Shriver speaks about anger, exclusion and violence

[Tarantella]

Purlease - I'll not take anything you write seriously if you witter on about things not being PC. It's lazy and it's dull. I thought you weren't, but.....

I'll stand by my PC comments, thanks. PC is the ultimate form of censorship. And now if you'd care to develop a discussion instead of personal insult. Oh, but wait, that would be lazy and dull wouldn't it?

[amateur51]

I'll stand by my PC comments, thanks. PC is the ultimate form of censorship. And now if you'd care to develop a discussion instead of personal insult. Oh, but wait, that would be lazy and dull wouldn't it?

It wasn't intended to be a personal insult but a comment on the common misusage of PC as a bogey word, but if you were offended I apologise.

[Richard Barrett]

PC is the ultimate form of censorship.

What does that mean?

[Flosshilde]

As a characteristic of our age in general, the explosions of anger/violence also seem to be found in incidents like 'road rage' where perfectly innocent behaviour, or perhaps unintended mistakes, can trigger even worse blind, unreasoning responses.

It might (or might not) be of interest that this is a classified psychiatric disorder - 'Intermittent Explosive Disorder' (http://www.psychologytoday.com/condi...osive-disorder). There was a brief (not terribly serious) discussion of it on Radio 4 yesterday.

[Flosshilde]

Some experts have formed the same view,

Which ones, & in what field? I'm afraid that this is as lazy as the 'PC' jibe/accusation. If you know of experts, you should be able to give a reference.

it's not PC. People believe in freedom, but I don't think freedom is absolute. I remember a famous speech by Mary McAleese about this exact issue - one person's freedom is another person's loss of liberty.

I don't think anyone you would accuse of being 'PC' would disagree with this. In fact, way back in the 1980's that most 'PC' of organisations, the Inner London Education Authority', did work on rights and responsibilities with pupils.

[eighthobstruction]

This could be an interesting conversation if we don't let it get out of hand....I/we have no objection to your point of view [yet!] Tarantella, you are new here aren't you? [welcome]....it's just that we have a lot of discussions here that get lost in generalisations and cliches [for years this has been going on]We are trying to get away from the non specific reference that comes across as an accusation [red rag]....words or phrases like PC....people.... posters jumping to conclusions about other posters without knowing much about them....Here....this is the wonder of the internet and cyber space culture....this is it....We have to find a way of discussing information, knowledge, concepts and differences without falling out....

>>>(I see you used my quote before I edited this!) I think you're drawing a long bow between the written word re slander, vitriol, libel and people talking intimately in pubs.<<< I don't know what you mean about your quote, which quote?....

....isn't Frank a boys name?....

[Richard Barrett]

The "exclusion" that Shriver talks about is certainly real but I don't think she sees the bigger picture at all. She "explains" the Boston Marathon bombers' motivation merely in terms of a "sense of having been left out, and a subsequent vengefulness ... [an] urge to annihilate whatever seems to elude or exclude you". This is really no better than GW Bush's "they hate our freedoms" to "explain" why there are attacks on the USA by people of Muslim belief.

Without making any excuses for terrorist acts it's surely important to understand that the people who carry them out believe themselves to be committing acts of war against an imperial power which has supported their coreligionists displacement and effective mass incarceration (in Palestine), supported dictatorial régimes when it suited them (in Egypt, Libya, Indonesia, Bahrain and many other places), starved their countries (Iraq) and then invaded them (Iraq again, Afghanistan), killed hundreds of civilians with drone attacks (Afghanistan and Pakistan), and so on. And Western governments respond to this situation by continuing to pursue those same destructive policies which have ensured that the USA is regarded in most of the world as currently one of the most serious threats to world peace (generally coming second to Israel, which of course is armed and funded with extensive US help so that comes to the same thing). None of this is mentioned in her article, which renders it useless as analysis of why such terrorist acts are carried out.

She does however make a direct comparison between the "exclusion" felt by such people as the Boston bombers and the exclusion that generates angry outpourings across the internet, and here she has a point: the economic crisis of 2008 and the subsequent way in which the people who caused it are still getting their fat bonuses while the poorest in society are made its victims is, among many other things, evidence of the way most members of even our supposedly enlightened societies are excluded from participation in them. "Freedom" in our society carries a property qualification, which seems also to confer freedom from responsibility to those less fortunate than oneself. But she doesn't mention any of this, and so her article becomes doubly useless.

[aka Calum Da Jazbo]

oh dear i thought between all the logical positivists and Wittgenstein and then r d laing we had ceased the 'i have just described an event therefore some entity exists' loonie tunes of psychiatry etc ...

a clever researcher tracked back all the admissions diagnosed paranoid psychosis into the circumstances and social milieu they had been admitted from .... in every single case there was a demonstrable conspiracy to exclude the individual culminating in his psychiatric detention ... each and every conspirator cited the behaviour of the admitted individual as the reason for excluding her/him ... no matter how it started, it ended with they are out to get me ...

exclusion is dangerous, it makes one feel insignificant, rejected and so on but not every excluded person deals with this through violence and rage .... just as every violent and rage fuelled act is not always driven by exclusion [try betrayal] ... we seek significance, the internet is a substantial, even gargantuan, opportunity to create it .... and inclusion and dominance and intimacy ...

as a matter of debate, i would argue that the bomb droppers in Boston were not affected by exclusion but by anatgonism and revenge in a between group animosity, not a rejection from some aspired to in group ... but an attack on a despised other, an evil out group ... now it is clear that that sense of animosity was kindled via both the web and books .... but then so is the international solidarity of the London runners with Boston ...

whatever, but no more magical thinking about human behaviour and how it comes about; no more i feel angry; there is a rage, i am possed by an entity stuff ... humans do all sorts of extraordinary things, but the more remarkable thing is how many truly ordinary things they do each day, like saying good morning ... or helping a neighbour; the sheer volume of unremarked niceness is a defining characteristic of the species without which it would be extinct

[eighthobstruction]

>>>"Freedom" in our society carries a property qualification, which seems also to confer freedom from responsibility to those less fortunate than oneself.<<<

Can you open that out a little more RB....i.e. expand....

