‘Officers, Why Do You Have Your Guns Out?’

68yo's medical alert system goes off by accident, fucking gross shit ensues

ooooooff

and the damn insurance companies

yep, the world sucks.

NEXT.

no, i'm keeping a log, i want all the suck categorized and easily clickable

i appreciate this thread and share neight's sentiments

cops harass trekkies, end up making educational video about their shady traffic stop tactics

Seriously. http://nplusonemag.com/raise-the-crime-rate

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shugE
3/30/12 3:10 PM
i appreciate this thread and share neight's sentiments

+1

How does one reconcile a suspicion of/disrespect for the police with a desire to have a society that doesn't feel the need to defend aggressively their property with violence and/or not be victimized by violence.

In other words, how do you reconcile a fuck the police attitude with feeling that George Zimmerman should just call the police and let them handle something rather than taking it into his own hands?

This is a serious question and not one intended to bait anyone, whether they be neight or princelumber.

Fuck Terrible People

That's not the same thing.

I believe it's the same sentiment. Zimmerman was a self-appointed cop.

Fuck the Police = Fuck Terrible people if all cops are terrible people. If that is true, then it goes back to my original question, which makes the change in phrase pointless.

All Generalizations are 100% True

I would think folks are more speaking of how police handled it AFTER the fact. fwiw

There were a lot of solutions to that situation.

police may serve a purpose, but that certainly doesn't put them above criticism/disdain. if all they ever did was just bring bad guys to justice, that might be one thing. but that's not all they do.
eat dicks, cops.

so i'm at work, listening to op ivy thanks to howie and i just got to...

Do you have to force yourself with power and control
Do feel a need to live your life playing up a role
Intimidating people with your wall of sight and sound
You and your kind destroy our underground

All the happiness that you have destroyed
All the brutal tactics that you always employ
All the fucking bullshit when will it ever stop
The comparison is obvious: you're just a fucking cop
Officer - you act like an animal, you're out of control
Officer - what the hell is wrong with you

Wear a tie if you want to wear a uniform
Join the army if you want to conform
Tough guy big man do what you can
Whatever you destroy we'll create it again

All the happiness that you have destroyed
All the brutal tactics that you always employ
All the fucking bullshit when will it ever stop
The comparison is obvious: you're just a fucking cop
Officer - you act like an animal, you're out of control
Officer - what the hell is wrong with you

Officer

Why don't you fucking stop?

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Trudie agrees with neight.

looks like the man has trudie on lockdown

Is it just me or should they make the moon a prison colony like Australia? Get a chance for a new start on the moon

pitpat
4/05/12 10:56 AM

police may serve a purpose, but that certainly doesn't put them above criticism/disdain. if all they ever did was just bring bad guys to justice, that might be one thing. but that's not all they do.
eat dicks, cops.

I 100% agree. But they also do things like bring bad guys to justice and are really the only ones practically allowed to do that. To me, Fuck the Police doesn't allow for this. But I do realize that it's a slogan am I'm just over analyzing it and probably coming off like a anal prick.

In summary, abortions for some, tiny American flags for others. Let's all return to our samethink communities and come up with more slogans instead of engaging in discussion!

true that.
i don't trust the mentallity of someone who willfully pursues a career in law enforcement, knowing full well that the job is inextricably linked to racist/classist/etc profiling and disproportionately punishes minorities.
if you really want to help, be a fire fighter. you can't profile a fire, and you'll be able to sleep at night.

LEMME AT IT!!!!!!!

If I were to guess, and it's just a guess, I'd bet the racist asshole ratio for firefighters is similar to cops. Obviously, a racist asshole firefighter is likely to do less damage in his job to society that a racist asshole cop.

:

i mean, the law of averages states that any profession will have a cadre of asshats. but as you pointed out, cops kinda have an unprecendented ability to impose their particular assholeisms on the general public.

well in good news it looks like connecticut is ending its death penalty

My imagined venn diagram of power addict and an adrenaline addict looks pretty close to one circle.

I feel like less assholes would be enticed by the fairly selfless job of FIGHTING FIREZ than would be by BEING THE FUCKING POLICE

Terrific news about Connecticut and the death penalty.

stu
4/05/12 11:44 AM

My imagined venn diagram of power addict and an adrenaline addict looks pretty close to one circle.


hahahah this is fair

these fucking BASE Jumpers are oppressing minorities at an alarming rate :)

a client's mom called 911 for a welfare check. resulted in individual tased, beaten, arrested for a warrant that was for someone else. this person was let free after seeing a judge in district court and left to find their own way home shoeless. not once were they informed why they were being arrested or asked about their mental health which was point of call.

Imagine a firefighter force as corrupt as the police force. All rolling eyes at black people's fires, all corroborating with white arsonists

Spraying the fire hose at things not on fire only

all extorting tennants for free handos in exchange for their flaming building being extinguished.

THIS WOULD MAKE A GOOD MOVIE, SHANE

Weighing fires against paperwork

Not turning on the lights for kids doing fire station tour field trips

stopping for nachos on the way to a fire.

Siccing Dalmations on urban youths

I'm pretty sure Nicholas Cage would star in this movie about bad firefighters

Released: 1988
Recorded: 1988 in Menlo Park, California
Length: 5:43
Label: Priority/Ruthless
Writer: Ice Cube, MC Ren, Eazy-E
Producer: Dr. Dre, DJ Yella

pitpat
4/05/12 11:33 AM true that.
i don't trust the mentallity of someone who willfully pursues a career in law enforcement, knowing full well that the job is inextricably linked to racist/classist/etc profiling and disproportionately punishes minorities.

One of my coworkers is pursuing a career in law enforcement specifically because he thinks that the system is fucked up and he wants to be part of changing it.

yeah, i didn't mean to imply that all cops were monsters, but i also have a pessimistic view of anything changing what with the 'thin blue line' shit. doesn't seem like cops who are willing to point out power abuses are treated too well by their peers in the field. i feel like being an honest cop would be the most soul-crushing experience ever.

Totally.

I'm with pitpat 100% on this.

I don't mean to bang on too fine of a point to miss the point of the whole discussion, but...

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well back then as many doctors were racist assholes, right?

I'm not addressing that, I'm addressing whether or not a racist asshole fire fighter can do damage. That's all. The Birmingham FD was also well known for breaking up Black meeting with fake fire inspections.

I guess I don't see that many firetrucks rolling around with a dude in mirrored glasses and knuckeless driving gloves all giving the stink eye.
But, I see lots of Ford Crown Vics.

Dude's an asshole, that's for sure. He also has a LOT of power to wield.

the classical drives past me frequently the exact way you describe

In a Crown Vic or a firetruck?

Hitler's pussy throat car.

Drive Hitler's firetruck

"i was super glad i got up early and had time to read the news before work
and then i started thinking about the princelu.. "

jeez dude if I offended you that bad that you are talking about me in other threads, well, I guess I am a little bit honored. Carry on.

I wonder if the negative stigma around being a cop prevents quality people from considering the profession. Thus ensuring more assholes. So, in short: its your fault neight.

there are plenty of published studies out there showing that the average psychological profile of a cop is the same as the average psychological profile of repeat violent offenders. the power of being a cop attracts bullies. very few good people choose to go into the field and it makes perfect sense.

Such a great song. It singlehandedly got me into rap. I haven't listened to much rap since the mid-90s other than breaking out the old shit once in a while, but that tune put me on a solid eight-year run.

Better than 911 Is a Joke, even though I prefer PE's overall output to NWA's.

princelumber
4/05/12 12:39 PM

"i was super glad i got up early and had time to read the news before work
and then i started thinking about the princelu.. "

jeez dude if I offended you that bad that you are talking about me in other threads, well, I guess I am a little bit honored. Carry on.

don't worry about it dude, i just funnin' on some dipshit on the internet, no biggee

Drug dogs are power hungry, racist assholes.

Yeah you should read the psychological profiles of dogs that want to become drug dogs

i definitely read that as "Motorhead police" and felt a lot of mixed emotions

We've had a bomb sniffing dog train in our building. She seemed pretty nice.

They're the firefighters of dogs

add "drug dogs" to that thread where things are not as cool as their names suggest they should be

An opiate injected frankfurter does sound kind of rad.

