This only touches on the culture war being waged against the fabric of the US to which we owe centuries of success.

 

Meta, I understand your objectives. But the first step in solving a problem is not the suggestions of solutions- but the diagnosis of cause and mechanism. Then and only then can you address the problem with appropriate solutions.

I was friends for a long time with a respected district court judge, and we often talked law and about the people and events that took place in his court. I found his perceptions most educational, and one in particular fits here:

"The best regulator is the self regulator. Such people have sound fundamental values they hold above all else, and they regulate themselves. We have to have laws because many people will not or cannot self-regulate. Of course- laws cannot actually supplant self-regulation, so laws are only a patch trying to hold such people within limits." IF everybody had respectable values and self-regulated, I'd be out of work."

The point is that we can't instill values or control motivation with laws- but we do create a sort of game over who controls who; where people who don't like a law learn how to evade it and continue on the path their psyche dictates, then we pass a law to control the evasion, and they come with another to evade that- and every step of that game destroys a bit more of our freedoms.

Self-regulation comes to us socially, starting at birth, by being immersed in a world where sound values are the examples we grow with- in other words, good parents, family values. It is also a social thing in that when others disapprove of poor conduct and reject people who will not respect others, good conduct is encouraged and rewarded. When we choose to allow our surrounding environment to lack regulation or consequence, we endorse that condition.

The core of the problems you address reside in the mindset of people. Laws at best provide a sort of external regulator- but never a solution, and often serve to aggravate the conditions. They reduce the ability of people to see that they are the source of their own conflicts, and they are the only real source of the power to resolve them. The greatest teacher of all is consequence- dealing with the results of your own choices. No consequence, nothing learned- and when consequence is a choice determined by other people, you will blame them for the consequence rather than yourself for making a poor choice. It's like a convict believing that they are in jail because someone caught them rather than because they committed a murder.

When you believe that what happens in your life is determined by others and is not in your power- you have no power, except through actions against those you think control you- so instead of self-regulation, you attempt to regulate the world around you; force others to make your life right. We have a huge number of people blaming everybody but themselves for things that only they can change.
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Nature solves this problem with fundamental rules that are either followed or ignored.... and with consequences that are not negotiable. In so doing, those who fail to understand or follow rules don't get to play the game, and are gone. I'm not saying humans can't do better- but I am saying that the most successful societal system that has ever existed, with millions of thriving species that self-regulate without interference from government, religions and laws- just might tell us that our tolerance for those who will not self-regulate is also the reason for our own condition.

I don't have a solution for all of society, but for each of us as individuals.
We need to find a way to make self-regulation, self-respect and sound values into a cultural trend, something to be admired and desired by all.

 

Self regulation would put your judge friend out of a job. Ever wonder why he HAS a job? Because self regulation isn't nearly enough

 

Fox, MSNBC and CNN are no longer news platforms. if they ever were. What they do offer is a lot of visual content of breaking events, like mass shootings, train wrecks, plane crashes, and puppy dogs. The rest is just, well as you said. Look elsewhere for news, but it won't be anywhere near as spicy or dramatic. Look at news feeds from AP and Reuters. This may not fit but try major network feeds - NBC, ABC, CBS, PBS. But I'm not too familiar with them lately. Local news is always a good bet. Google News covers everything with their proprietary agglomeration algorithm. You may like it.

Personally, I rely on Google, NYT, PBS, MarketWatch, and Bret Baier on Fox (evening news). Shop around.

 

Again folks you really can't stop this stuff no matter how careful you are, no matter how good your mental health care is every now and then a loose screw is going to fall through the cracks and people are going to get hurt and/or killed. Dead is dead the means by which you achieved that status don't at the end of the matter a damn dead is still dead. Since you can't stop this crap the only worthwhile conversation is about how to minimize the carnage.

 

Putin is only a bit player in this if that. Politics is always divisive by its very nature. Far more civilizations have collapsed because of internal issues than external ones. By the time Rome was sacked and burned it was only a shell of it's former self having spent the preceding 200 years engaged in civil wars to determine which nut bar was going to rule the roost next in the process killing and maiming much of its best and brightest when they weren't being driven mad by lead contaminated drinking water. They aren't alone.
As long as people worship at the altar of power, and way too many of them in every generation do, politics will be a divisive and not infrequently bloody sport.

 

For openers get rid of every gun free zone sign in the country. To crazies that translates as free fire zone I got no opposition.

 

It's an American impulse to look for solutions to problems. We have this notion that if we just think about it and work at it hard enough....

I don't see how that is possible with divided government. And then there are opposing objectives like employment and environmental protection.

 

There is a solution of sorts however it has nothing to do with laws and bureaucrats neither of which have the power to fix a corrupt heart

 

Definitely have to change the incentives. 70% of black kids growing up in single parent homes is unacceptable --- a number I heard a while back. More recently, like within the past week, I heard a number like 65% for poor families in general. There are other headwinds --- efforts by some segments of society to kick parental rights and authority over their kids to the curb. This is like the Hitler Youth and Stalin's Komsomol. They are the same forces who have marginalized religious organizations.

