- Joined
- Jul 24, 2011
- Messages
- 59,162
- Reaction score
- 50,779
- Location
- Georgia
- Gender
- Male
- Political Leaning
- Slightly Liberal
His point, if i am not mistaken, is that when you have a more culturally diverse grouping you tend to higher crime because of the diversity. Different cultural backgrounds clash.....
I think you are overstating it, but you do have a point. When I was a kid, "courtesy" was very very important in social settings; now it has been replaced by "attitude". Rudeness is mistaken for strength, arrogance for ability, selfishness for ambition, and pride no longer needs to be based on actual accomplishments. Sometimes our society does seem like a "death of a thousand tiny cuts" and there are plenty of opportunities for haters to find an excuse for their hatred.
Even so, there are still lots of good people out there. They just seem to be few because the bad ones are so loud and so visible.
...poverty is relative to the nation's norms, and to the gap between the haves and have-nots, which is growing....
Sure, an American on welfare and food stamps and living in subsidized housing is rich compared to a Kenyan back-woods village farmer... but that isn't relevant to the effect of poverty on our culture in terms of crime.
Poverty is relative to the nation's norms, and to the gap between the haves and have-nots, which is growing. Half the country looks at the other half with envy today, because of that gap. That contributes to hate and coveting what others in your culture have that you do not.
I am not saying there are no good people. I know there are. But in country of 312 million people I bet you couldnt find more than a 10 million people who dont have hate for a group of people.
so that fact that we have Germans, Italians, Jews, Irish, Scots, Russians, Poles, and English......means that we will automatically have a higher crime rate?
that's dumb and intellectually absurd.
you are possibly correct, as we do have a large number of white supremacist & Neo-Nazi hate groups in the USA.
Sure, an American on welfare and food stamps and living in subsidized housing is rich compared to a Kenyan back-woods village farmer... but that isn't relevant to the effect of poverty on our culture in terms of crime.
Poverty is relative to the nation's norms, and to the gap between the haves and have-nots, which is growing. Half the country looks at the other half with envy today, because of that gap. That contributes to hate and coveting what others in your culture have that you do not.
Uh. You mean ninety-something percent looks at a tiny fraction of the superrich.
you are possibly correct, as we do have a large number of white supremacist & Neo-Nazi hate groups in the USA.
^ I bet he mentions something like NAACP :lol:
In some cases, yes, you have the poor-to-struggling looking at Lifestyles of The Rich and Shameless and envying. But you also have the 35-50% of the population that can barely/not-quite afford what American norms consider a "decent lifestyle"... a reasonably comfortable home with electricity and air conditioning, a car that doesn't break down every month and isn't covered in Bondo or rust, health care insurance that covers important stuff adequately, a decent diet, and a little something left over for savings and entertainment, looking at the half of the population living in knocked-up-in-a-month McMansions, driving new 30k+ vehicles, and vacationing in Florida twice a year and feeling left out.
Sure, some of it is failing to pursue education and opportunities or laziness, but not all of it by a long shot. One factor is simply that blue-collar jobs in most states don't pay a living wage anymore, like they did in the 1950's and 60's. There are a lot of factors like outsourcing and cheap illegal labor, but thats a big subject all by itself and I don't want to derail the thread.
Suffice it to say that the PERCEPTION of being poor has a dramatic effect on crime rates, and that perception is based on what appears to be the norms in your culture, not in someone else's culture.
there are alot more hate groups that
Cultural factors are very much in play in comparing different countries and what happens there in terms of violence. Without taking these factors into account, it becomes and apples-to-oranges comparison.
There have been mass shootings in many other modernized Western nations, most recently a terrible one in Norway, for instance. Yes, it is more frequent here.... why? That's a complex question with a complex answer, in which many factors are at work: our societal glorification of violence and violent entertainment, our "machismo", our stimatization of mental illness and lack of resources to treat same, our huge and very diverse population (we have states more populous than most European nations, and typically far more diverse culturally and ethnically), the specific pressures and stresses to which we subject ourselves (ie most European nations have a slower-paced lifestyle where they are more casual about deadlines, whereas being 5minutes late for work in the US can get you fired, as a minor example), our cultural heritage as a nation founded by revolution and expanded through conquest of the Native-occupied frontier.... the list could go on and on.
There are no simple or one-dimensional solutions to psycho rampages.
I think the problem is that the decent lifestyle that the wage provided in the 50's and 60's is no longer considered a decent lifestyle. It is very much perception. A perception that because all these new products come out, that if you can't afford one you are somehow a victim of those who can.
they are the most dangerous ones.
Ineffective govment and law check.
Poverty check.
Violent Factionalism check. (Gangs) (Also depends on your definition of violent factionalism)
Yet our murder rate is far lower.
all hate groups are dangerous
armed ones are more dangerous.
ones that have a history of violence & murder are more danngerous.
and as we all know, many of the groups that you consider to be "hate groups", are of the sort.
are you able to explain how are like usual are you just spewing garbage statements. you can look at the numbers. we are one of the most violent countries in the world, and we are one of the most culturally diverse. I havent looked up the numbers exactlly but for countries not at war i bet we are the most violent in the world. and i am pretty sure we are the most culturally diverse. there is more anger and hate in this country than any where else
I certainly agree with your list of contributing factors which make this problem more evident in the USA than in most other nations. I have a honest question for you in addition to those things you listed, would we not also have to list gun culture and availability as part of those cultural factors?
I agree 100% that we have a culture that glorifies violence in media and entertainment - and the use of guns are a big part of that. So don't we have to include the gun culture and its allure as part of our cultural differences which contribute to the problem itself?
here is the intentional murder rate around the world
List of countries by intentional homicide rate - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
If you look at the most recent figures for the 2010's, you will see that the USA is listed at 4.8. That is higher than comparable nations such as Canada( three times higher), the United Kingdom (almost four times higher) and a whole host of European nations who are far behind even the UK - Ireland, Italy, Netherlands, Sweden, germany, Spain and Australia. Other than Canada, the nation that I find to be most like the USA in terms of urban/rural and manufacturing and economy is Japan and they have a rate of 0.34 which is a tenth of what ours is.