So since we're all complaining about the police, what is the solution to bad cops? Or are we just going to complain about them?

princelumber, i cringe every time i hear a question like that because i feel the answer is so damn obvious that since you are asking probable means we're just not going to agree. it's like the analogy from a wingnut dishwashers union song: people who never wash their own god damn dishes are always the ones who ask who will do the dishes after the revolution...i wash my own dishes now, i'll wash my own dishes then.

the answer to bad cops is so very obvious in my opinion: once you put the work into actually building real community based on respect and cooperation you simply don't need them.

of coarse for my argument to hold water requires a few basic assumptions that many people will simply never agree with me on: like the fact that industrial civilization as a whole is unsustainable, based on violence & oppression, detached from any balance with our landbase, and as a whole needs to collapse for most of us to ever have a chance at building such genuine community.

yeah I'm not trying to be a dick, I understand what you're saying. It's like the ideal libertarian state; looks good on paper, but would entail starting society over from scratch.

fuck 'em, with a side of fuck 'em

He was off duty so it doesn't count. An extra curricular killing.

As if this story isn't messed up enough, the last paragraph really drives the point home. :-€

Some officers there “took exception to a police officer being charged or investigated,”

"the law is the law. except against my brother. i would never want to put him through that heinous bullshit."

jeeeeeesus.
thin blue line.
acab.

Yeah, obvs the police system needs an overhaul on par with that of the prison system. Doesn't mean they don't need to exist at all necessarily, but real structural change seems impossible without actually dismantling the current system and starting again.

With or without the cancerous privatization?

ShugE's solution indicates a perception of human nature that I simply do not believe the animal in question possesses.
There will always be people who desire power over others and there will always be people who want more than they need and are willing to do very distasteful things to that end.
I am no fan of cops, but I am no fan of people in the aggregate either.

the fact is there are too many people. if there were like 75% less people and they could just have their own space we wouldn't need cops or prisons! just run away from the bad guys, or send the bad guys runnin'!!!!!

shane shiner is on to something

Put your money where your mouth is, too-many-people people.

Well, I have reproduced, so I guess I am part of the problem.
On the other hand, getting what I would call good a good genetic projection into the future might do some good?

But I popped in here to say that SC hit the nail on the head.
I don't think history at all coraborate's shugE's optimistic veiw of human nature, as much as I am inclined to agree that idustrialized society is destructive to humans and the earth in many ways. Sure, like minded communities can and do mitigate much of the bullshit in our modern society, but there will ALWAYS be a power and authority dynamic at play. The idea behind a civil society is a basic attempt to guarantee a basic level of safety and security for all. Empowering some to enforce protection from the violence of potential oppressors, however, becomes a catch-22, as power inexorably corrupts the powerful. Blah.

i remain hopeful because i beleive if i am wrong then the human race will become extinct pretty soon

i'm all for killing everyone but a select few around the world, but what about that pesky mineshaft gap?

We can move to Greece and get in on the ground floor.

I for one, cannot wait to drown in blood.

it's like none of you fuckers ever watched TERRA NOVA

well then you haven't thought it all through soapy.

Sorey.

I've never been clear on this point. What is it, in the life of the median human being, that is worse today than it's ever been and indicates the species is headed for extinction?

What aspect of life in in the 21st century seems WORSE than life 600 years ago?

Soapy and I have the same fears.

Soapy Kittens
5/31/12 12:03 PM
I don't believe civilization has to collapse in order to start anew.

Sorey.

shugE
5/31/12 12:20 PM
well then you haven't thought it all through soapy.

Sorey.

But apparently he has read some history books.

It's funny that views like Shug's of how society should function so often coincide with urgent concerns about privacy.

My understanding is that privacy, as we think of it, really didn't exist and doesn't exist, in the type of society that functioned or functions without law enforcement.

That seems more or less accurate, danjohnson. If you read the diaries and accounts of people who set up communities that were honest-to-God attempts to embody anarchist communities (I'm thinking here mainly of towns in Spain in the thirties, which are probably the closest to really living the dream, so to speak, even if you count the Paris commune), the way they operated in practice, I mean, good God, talk about policing-your-nighbor, everyone's-an-informant surveillance society. I think one of the reasons police historically worked is so that communities could push the monitoring of themselves outside of their own sphere of responsibility, for reasons both historical and important psychologically, in order for notions of kinship and fraternity to actually take hold.

Let us not also forget that the vast majority of people are perfectly happy being told what to do and living their lives within prescribed or imposed boundaries. For every power-hungry ladder-climber there are a thousand people wanting not to think about what to do with their lives.

The Decider
5/31/12 2:32 PM

I think one of the reasons police historically worked is so that communities could push the monitoring of themselves outside of their own sphere of responsibility, for reasons both historical and important psychologically, in order for notions of kinship and fraternity to actually take hold.

kinship and fraternity pre-date police by, like, the vast majority of human history tho

It predates not knowing everything about everyone who lives within a mile of you, too.

Police seem like a reasonable price to pay.

in a society with specialized labor some of the people are going to end up on security

but police today are primarily security for money, not human beings (ie "maintain order" so the economy can keep growing)

i don't think the drug war and racial profiling and leniency for white collar crimes are doing much to promote the growth of kinship and fraternity

the police are just a tool and reflection of society - they will change when it does,
but right now our society is guided by assholes and pricks, so Fuck 'Em

word to that 110%

Nothing there I disagree with. Cosigned.

I'm on thirded base.

who here has actually fucked a police?

THEY do the fucking, missy.

In fuck, Russia polices you.

hahaha!

but police today are primarily security for money, not human beings

I'll disagree with that part of it, I think it's too simple, and now I'll excuse myself from this thread and forget it, because I don't feel like having a serious convo, but I'll still make this post anyway. Hi!

go awa y already, GOD.

The people in this thread who argue against the presence of police in society are basing their philosophy on the falsehood that non-state societies are somehow more peaceful than state-based societies. In the past thirty years, anthropologists have completely disassembled the idea that pre-state societies are egalitarian and peaceful, as was often posited in the beginning days of anthropology. These societies are, in many ways, just as violent as state/industrial societies. Articles and books published by the likes of John Tooby, Leda Cosmides, Robert Axelrod, Martin A. Nowak, Karl Sigmund, or Lee Dugatkin clearly illustrate this. This utopian dream world of a police-less or possibly stateless society is wholly naive as it completely denies human nature.

Of course, this doesn't mean that there are problems with police abuse. But let's not get into utopian fantasy lands... they almost always lead to widespread suffering.

well done, Maltese. Bravo.

i'm arguing against all civilization...including utopian ones.

I'm pretty sure there are a lot of things you'd miss about civilization.

Like living past 30.

in soviet lack of civilization, existence past 30 misses YOU

I got a note asking me out on a date once while I was at work from a police.

When confronted with the idea of actually fucking a police, I couldn't. Not even an innocent date.

You're under arrest.

SEXY ARREST.

I like how everytime someone tries to honestly engage shuge in a debate he just defaults to ” the earth is going to blow up anyway! kill society! I'm teaching my kid shoplifting and karate! Anarchy rules!”

i call bullshit on that.

shugE
4/06/12 7:41 AM

the answer to bad cops is so very obvious in my opinion: once you put the work into actually building real community based on respect and cooperation you simply don't need them.

shugE
5/31/12 6:52 PM

i'm arguing against all civilization...including utopian ones.

Community can exist without civilization.

Just not at a scale of more than a few dozen people in a given area.

COF: It's an election year, what else would you expect from shugE?

"oops"
-the police

danjohnson
5/31/12 10:19 PM

Community can exist without civilization.

Just not at a scale of more than a few dozen people in a given area.

---T.A.Z.

I have been working alongside police way more lately and asking them a lot of questions. I'm sure they are annoyed.

"Do you get tired of people making fun of your moustaches?"

"Ever plant evidence on someone?"

"How often do you guys get the chance to say 'Shit just got real'"?

"Do you guys ever high five?"

"Which one of you two is three weeks from retirement?"

my friend Bob is a cop and he's GAY you fucking piece of shit homophobes.

nice dude.

every time a cop is a mere three weeks from retirement, some crazy, mulit-faceted case will pop up that will doubtless drag him into another five months.