 

Let me put it this way 25% of millennials say they have no friends. the last two shooter were millennials. Why do so high a percentage of millennials not have friends?

 

Why have friends when you can chat online?

These online debates we have here aren't doing anything to strengthen bonds we have with people we know and can see and hear in person.

 

BTW, I live about 10 miles from this El Paso shooter's house in Allen. It's a luxurious house and is probably someone's dream home, but you have to make an effort to stop and talk to people, because they, like you, are in a hurry to get inside and on to the internet.

30 - 40 years ago a kid would have to get on a bike and pedal over to a friend's house to play whiffle ball, play board games, play basketball, anything. Only thing on TV was Days of Our Lives, Ed Sullivan, and Bonanza.
We all had guns. Nobody shot anybody.

Progress.

 

I talk to everyone. It's who I am being nice to people doesn't cost a thing. I find most African Americans Latinos and what have you aren't, at heart a hell of a lot different than I am.

 

Need to practice what I preach and unplug for a while. Will try to limit logins to the 1st of the month. Ciao.

 

we should support our President, he is a capitalist who wants to make America great again.

a good economy makes people happy.

 

yes, it should be business as usual.

petty societal rifts cannot stop the machine, the military industrial complex would see to that if it 'spirals further out of control'.

 

Didnt read all 8 pages of this, but my opinion is unchanged over the last 10+ years. The problem is leadership. We simply dont have any in high office.

We have a disinterested populace that votes for their team, no matter who it is. This leaves the only the most vocal to choose who is actually on the ballot. The extremes of any point of view are toxic in every sense of the word.

We have a serious issue in that good people dont run for high office. We get all the pretty people that spout off focus grouped lines that they dont understand or mean. They are looking for power and prestige. If anyone is helped or hurt in the process, they dont care.

We are cynical of politicians and their motives. No one actually believes or trusts politicians because we know they are only it in for themselves. As a population, we just regurgitate what we saw in our facebook or twitter echo chamber, or the news show we caught 5 minutes of last week. Then we tell everyone we know and dont know all about it in the comments section.


The US is in a whirlpool right now. We started on opposing extremes and as things go downhill, we are drawn closer together until we collide.

 

The problem sir is not guns or the constitution it is an increasingly balkanized and atomized millennial generation that is increasingly raised without fathers and without any good male role models in their lives. We have an education system that increasingly female dominated and female centric where the only men in the system are coaches and those don't show up until 9th grade and if the kids aren't good athletes they never meet them alone become influenced.

Yes there are some men that are awful human beings but most aren't. There is no such thing as toxic masculinity there is however toxic behavior and it is found in both men and women. Until you deal with that problem gun control laws and most of the red of the crap on that list are the moral equivalent of slapping a band aid sheer strip on a sucking chest wound

 

Like many, I've pondered your question in many ways. I've stated the position that this is a people problem having to do with maturity and values, and that there is no quick cure for that. So what would be a logical start?

Obviously, we have the equivalent of a pissing match. Not everybody wants to participate, but those who want it are imposing it on others- in some ways on everybody. Thus it is here, and we do have to deal with it. This is a very childish situation, something every mature adult should recognize. The contest is hardly one of factual issues, but of interpretive opinions and radical claims that are generally not legitimate at all. Perhaps linked to some real statements of events, but usually so distorted and bent that they are reduced to insult, slander and the school-yard bully level. Communication, discussion, reason- do not take place on that level. Those who drive these kind of claims actually know that, somewhere in their logic, but are past caring. They have allowed thei emotion to over-ride and control their common sense.

If you have ever dealt with a seriously spoiled small child, you see exactly the same thing. However when that conduct takes place between grown adults and people with enough education and age they should be controlling it, things change. You can't spank them, put them in the corner or use normal parent/child disciplines. As grown ups, we should be able to discipline ourselves. The government is not a parent, although many people expect the same things from government as adults that were provided them as children by parents. Every time government attempts to do that, the legitimize that expectation- and go from the role of management of the nations business to social nanny. Every step in that direction confirms it and attracts more- and reduces the freedom of each and every one of us.

I think the first step at this time needs to be a social one, where rational people simply refuse to argue or entertain irrational behavior or claims. One can speak to truth without arguing with lunacy- and arguing with such claims legitimizes them as worthy of discussion. A parent would tell a ranting child to calm down- and that when they get control of themselves, the issue can be discussed. But outrage and ranting simply will not get you anything- including my attention.

That message is simply- Calm down. Until you do, you are talking to yourself. We simply dismiss such outrage with minimal language, none of which gives legitimacy to the argument or person using it.

Forums all have problems with trolls, with click-bait rants wanting to create an argument over a claim so ludicrous on the surface of it as to be unworthy of any attention. When we try to reason with such people they demand you engage on the ludicrous "points" they think they have- and disprove them. When we do- we are indeed giving those so-called points validity they never had in the first place.

We have to make rants and outrage moot actions, everywhere. As the proper parent tells the misbehaving child- come back when you can calm down and behave yourself.