Thread:User talk:WaitingforGodot/Pinker's latest stinker/reply (13)

Violence is a very interesting "metric" to play with, if you are in for a bit of mental fun. When we traditionally think of violence, it's with a level of blood guts and gore. A more particular definition would require that violence is something done with intention of harm. But even there, we have needed less violence as humans to survive. But that doesn't make us necessarily less violent in our motivations. That is to say, now that I have a police force, I do not need a gun to protect my home. Now that my police force has tazers, they do not need to use guns as often. Now that I buy hamburger at the store, I don't have to slaughter a crying animal -- no matter how much i need that food to survive.

So then I ask myself, what was the point of shooting people who came into your home? Safety. so is protecting yourself violence, of course. But of a necessary sense, so it doesn't have the weight of someone who today, with all the cops around, still shoots an intruder.

My father is of an age where kids got their butts tanned HARD for doing wrong. it was normal. Because he and all his friends shared teh same thing, none of them felt ashamed, and it was not 'abuse" (abuse is, like everything else, relative). Today, if you even get spanked it's probably quite shameful cause that doesn't happen in other kids home, and it probably is abuse.  Reinforcing Pinker? or just something of a shift in society?  I don't know...  but i think a lot about it.