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case in point.
kudos to my TA, Grant's Tomb

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yeah man if there was no cops there'd be like 30% less awesome movies.

a world with no Lethal Weapon is a world i hope i never live to see.

it would be like a less cool Gotham City.

sorry i was away while folks were offended by my opinions.

to clarify: as stated above I'm not anti-cop as a knee-jerk idiot anarchist. i've thought my beliefs through quite thoroughly. civilization does not need to exist for there to be real community.....although such community would be something much different than anything we know of in our current civilization.

i do wholeheartedly disagree with 9/11 LAWomanMachine.

to maltese: i actually agree with much of what you say about pre-civilization and violence but still disagree with your conclusion. Industrial Civilization is COMPLETELY based on violence (if you do not pay your rent for long enough a man with a gun will come kick you out....that is why we comply in the end....that is violence). police do not make a peaceful cociety.....rather they increase the violence and do so to protect the wealth of the ruling class. also Industrial Civilization is unsustainable in that we take more from the natural world than our immediate landbase can provide....much in the form of finite natural resources we have become systemically addicted to (which will run out). i believe the destruction of this Industrial Civilization is necessary to prevent the extinction of the human race.

if i were to live in a post-civilization world i would have no need for police in my community. fuck the police.

i agree with soapy in that, while i don't particualrly agree with shugE, he is more than capable of explaining himself/his beliefs in depth and beyond the usual sloganeering most of us are accustomed to.
he definitely seems to have a consistent worldview, which i respect.
also, he's generally more accepting and polite towards others than many who disagree with him are towards him.
all in all, i approve of shugE. he get's my highest accolade: ("would smoke out with")

Yeah, bartertown sounds dreamy.

And it speaks to his character that dude backs up them words with a whole lot of good-doing. He has done much to improve the culture in this town, at least as much as the police.

to shugE: nature itself is completely based on violence.

pitpat and soapy are first in line for jonestown II: the captain buttsexening.

Except that all the help he's doing is just delaying the collapse of industrial society and prolonging everyone's suffering.

Like Constantinople or Rome before it the city has become a breeding ground for suffering and injustice. It is beyond saving and must be allowed to die.

Mannyapolis
6/01/12 4:29 PM

And it speaks to his character that dude backs up them words with a whole lot of good-doing. He has done much to improve the culture in this town, at least as much as the police.

from what i've learned on the internet, this definitely appears to be among his most admirable qualities.

aw shucks. thanks guys. yeah i don't mind people disagreeing with me because of coarse I might be wrong.

to maltese: yes you are right about nature itself being based on violence....but it's balanced violence that still allows the landbase to sustainably provide enough sustenance to support life. every species that breaks that rule of staying in balance with your landbase ends up extinct-- which i fear could happen to us. we've just used importing of resources (and the global industries involved) to prolong the inevitable consequences.

i would smoke a bowl with any of you any time.

i do wholeheartedly disagree with 9/11 LAWomanMachine.

But I never even made my point! And I still don't feel like doing it!

I'm obviously a little bit joking, and I don't necessarily think you should join the League of Shadows, but if the solution to the world's problems is, for lack of a better term, apocalypse, why not rip the band-aid off?

I mean, I get that helping people and building community is fundamentally good, but if the industrial hegemony is going to collapse, needs to collapse, it stands to reason that it's going to collapse from the top down.

Which means helping the less fortunate in the most fortunate country in the world is just giving America a crutch to lean on so it doesn't need to balance on the foot it's using to stomp the third world.

Or maybe "think globally" isn't actually a call to super-villainy. Whatever. I've got another hour at work.

you make excellent points i have thought a lot about danjohnson. i do feel like attacking certain bottlenecks of industrial civilization's infrastructure is a good idea....but as far as the community work you are referring to i think the most important aspect of my belief system is how it reflects in the day to day treatment of my fellow human beings. even those who will never agree with me about what is wrong still deserve as much compassion as any of us.

shugE
6/01/12 7:45 PM

I may be Ra's al Ghul, but I'm nobody's fool.

Yeah, everyone cares more about the people they see.

I maintain that some people deserve far less compassion than others.

so do cops

I guess cops are people.

1) people who live in my apartment
2) people on my Facebook friends list
3) the board
4) everyone else

Savage Clone
6/01/12 8:32 PM

I maintain that some people deserve far less compassion than others.

i agree. when you ask people if they could send a copy of any book to adolf hitler to read just before the start of the holocaust too many people try to name a book that might change him by reading it-- when clearly (in my opinion) the right answer is a book with a bomb in it.

The last xkcd was about going back in time to kill Hitler.

I wouldn't be able to without causing a temporal paradox, because my grandparents met at a World War 2 airplane factory.

I would go back in time to kill Hitler. Send me.

Don't do it! You're killing the Bargain Basement Bar!

wow this is some awesome dr who shit now

I remember when I was the only person who appreciated ShugE's articulateness. TRENDSETTER!

That said, self-policing anarchist communities I've observed have included some folks more than willing to be violent pieces of shit.

we're all presidents,
we're all congressmen,
we're all cops
in waiting, we are the workers of the world.
there is the elite
and the dispossessed.
it's only about survival.
who has the skill to play the game for all it's worth,
and reach an obscure kind of perfection.
let's try and keep as much emotion out of this as possible.
let's try not to remember any names.
we'll do it for a country,
for a people,
for a moral vision.
united we'll make them remember
our history.
or how we'd like to be told.
how we like to be told...

And we rock, because it's us against them
we found our own reasons to sing,
and it's so much less confusing
when lines are drawn like that.
when people are either consumers or revolutionaries,
enemies or friends. hanging onto the fringes of the cogs in the system.
it's just about knowing where everyone stands.
all of the sudden people start talking 'bout guns,
talking like they're going to war.
cause they found something to die for.
start taking back what they stole,
sure beats every other option.
but does it make a difference how we get it
well do you really fucking get it
No, no, no, no,
No, no, no, no....

for me informed right intention is needed for all people. if someone is trying to do good they may or may not be a cop. a cop teacher told me the other day that for every cop that is killed there are 7 that are fired.
distribution of wealth and allocation of resources is important.
there was little if any looting in japan after the earthquake.
if you kick out your old mother there's no violence, just shame.
japanese scour the oceans for food.
don't worry the federation is coming.

to maltese: yes you are right about nature itself being based on violence....but it's balanced violence that still allows the landbase to sustainably provide enough sustenance to support life. every species that breaks that rule of staying in balance with your landbase ends up extinct-- which i fear could happen to us. we've just used importing of resources (and the global industries involved) to prolong the inevitable consequences.


Yes, it is undeniably true that industrialized societies have, in many ways, poisoned the environment. But what evidence shows that this could lead to the extinction of the entire human race? And by evidence, I mean hard evidence based on objective facts and statistics, not anecdotal evidence based on emotion often culled from extremist left-anarchist propaganda. Perhaps segments of the population could suffer if the world grows warmer, but it is unlikely that the whole of human society will collectively be thrown off a cliff... more like humanity adapts to the environment around it. Also, what proof is there that industrialized society and a sustainable environment are entirely irreconcilable? It currently appears that industrialized society is not sustainable, but this lack of sustainability is not immutable.

Of course, the world looks like it is decaying if you base your opinions on anecdotal evidence coupled with the cognitive illusion of better reporting in the information age that makes it look like people have become more violent. But upon both internally diachronic and externally synchronic analysis of hard facts and statistics, existence in industrialized democracies is probably more peaceful and egalitarian than our species has ever seen. I should have pointed out earlier that not only are non-state societies not any more peaceful than industrialized societies but in fact they are usually far more violent. Studies by the archaeologist Lawrence Keeley, and others, have clearly shown this to be the case. When analyzing his data, Keeley showed that the many indigenous societies that he studied suffered about 20 times more casualties from war than industrialized societies in the twentieth century. As Steven Pinker once put it in a speech at a TED conference, if hunter gatherer societies ruled the twentieth century, 2 billion, instead of 100 million people, would have died worldwide because of war during the 1900s.

Of course, this does not exonerate what industrialized societies have done to native populations. Nor does it prove that industrialized people are more genetically superior to hunter gatherer people. It is more a response to the ecological environment that a society is in (industrialized economies have agriculture, hunter gatherer societies do not) that industrialized societies can live in such relative peace.