Ref Boston( and your second para RB)....these two men seem to have backwards and forwards to USA and Eastern European (ex USSR) states....so they will have seen a little more of the world than many Americans....and anecdotally Americans tend to be insular [did I mean ignorant?] ref their knowledge of History, Current Affairs and cultures beyond their shores....These young men( I expect/ surmise) are a highbreed, of materialism (and inclusion or exclusion from materialism and 'success') and religious fundementalism (and its easy indoctrination in certain circumstances) and as you say what is happening ref Islamic states etc around the world (plus the USA stances).... But also as CadaJa says : this can also happen in a community such as a college or uni' where exclusion and inclusion a can be seen before your very eyes.... But this is OT really sorry....

[eighthobstruction]

>>>as a matter of debate, i would argue that the bomb droppers in Boston were not affected by exclusion but by anatgonism and revenge in a between group animosity, not a rejection from some aspired to in group ... but an attack on a despised other, an evil out group ... now it is clear that that sense of animosity was kindled via both the web and books .... but then so is the international solidarity of the London runners with Boston ... <<<cadaja

Yes a dicotomy/pardox of this age/era....they could be radicalised or insensed or manipulated by people thousands of miles away, that they had never met face to face OR by citizen up-loaded footage of atrocities OR as reaction to anti-muslim/Arab of social media....Or the nebulous nature of many Tweets etc....

[Richard Barrett]

"Freedom" in our society carries a property qualification, which seems also to confer freedom from responsibility to those less fortunate than oneself.

I mean basically that the more cash you have, the more freedom you have, and if you're poor you basically have very little freedom (and this of course applies across the world as a whole as well as within any given society); and that the wealthy generally haven't got where they are by being generous.

[eighthobstruction]

Yes I see it now RB....it was there all the time, I just misread it....

#8 Tara' >>> And please don't reply that the Murdoch press needs sanctions as this will simply take the spotlight away from the individual responsibility of those who use the internet.<<< ....I wasn't going to....

>>> What we're talking about here is the very visible sign of people feeling angry and excluded and venting that in print versus the kind of regulations to which the commercial media is increasingly subject. <<<.... I'm more interested in the very visible sign of people feeling angry, than I am about the regulation .

>>> moral relatism....narrative of grievance and victimhood<<<< .... I am for the individual....I am for personal responsibility....I am against ripping the guts out of a new platform....I am for a learned personal responsibility where by a 'victim' see's attacks in a less hysterical/melodramatic manner, where they get less attached to what people say....[hope that makes sense]....and a learned better personal responsibility of the attacker(to have more sense)....

[Serial_Apologist]

That may be, but Lionel is very much an attractive, intelligent female. Have a look for yourself!

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/b...-neurotic.html

The trouble is, Shriver is not critiqueing the kind of society that uses body image to sell product; nor is she accusing the Murdoch and other press for setting examples for others to follow as role models.

[Tarantella]

Which ones, & in what field? I'm afraid that this is as lazy as the 'PC' jibe/accusation. If you know of experts, you should be able to give a reference.

Why? I cannot remember their names in particular, but do remember reading and hearing debates on this subject over many many years. Would it worry you, particularly, to think that there are whole social groupings who believe that society has too much freedom and that watering down laws only contributes to more violence. That permissiveness is anathema to social cohesion; that anarchy comes not necessarily from an opposing philosophy like Communism or totalitarianism in general, but from WITHIN - especially if the "me" generation and the culture of entitlement escapes from the bottle. My husband's cousin is a retired Psychiatrist there in London and he says much the same thing, but I don't want to give his address over the internet. He worked with adolescents for his whole career and wrote a book about it. The culture of violence, permissive violence, and a society which says, "Oh, it's just boys being boys - they're grow up". Yes, but will WE?


I don't think anyone you would accuse of being 'PC' would disagree with this. In fact, way back in the 1980's that most 'PC' of organisations, the Inner London Education Authority', did work on rights and responsibilities with pupils.

I've been in the teaching profession which discussed rights and responsibilities too. Funny. Very funny. The students knew exactly what their rights were and effective discipline wasn't regarded as something many should take seriously. Give them rights and then talk about responsibility afterwards. Yep, good idea.

(I see I accidentally included my own comments in the quote section above.)

[Tarantella]

Yes I see it now RB....it was there all the time, I just misread it....

#8 Tara' >>> And please don't reply that the Murdoch press needs sanctions as this will simply take the spotlight away from the individual responsibility of those who use the internet.<<< ....I wasn't going to....

>>> What we're talking about here is the very visible sign of people feeling angry and excluded and venting that in print versus the kind of regulations to which the commercial media is increasingly subject. <<<.... I'm more interested in the very visible sign of people feeling angry, than I am about the regulation .

>>> moral relatism....narrative of grievance and victimhood<<<< .... I am for the individual....I am for personal responsibility....I am against ripping the guts out of a new platform....I am for a learned personal responsibility where by a 'victim' see's attacks in a less hysterical/melodramatic manner, where they get less attached to what people say....[hope that makes sense]....and a learned better personal responsibility of the attacker(to have more sense)....

Oh dear. Please, what is the zip or postcode of Utopia?