There is also the unequivocal and unescapable reality that, as societies break down, violence and rape flourishes.

The point of this post is not merely to quibble, but to point out the risible claim that human beings are naturally egalitarian and the false belief that an anarcho-primitivist philosophy leads to greater social harmony. Not only is this belief naive, it is dangerously naive. It threatens to undo centuries of human progress. Also, the means to justify the ends in the anarchist community are almost always violent, and thus violent means promote even more violent ends. Anarchism is not a solution to our problem... anarchists are the problem. Their absolutely puerile ideology threatens to harm the social fabric. This isn't to say that anarchism doesn't have its place in the philosophical discussion... it is one of those ideologies that people usually experiment with in their late adolescence and in their college years and the residue of which often positively colors the world views of people later in life in influencing people to be skeptical of authority and to be more reciprocal to other people. But anarchism is not something that anyone takes seriously as they grow more mature. People who remain with these anarchist tendencies after age 25 live in a state of extended adolescence.

ouch.

ok maltese here we go.

you are very wrong.

industrial civilization is unsustainable for one clear reason: it takes a certain amount of food from the land you live on to keep you alive. we have created a civilization where we take more to survive than the land we live on can provide. every animal that has ever done that has become extinct and this is not anecdotal evidence based on emotion often culled from extremist left-anarchist propaganda. these are facts.

your anthropological citings are false. in the anthropological community IT IS ACCEPTED that pre-civilization hunter gatherers ()more often but not always of coarse) did have more leisure, more art, and were more egalitarian than us. the contrary examples you cite are not respected like you claim. it is also well accepted at this point that there have most likely been many civilizations before on this planet....but none have succeeded. this one has succeeded the longest only because it has prolonged the problems associated with living outside the means of your landbase with importation and exploitation of the 3rd world. this is not a solution to the problem but rather a way of actually making the problem much worse while putting off the consequences to a later date. this problematic situation has also been made worse by the fact that our technologies that are at the foundation of our global trade economies are based on the extraction of finite natural resources. finite means that there is only so much and said resources will run out....but we have not gotten a plan B ready for when that happens (as a technological civization). clearly this could lead to the extinction of the human race. also it is good to keep in perspective that this civilization you are clinging to by bending facts and ignoring others has only really been here for an extremely short period of the human race's existence.

I have already stated most of this before and you obviously did not comprehend (maltese)....you should slow down, cool down, and read. I am not calling you names or insulting you. I am making intelligent argument based on facts. you are insulting me with your know-it-all rhetoric which is sadly common amongst those who are defending the undefendable addictions of our fucked up civilization. there is more than enough anthropological and scientific evidence to make my arguments perfectly viable so please don't be a dick to me.

anarchists are not the problem.....people who close their minds to unlearning lies they have accepted as truth are the problem.

No, these are scholarly analyses, not baseless ad hominem attacks. I must admit that I am also naive about this topic as well... what I want to hear are actual scholarly articles supporting these claims, the bulk of which I have not yet heard.

the anthropoligical analysis you are supporting your arguments with (from what I can tell) very well may be scholarly analysis but are still not widely accepted or respected by most in the scientific world as most in that world/community feel there is overwhelming evidence to refute them.

You know, I apologize for using the word 'puerile,' that was probably a little out of line...

It is still under debate whether or not hunter gatherer societies are more or less egalitarian than industrial societies. Some anthropologists believe this and some don't, there is no accepted analysis. Although, from reading people with far-left, to leftist, centrist, and far-right tendencies, I would almost say that at this point the people who say that industrial societies are more egalitarian have more points in their column. I'm not an anthropologist.

maltese,

i believe your argument to be full of assumptions. i also think you are wrong in your understanding of what is more accepted by the anthropological communities (i'm getting most of my info here from a sibling of mine who is a working anthropologist). we can agree to disagree.

you state above that there is also the unequivocal and unescapable reality that, as societies break down, violence and rape flourishes. this is a perfect example of your arguments being totally backwards in my opinion. i think it is much more accurate to say that there is also the unequivocal and unescapable reality that, within the confines of this civilization of ours, violence and rape flourishes.

look at indigenous cultures that have not been completely destroyed. yes there is violence there (as there is everywhere)....but no where near the horrific scale of what goes on within and in furtherance of our current industrial civilization....and also these indigenous cultures outside of civilization usually demonstrate an understanding and practice of living within the means of their immediate landbases ability to provide sustenance for their existence (unlike the imbalance of this in our civilization).

fuck the police.

I guess what I am asking for is evidence for the assertions that you make. I'm completely malleable and willing to believe them, but I just want to see the evidence behind it. Until then, assertions made without proof can be dismissed without proof.

Also, I think that, yes, what happens in our society it is bad, but it is worse on a per capita scale in many indigenous societies, at least from statistics based on the jivaro, yanomamo, mae enga, dugum dani, murngin, huli, and gebusi societies (this is from the Keeley study). It just looks worse in our society because of media coverage and the fact that we use bigger weapons.

So again, all I want to hear is specific examples. It would then make your argument more palatable.

reread what i wrote then.

what we both have here are opposing theories based on the evidence of the accumulated information of our entire lives.

there is no proof either way. we disagree. i've given plenty of specific examples of evidence to support what i believe...and much of the active anthropologic community agrees with me.

also on your claims regarding indiginous cultures and use of information from lawrence keeley's study: just because a society is referred to as indigenous does not meas they are pre-civilization. there have been countless civilizations in the past and many anthropologists would assert that most of the warring cultures in the keeley study meet the criteria of being considered a civilization (domestication, trade, division of labor, urbanization, etc...).

so when you say that the violence in many indigenous cultures is worse than in ours (per capita)....you are making an assertion that is actually irrelevant to our debate because you are confused about what is and isn't civilization.

our current industrial civilization is one of countless that have existed. it is the only one that has not failed yet. i believe it is destined to fail. i believe there is insurmountable evidence that the sooner we bring down this civilization the better chance the human race has of surviving.

The lizard people are still thriving.

no the lizard people's civilization failed but they averted extinction by going into suspended animation deep inside the earth for thousands of years.

Reptoids left earth, we must follow suit to survive.

I didn't read any of the above volley between both erudite folks, but I do like to think back to people who put meat under rocks.

Yea or what shugE said.

you state above that there is also the unequivocal and unescapable reality that, as societies break down, violence and rape flourishes. this is a perfect example of your arguments being totally backwards in my opinion. i think it is much more accurate to say that there is also the unequivocal and unescapable reality that, within the confines of this civilization of ours, violence and rape flourishes.

It's true that violence and rape in our society is prevalent and bad, but numerous studies have shown that it gets worse when society breaks down. So I'm not disagreeing with you that your analysis of our society as being full of rape and violence I just think your solution to the problem is misguided and would only cause more harm.

industrial civilization is unsustainable for one clear reason: it takes a certain amount of food from the land you live on to keep you alive. we have created a civilization where we take more to survive than the land we live on can provide. every animal that has ever done that has become extinct and this is not anecdotal evidence based on emotion often culled from extremist left-anarchist propaganda. these are facts.

That's certainly true right now, but I doubt that its the case that it would be impossible for industrialized society to become more sustainable in the future. No need for an overthrow of society.

there is no proof either way. we disagree. i've given plenty of specific examples of evidence to support what i believe

No you haven't. You haven't cited any studies, sources, given any statistics, or showed examples of pre-civilized societies that are better than industrial civilization. You've only given anecdotal evidence.


and much of the active anthropologic community agrees with me.

That's debatable.

also on your claims regarding indiginous cultures and use of information from lawrence keeley's study: just because a society is referred to as indigenous does not meas they are pre-civilization. there have been countless civilizations in the past and many anthropologists would assert that most of the warring cultures in the keeley study meet the criteria of being considered a civilization (domestication, trade, division of labor, urbanization, etc...).

I guess I'm not understanding what you want to go back to then. It almost seems like some kind of pre-human state as trade and division of labor, at least to my knowledge, are universals of human nature. At least the latter is. Also, which warring cultures in Keeley study meet the criteria of being considered a civilization? If you know... I'm not expecting that you have to know.

so when you say that the violence in many indigenous cultures is worse than in ours (per capita)....you are making an assertion that is actually irrelevant to our debate because you are confused about what is and isn't civilization.

No. I'm not confused and it is not irrelevant. The evidence just shows that overthrowing society would probably make it worse. Again, I agree with your assertion that violence is a problem in our society, I just cite the Keeley study to show that your attempts to overthrow society would probably make the world a worse place to live in. There are better solutions, like reforming society, than overthrowing it.

</bow>

I also think about Men hanging out all in the smokehouses and how genders pretty much stayed homogeneous.

But really, the most successful and powerful anarchists on earth are currently running the GOP, and that's the best damned argument against anarchism I can think of. The problem isn't the rule of law. The problem is a lack of law.

YES

Or a lack of law applied equally.

Four more laws!!!! Four more laws!!

this entire argument needs some basis of agreement. defining civilization could be a start.

here's an excerpt from the book Endgame by Derrick Jensen (one of the most relevant books i can think of to my argument here):

If I’m going to contemplate the collapse of civilization, I need to define what it is. I looked in some dictionaries. Webster’s calls civilization “a high stage of social and cultural development.” The Oxford English Dictionary describes it as “a developed or advanced state of human society.” All the other dictionaries I checked were similarly laudatory. These definitions, no matter how broadly shared, helped me not in the slightest. They seemed to me hopelessly sloppy. After reading them, I still had no idea what the hell a civilization is: define high, developed, or advanced, please. The definitions, it struck me, are also extremely self-serving: can you imagine writers of dictionaries willingly classifying themselves as members of “a low, undeveloped, or backward state of human society”?

I suddenly remembered that all writers, including writers of dictionaries, are propagandists, and I realized that these definitions are, in fact, bite-sized chunks of propaganda, concise articulations of the arrogance that has led those who believe they are living in the most advanced—and best—culture to attempt to impose by force this way of being on all others.

I would define a civilization much more precisely, and I believe more usefully, as a culture—that is, a complex of stories, institutions, and artifacts— that both leads to and emerges from the growth of cities (civilization, see civil: from civis, meaning citizen, from Latin civitatis, meaning city-state), with cities being defined—so as to distinguish them from camps, villages, and so on—as people living more or less permanently in one place in densities high enough to require the routine importation of food and other necessities of life. Thus a Tolowa village five hundred years ago where I live in Tu’nes (meadow long in the Tolowa tongue), now called Crescent City, California, would not have been a city, since the Tolowa ate native salmon, clams, deer, huckleberries, and so on, and had no need to bring in food from outside. Thus, under my definition, the Tolowa, because their way of living was not characterized by the growth of city-states, would not have been civilized. On the other hand, the Aztecs were. Their social structure led inevitably to great city-states like Iztapalapa and Tenochtitlán, the latter of which was, when Europeans first encountered it, far larger than any city in Europe, with a population five times that of London or Seville. Shortly before razing Tenochtitlán and slaughtering or enslaving its inhabitants, the explorer and conquistador Hernando Cortés remarked that it was easily the most beautiful city on earth. Beautiful or not, Tenochtitlán required, as do all cities, the (often forced) importation of food and other resources. The story of any civilization is the story of the rise of city-states, which means it is the story of the funneling of resources toward these centers (in order to sustain them and cause them to grow), which means it is the story of an increasing region of unsustainability surrounded by an increasingly exploited countryside.

German Reichskanzler Paul von Hindenburg described the relationship perfectly: “Without colonies no security regarding the acquisition of raw materials, without raw materials no industry, without industry no adequate standard of living and wealth. Therefore, Germans, do we need colonies.”

Of course someone already lives in the colonies, although that is evidently not of any importance.

But there’s more. Cities don’t arise in political, social, and ecological vacuums. Lewis Mumford, in the second book of his extraordinary two-volume Myth of the Machine, uses the term civilization “to denote the group of institutions that first took form under kingship. Its chief features, constant in varying proportions throughout history, are the centralization of political power, the separation of classes, the lifetime division of labor, the mechanization of production, the magnification of military power, the economic exploitation of the weak, and the universal introduction of slavery and forced labor for both industrial and military purposes.”(The anthropologist and philosopher Stanley Diamond put this a bit more succinctly when he noted, “Civilization originates in conquest abroad and repression at home.”) These attributes, which inhere not just in this culture but in all civilizations, make civilization sound pretty bad. But, according to Mumford, civilization has another, more benign face as well. He continues, “These institutions would have completely discredited both the primal myth of divine kingship and the derivative myth of the machine had they not been accompanied by another set of collective traits that deservedly claim admiration: the invention and keeping of the written record, the growth of visual and musical arts, the effort to widen the circle of communication and economic intercourse far beyond the range of any local community: ultimately the purpose to make available to all men [sic] the discoveries and inventions and creations, the works of art and thought, the values and purposes that any single group has discovered.”

Much as I admire and have been influenced by Mumford’s work, I fear that when he began discussing civilization’s admirable face he fell under the spell of the same propaganda promulgated by the lexicographers whose work I consulted: that this culture really is “advanced,” or “higher.” But if we dig beneath this second, smiling mask of civilization—the belief that civilization’s visual or musical arts, for example, are more developed than those of noncivilized peo-ples—we find a mirror image of civilization’s other face, that of power. For example, it wouldn’t be the whole truth to say that visual and musical arts have simply grown or become more highly advanced under this system; it’s more true that they have long ago succumbed to the same division of labor that characterizes this culture’s economics and politics. Where among traditional indigenous people—the “uncivilized”—songs are sung by everyone as a means to bond members of the community and celebrate each other and their land-base, within civilization songs are written and performed by experts, those with “talent,” those whose lives are devoted to the production of these arts. There’s no reason for me to listen to my neighbor sing (probably off-key) some amateurish song of her own invention when I can pop in a CD of Beethoven, Mozart, or Lou Reed (okay, so Lou Reed sings off-key, too, but I like it). I’m not certain I’d characterize the conversion of human beings from participants in the ongoing creation of communal arts to more passive consumers of artistic products manufactured by distant experts—even if these distant experts are really talented—as a good thing.

I could make a similar argument about writing, but Stanley Diamond beat me to it: “Writing was one of the original mysteries of civilization, and it reduced the complexities of experience to the written word. Moreover, writing provides the ruling classes with an ideological instrument of incalculable power. The word of God becomes an invincible law, mediated by priests; therefore, respond the Iroquois, confronting the European: ‘Scripture was written by the Devil.’ With the advent of writing, symbols became explicit; they lost a certain richness. Man’s word was no longer an endless exploration of reality, but a sign that could be used against him. ...For writing splits consciousness in two ways—it becomes more authoritative than talking, thus degrading the meaning of speech and eroding oral tradition; and it makes it possible to use words for the political manipulation and control of others. Written signs supplant memory; an official, fixed, and permanent version of events can be made. If it is written, in early civilizations [and I would suggest, now], it is bound to be true.”

I have two problems, also, with Mumford’s claim that the widening of communication and economic intercourse under civilization benefits people as a whole. The first is that it presumes that uncivilized people do not communicate or participate in economic transactions beyond their local communities. Many do. Shells from the Northwest Coast found their way into the hands of Plains Indians, and buffalo robes often ended up on the coast. (And let’s not even mention noncivilized people communicating with their nonhuman neighbors, something rarely practiced by the civilized: talk about restricting yourself to your own community!) In any case, I’m not certain that the ability to send emails back and forth to Spain or to watch television programs beamed out of Los Angeles makes my life particularly richer. It’s far more important, useful, and enriching, I think, to get to know my neighbors. I’m frequently amazed to find myself sitting in a room full of fellow human beings, all of us staring at a box watching and listening to a story concocted and enacted by people far away. I have friends who know Seinfeld’s neighbors better than their own. I, too, can get lost in valuing the unreality of the distant over that which surrounds me every day. I have to confess I can navigate the mazes of the computer game Doom 2: Hell on Earth far better than I can find my way along the labyrinthine game trails beneath the trees outside my window, and I understand the intricacies of Microsoft Word far better than I do the complex dance of rain, sun, predators, prey, scavengers, plants, and soil in the creek a hundred yards away. The other night, I wrote till late, and finally turned off my computer to step outside and say goodnight to the dogs. I realized, then, that the wind was blowing hard through the tops of the redwood trees, and the trees were sighing and whispering. Branches were clashing, and in the distance I heard them cracking. Until that moment I had not realized such a symphony was taking place so near, much less had I gone out to participate in it, to feel the wind blow my hair and to feel the tossed rain hit me in the face. All of the sounds of the night had been drowned out by the monotone whine of my computer’s fan. Just yesterday I saw a pair of hooded mergansers playing on the pond outside my bedroom. Then last night I saw a television program in which yet another lion chased yet another zebra. Which of those two scenes makes me richer? This perceived widening of communication is just another replication of the problem of the visual and musical arts, because given the impulse for centralized control that motivates civilization, widening communication in this case really means reducing us from active participants in our own lives and in the lives of those around us to consumers sucking words and images from some distant sugar tit.

I have another problem with Mumford’s statement. In claiming that the widening of communication and economic intercourse are admirable, he seems to have forgotten—and this is strange, considering the sophistication of the rest of his analysis—that this widening can only be universally beneficial when all parties act voluntarily and under circumstances of relatively equivalent power. I’d hate to have to make the case, for example, that the people of Africa—per-haps 100 million of whom died because of the slave trade, and many more of whom find themselves dispossessed and/or impoverished today—have benefited from their “economic intercourse” with Europeans. The same can be said for Aborigines, Indians, the people of pre-colonial India, and so on.

I want to re-examine one other thing Mumford wrote, in part because he makes an argument for civilization I’ve seen replicated so many times elsewhere, and that actually leads, I think, to some of the very serious problems we face today. He concluded the section I quoted above, and I reproduce it here just so you don’t have to flip back a couple of pages: “ultimately the purpose [is] to make available to all men [sic] the discoveries and inventions and creations, the works of art and thought, the values and purposes that any single group has discovered.” But just as a widening of economic intercourse is only beneficial to everyone when all exchanges are voluntary, so, too, the imposition of one group’s values and purposes onto another, or its appropriation of the other’s discoveries, can lead only to the exploitation and diminution of the latter in favor of the former. That this “exchange” helps all was commonly argued by early Europeans in America, as when Captain John Chester wrote that the Indians were to gain “the knowledge of our faith,” while the Europeans would harvest “such ritches as the country hath.”It was argued as well by American slave owners in the nineteenth century: philosopher George Fitzhugh stated that “slavery educates, refines, and moralizes the masses by bringing them into continual intercourse with masters of superior minds, information, and morality.”And it’s just as commonly argued today by those who would teach the virtues of blue jeans, Big Macs™, Coca-Cola™, Capitalism™, and Jesus Christ™ to the world’s poor in exchange for dispossessing them of their landbases and forcing them to work in sweatshops.

Another problem is that Mumford’s statement reinforces a mindset that leads inevitably to unsustainability, because it presumes that discoveries, inventions, creations, works of art and thought, and values and purposes are transposable over space, that is, that they are separable from both the human context and landbase that created them. Mumford’s statement unintentionally reveals perhaps more than anything else the power of the stories that hold us in thrall to the machine, as he put it, that is civilization: even in brilliantly dissecting the myth of this machine, Mumford fell back into that very same myth by seeming to implicitly accept the notion that ideas or works of art or discoveries are like tools in a toolbox, and can be meaningfully and without negative consequence used out of their original context: thoughts, ideas, and art as tools rather than as tapestries inextricably woven from and into a community of human and nonhuman neighbors. But discoveries, works of thought, and purposes that may work very well in the Great Plains may be harmful in the Pacific Northwest, and even moreso in Hawai’i. To believe that this potential transposition is positive is the same old substitution of what is distant for what is near: if I really want to know how to live in Tu’nes, I should pay attention to Tu’nes.

There’s another problem, though, that trumps all of these others. It has to do with a characteristic of this civilization unshared even by other civilizations. It is the deeply and most-often-invisibly held beliefs that there is really only one way to live, and that we are the one-and-only possessors of that way. It becomes our job then to propagate this way, by force when necessary, until there are no other ways to be. Far from being a loss, the eradication of these other ways to be, these other cultures, is instead an actual gain, since Western Civilization is the only way worth being anyway: we’re doing ourselves a favor by getting rid of not only obstacles blocking our access to resources but reminders that other ways to be exist, allowing our fantasy to sidle that much closer to reality; and we’re doing the heathens a favor when we raise them from their degraded state to join the highest, most advanced, most developed state of society. If they don’t want to join us, simple: we kill them. Another way to say all of this is that something grimly alchemical happens when we combine the arrogance of the dictionary definition, which holds this civilization superior to all other cultural forms; hypermilitarism, which allows civilization to expand and exploit essentially at will; and a belief, held even by such powerful and relentless critics of civilization as Lewis Mumford, in the desirability of cosmopolitanism, that is, the transposability of discoveries, values, modes of thought, and so on over time and space. The twentieth-century name for that grimly alchemical transmutation is genocide: the eradication of cultural difference, its sacrifice on the altar of the one true way, on the altar of the centralization of perception, the conversion of a multiplicity of moralities all dependent on location and circumstance to one morality based on the precepts of the ever-expanding machine, the surrender of individual perception (as through writing and through the conversion of that and other arts to consumables) to predigested perceptions, ideas, and values imposed by external authorities who with all their hearts—or what’s left of them—believe in, and who benefit by, the centralization of power. Ultimately, then, the story of this civilization is the story of the reduction of the world’s tapestry of stories to only one story, the best story, the real story, the most advanced story, the most developed story, the story of the power and the glory that is Western Civilization.

why is everyone spelling "coarse" wrong? It's "Course". of course

When in the coarse human events...

really rough events.

this conversation has been actually pretty civil when it comes to all that. similar conversations on here a few years ago got pretty childish though.

i think some of us just need to agree to disagree. it's cool. fuck the police!

I'm not following this back and forth and back very closely for various reasons but, regarding Steven Pinker, in The Better Angels of Our Nature he attempts and, in my opinion, largely succeeds in demonstrating an analysis of historical trends of violence using only stats and other hard data. The first section is worth a read if you're interested in this issue. His basic premise? The contemporary West (especially Europe) is literally the most peaceful place to live that has ever existed (aside from a few odd pre-literate communities).

I'm totally with garyburrito. I've been doing a lot of reading about this topic lately and it just amazes me when I read somebody like Pinker how he can cite over a hundred scientific studies to prove his point using all kinds of hard facts and then read his detractors and see nothing more than effete speculation.

i don't see it that way. john zerzan layed some fantastic groundwork on anti-civilation theory...and jensen's endgame is great with it's 20-some well explained premises.

Well, Yeah. If Pinker simply multiplied 100 million by 20 and called it a day, that'd be dum. He's certainly more through and convincing in his book, fwiw.

^yes! go bury your meat under rocks! put hot rocks in skinned bags to heat shit up!

Interesting you should ask because, as I recall, he does mention the rate of incarceration in the US as, perhaps, a factor in declining rates of violence...I remember this because I was uneasy with the idea that increased incarceration could provide a net benefit to society. Pinker doesn't place any value on this observation, btw. That wouldn't be his style.

But, though I can't quite recall his precise definition of violence, I'm pretty sure that incarceration wouldn't apply. Also, it bears mentioning that he is less impressed with the American approaches toward violence than the European.

He's talked about the US prison population being a problem... he criticizes the US a lot. I'm personally not sure if he's ever considered that violence... probably not. I can't say I agree with the man on everything. He's definitely more of a fan of Canadian/Western Europe style democracies.

imprisoning people against their will isn't violence?

Aren't the statistics regarding the 20th century skewed by World War II, particularly if you define it as including the Japanese genocide in China from 1931 onwards, and totalitarian state violence and/or genocide from the 1930s to the 1960s in the USSR, Germany, and China?

In other words, major, well-documented events and sequences of events that arguably aren't typical of the average level of violence of 20th-century "civilization", are confined to large but definable geographic areas, and account for the majority of violent deaths in the period.

And it's easy enough to imagine plausible circumstances where some or all of those things wouldn't have happened - I certainly don't believe the Holocaust, Stalin's great terror, or the Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere were inevitable.

AHHHHH, okay, shugE, once you mentioned zerzan it painted a much clearer picture for me of where you're coming from, intellectually, on this stuff. Zerzan is a good example of someone who I think makes some very well-reasoned arguments, but they tend to be predicated on (in my own humble opinion) views of human nature, society, and civilization that are rather contested, to put it mildly. His whole division of primitive and civilized seems fairly off-the-mark, especially when it comes to his fairly baseless assertion that primtive societies were non-alienated and egaqlitarian, which is the foundation for his entire critique of civilization, so I guess it's kind of a question of whether you swallow that or not as to whether you follow him down the rabbit hole from there on out. He has some nicely written stuff, and again, I like some of his more pithy diatribes, but I have a disagreement with his preconditions.
Which also explains, I think, the confusion between your and maltese's points. Your views of anthropology are coming from one school, not anthropology as a whole, and folks diagreeing with you are taking the points from some other schools of thought. Obviously some political interpretations are going to be disparate when there's disagreement happening there, but just trying to help sort out the camps for folks who are curious about this sort of thing. Yay debate. :)

i think you got me wrong The Decider, i actually agree on much of your criticism of zerzan....i just feel he did a great job of saying part of the groundwork that others have used to further exploring anti-civilization theory-- without his primitivist stuff.

maltese
6/01/12 4:30 PM
to shugE: nature itself is completely based on violence.

I'm going to only comment on this one little thing: Violence is a construct of man.

no war but class war.

garyburrito
6/02/12 4:58 PM

The contemporary West (especially Europe) is literally the most peaceful place to live that has ever existed (aside from a few odd pre-literate communities).

sure Europe is really nice
but the violence of Europe is not contained just in Europe
plenty of the violence in the middle east, africa, and south america is very clearly caused by europe

comparing the violence of one region at one time to another region in another time is not a very useful comparison

I'm going to only comment on this one little thing: Violence is a construct of man.

um...that's a nice quote and all but...wait a second, do i really have to say anything to prove how ridiculous this is? harmony is like the exception to the rule when it comes to living things.

violence is hardly anything new or human-made. it's living unsustainably outside the means of our landbase's ability to support that has only been done by extinct species and now us.

how about the violence of people being wage slaves? or sex slaves?
of cancer and heart disease?
of domestic abuse or substance abuse?
being an illegal immigrant?

the toll of civilization is not just the dead or maimed

most of those are simply symptoms of our civilization

agreed. and sure, people suck. they fuck up the earth. each other. other creatures. pretty much everything. but the notion that the "state of nature" is some beautiful harmonious thing that civilization has fucked with is ludicrous. civilization is a result of the state of nature. you can't weed a garden and expect weeds to stop growing back.

haha

No one that I'm aware of would ever claim that incarcerations, economic colonialism, sexual economies, etc... aren't forms of violence. So is that one time my buddy farted in my face for a laff. Of course there are degrees of violence and anyone who claims otherwise deserves a kick in the 'nads.

But Pinker, in establishing a data set that might reveal some valuable historical trends, chose to limit his definition to "homicide." (At least in the first section of his book...he actually goes on to discuss the rights revolution and even accelerated sensitivity to animal cruelty as anti-violent historical trends.) By establishing this sharp definition, he is able to show that homicides have declined everywhere as civilizing forces have spread.

This is not to say that, for example, Europe's influence in other parts of the world hasn't resulted in homicides, but in this world that is currently, in very significant ways, post-colonial, the death rates in Europe and all other parts of the world have dropped precipitously. This is a real trend that can be seen quite clearly in the data.

here's one huge problem I have with that specific argument:

Less homocide and this generally more peaceful aspect of the first-world society is at the expense of the 3rd world. If Pinker is claiming that overexploited 3rd world countries are enjoying a more peaceful existence he is simply not being at all honest about the criteria for coming to that conclusion.

Without much higher amounts of suffering & death in these 3rd world countries we would not be able to prop up our 1st world societies which are enjoying this peaceful existence you and Pinker are talking about.

The resources required to maintain our cultural 1st world lifestyles and standard of living is imported from the 3rd world because there is not enough of these resources here within our own landbase. the extraction of these resources is violence and results in extreme poverty, famine, starvation, disease, war, suffering, and death.

Our peaceful existence is fake.

civilizing forces include: monkey butlers, molecular gastronomy and right guard brand deoderant

IMAGE REMOVED - CLICK TO VIEW

does starvation due to exploited resources (by others) count as homocide?

Is there a timeframe for when all the resources will run out and civilization will collapse?

Because I've got a small debt with the gas company, and if it's all going to crash and burn anyway, I'd rather just spend that money on cheap whiskey.

Well, I'm the one who made the sweeping statement, based on having read his book, so there's that. I believe that's the statement made over 700+ pages.

His analysis isn't based on one set of data extrapolated to other locations and, ta-da, we have a theory. His data tells us that battle deaths (to use one relatively easy metric to establish) have gone down everywhere recently. You all made me dig my copy out and take a look at what he says about the developing world and here's some of what he says.

In Pinker's view, until recently, the markers of civilization were concepts like honor, glory and ideology. These three attributes correspond to the historical eras of clan, nation and movement. An irony captured in the book is that, until recently, civilization was a motivator of violence in that it rewarded violence through notions of glory, honor and ideology. Pinker relies on Kantian notions of peace - requiring democracy, open economies and international engagement. So, one of his "civilizing forces" is democracy (and I realize that democracy as it is understood is as laden with ideological baggage as anything but he's understanding it as a pure machine). When nations emerged as "post-colonial," there were struggles within the countries for power, money, resources, etc... Eventually, according to Kant (and Pinker), these countries, should they remain committed to the three requirements of open political, economic and diplomatic societies, will see their rates of organized violence continue to decrease. Encouraging these developments is a way to reduce violence.

Sometimes this kind of analysis skews a little to Friedmanny for me but I can't say I disagree with the essential premise - that engagement within and bewteen societies makes for a more peaceful world.

That's a quick summary of one point of international relations. more to the point of this thread, though, he spends a good deal of space with various communities of prehistoric hunter-gatherers and the evidence that archeologists have discovered regarding the ways they died. Many of these societies show a death by violence rate at over 10%, plenty at over 20% and several at over 30%. There doesn't exist a region today, anywhere, where folks are dying violently at these rates.

It's not violence if the person who kills you also eats you.

And I understand the logical path one follows to determine that a famine in the Horn of Africa is a form of violence executed upon the world's poorest by the world's richest (i.e. us and other super-consumers). Contrast this conceptualization of violence with the Atlantic slave trade or the Mongol conquests or the Thirty Years War or Hiroshima.

Plenty of sadness to go around but, in the largest scale we can imagine, I call it an improvement.

gary, i feel like not a single one of my arguments about why and how our civilation is unsustainable and actually based on systems of violence has been addressed by Pinker.
He doesn't seem to address issues related to importation and exploitation of resources to prop up our standards of unsustainable living.....he does not address the systems of violence that keep us going to meaningless specialized jobs that make the ruling class more wealthy, keeps us paying rent to landlords, etc......

also soapy I feel you are being quip about saying we can both keep our standard of living and simultaneously stop using those resources which are unsustainably imported at the expense of places far away.....when I feel that is impossible because most of our standard of living is dependent on those resources. everything from the textiles used in your clothing to most of your food to all of your technological frivolities all depend on systems of exploitation, extraction, and importation.

Isn't the ultimate question still just whether technology will keep pace with population?

Some resources are finite, yes, but some things that didn't used to be resources are, now.

and I feel it is a selfish and priviledged first world perspective to call these systems of oppression to prop up our standard of living. we (the rich first world) don't give those suffering, starving, and dying in the 3rd world a choice in the matter.

even if you don't agree with me that the imbalances of our global unsustainable markets are so harmful to our landbases as to head us towards global human catastrophe.....you must at least agree that it is wrong that a minority of the world's population has forced the rest to live in substandard (or worse) conditions so that we can live so comfortably.

Hooray! Everyone on the internet is right!

We now return you to your regularly scheduled pictures of cats.

i found this debate more stimulating than any fucking cat pictures

Dead police helicopter?

I just got a boner.

i need to go take a shower

Dead Horse Hella-Beater

i am so sorry Christ O Fire if you are bored by our debate and conversation.

yes I have repeated myself and rephrased my positions many times.

i wasn't calling you out specifically, more this thread. it is an interesting discussion but it seems to have exhausted itself and it's really a simple disagreement being stretched to convoluted extremes. sorry if i've been a bit rude in my interjections here, i've made it clear that i think your position is ridiculous, but that doesn't mean i think you're dumb or fucked up or whatever. i dunno. carry on, i guess, but i reserve the right to say whether i think something is wrong or boring or misguided or whatever.

you know what Christ O Fire? I totally agree with you there.

I'm not Pinker's literary agent so if any of you want a clearer view of his arguments, read his book. I recommend it. It's not unassailable but it's a serious attempt to balance some tendencies (both in and out of the mainstream) to exaggerate the level of violence we currently endure.

Also, the fact that (incidental) environmental degradation and unfair labor practices are now the form that official violence takes is quite remarkable.

no complimentary fondue table for customers.

I'm gonna read that book.

totes wrong thread but still an awesome non sequiter.

HomIcide, man, not homOcide.

oops did i do that? what a shitty misspelling.

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Of course I don't believe this to be true but thought it would fit nicely in this thread.

i thought this thread was bumped to discuss that off duty pig from andover who sucker punched a dude at a bar so hard the dude needed 2 brain surgeries and is still in the hospital.
protect and serve.

i hope said cop yelled out "YOU JUST GOT PROTECTED!" after the punch.

fcuk 'em

I hope Vinnie Q. Mobguy got to eat a tomato from his dad's garden while he was in jail.

This NYT Sunday Magazine feature, about the police informant that was used/abused in the totally fucked up murder of 92 year old Kathryn Johnston, is absolutely terrifying and nauseating to read.

A Snitch's Dilemma

in the last few years a few of our drug-addicted clients have reported that they were being used as police informants for crack buys. at first i didn't believe it - but after a few more independently told me the same story, i did. also the minneapolis police themselves reporting that they were using less to no undercover agents and using informants more...

personally i think it is completely unethical to use an informant who is trying to get clean. for a lot more complicated reasons than that.

Ya think?

Reminds me of the story about the college kid the feds entrapped into a terrorist charge by basically using undercovers to basically set it up for him and pressure him into gettin ginvolved.

Ummm.... fuck the police.

None of this should come as a surprise, but. . .

<a href="http://thephoenix.com/Boston/news/140923-shit-boston-cops-say/">Shit Boston Cops Say</i>

For at least six years, the Boston Police Patrolmen's Association (BPPA) has published a boldly bigoted official union newsletter, the Pax Centurion. Full of screeds against minorities, women, progressives, gays, Muslims, and even crime victims, its pages have long drawn ire from activists and union members alike. Last week, though, the mostly obscure paper finally broke into the spotlight: Mayor Tom Menino called the Pax "garbage," Boston Police Superintendent Ed Davis condemned the rag on Twitter, and several big-brand advertisers yanked their sponsorships.

<a href"http://6thfloor.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/07/02/behind-the-cover-story-ted-conover-on-the-murky-world-of-the-snitch/">Behind the article</a>

Haven't read it yet, but excited to.

That Pax Centurion thing is nuts. I've never heard of this before. How was something like this allowed to continue for DECADES? Boston really is a shithole.

whooops

Behind the article

emily: On the site where I found that, people were linking to similar newsletters from the Chicago and Seattle pd's, though not quite as over-the-top.

I was reminded of a former co-worker's story about a young cop she knew, who proudly displayed a bumper sticker at his desk reading "Defend America - Shoot A Democrat".

Freedom to speak like a jackass.

Feels good, knowing all that cutting edge military hardware is in the hands of folks such as these.

this thread needs a posi story where the police only act like dillholes instead of fuckwads

4-minute video: The Scars of Stop-and-Frisk

Produced by NYT op-doc series. Well worth watching.

guns don't kill people, hugs kill people

guns are so fucking lame i can't imagine how much of a loser you would have to be to own one

haha yep because shooting clay pigeons makes you a loser. Fuck off, Neight.

lots of decent people own guns.
blanket statements do a disservice to us all.

blanket statements do a disservice to us all.


haha

pitpat and his broad brush

AND, isn't this a fuck the police thread, why hasn't anyone fired that cop or put him on trial for shooting that poor girl that hugged him? He needs to go to jail for getting hugged.

fuckin' christ neight. Do yourself a favor and relax.

i'm glad someone caught my subtle 'joke'

hugging = .5 fucking

Diagram that for me on a picture of a baseball diamond.

it's like running around the bases and sliding into home without actually hitting the ball.

oh pl, ur a peach, thanks for eatin that one right up!



no but srsly guns a hell of stupid - like nukes if no one had one no one would need one

so lets get rid of them so stupid losers quit shooting ppl

yep ban them all. Works great. Ban everything Neight doesn't like.
Sorry bro. You're outnumbered. I have nothing to worry about at all.

except your guns KILLING YOU

Neight wants all political power to be held by people that can afford to maintain a suit of full plate armor and a clydesdale.

as a owner of nothing but a couple hunting guns, I feel I don't have to worry about my guns killing me. I bought a safe after I broke up with my ex.

is there a handle the guns could open from the inside?

i love their little black gun hands

man I'm gonna hide the bullets from those little bastards.

neight let's go take pl's guns away

You'd best get that constitution changed, son.

I hate it when my friends fight.

QUIT IT.

They didn't say they'd take away your rights, just your guns.

What if your rights were shot by a gun then what?

i need my guns for shooting cops in their faces

I'm with neight. Get a longbow.

tiny bombs for all

I thought the weapon of choice for aspiring revolutionaries was the wrist-rocket and/or brass knuckles.

Just sayin, the constitution is on my side, brahs.

North Coast Weedians Duluth Chapter

Hit em with a little bag of silver.

a "sap"?

Actually, don't. It's going to be the only money that works once the world blows up.

i feel like i've read some arguments about guns that quote the constitution and stuff man it's totally deja vu

That story of the girl who was shot in the chest while hugging a cop makes absolutely no sense.

They should change the name to "US Gunstitution"

She hugged him from behind and got shot in the lung? Is she four feet tall?

Exactly

maybe they were doing a standing 69.
TAI.

That's the only way this could have happened

sex cops

He was actually just a stripper in a cop costume

"well, he's dead, time to go round up the witnesses and steal their cameras"

Neight, that's a really similar situation to the one in the story I linked to above, "A Snitch's Dilemma"

terrifying shit

Still thinking about this & still pissed.

After police arrived, Darius's body remained on the sidewalk,
while his mother was questioned in a squad car for 2 hours.
During the investigation of the shooting, they searched Larry's
home again. Finding nothing relevant to the homicide, they
nevertheless proceeded to arrest Darius's older brother on a
ccount of truancy tickets.

police open non-lethal fire on a crowd of women & children

whoa.

Driving down to Kansas city I got pulled over for speeding and the cop did the whole take me back to his squad car ask me when was the last time I smoked weed pat us all down and search my car for NO FUCKING REASON spiel.

I was just about to link to neight's video clip. Stay classy, PD.

<a href="http://www.myfoxtwincities.com/story/19094451/2-minneapolis-officers-claim-department-corruption-retaliation">i dont even understand what's what anymore </i>

i dont trust the police, the police who are investigating the police, the police who are investigating those police, the reporter investigating all of them, or the news station

I don't even trust you.

oh man I don't either

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I like that. Winky D all the way.

Fuck this police in particular

handcuffed man shoots himself dead in cop car

SEEMS LEGIT

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"The mother said she was also told her son was shot in his right temple. But she says he was left-handed.  She says it just doesn’t add up."

CASE CLOSED!



25% of people shoot themselves with their non-dominant hand.

You mean 25% of people who shoot themselves, right?

or do they shoot themselves because they are using the wrong hand. Like "wow this feels awkward in my other BANG!"

obviously she means all people shoot themselves at some point.

no.
way.

25% of people who shoot themselves use their non dominant hand. Or, some use their dominant hand but shoot themselves in the opposite temple.

I got stopped for speeding in Nebraska a couple of weeks ago. When I saw the trooper, I was showing 56 on the speedo, It reads low- I was really doing about 62. He claimed it was 71.

Turns out they are on a quota system. He stopped me right at the end of the shift, about midnight.

So he was giving me a ticket, but on the ticket there was a signature line he wanted me to sign. By the line it said that 'I agree to show up in court at this place and time'. By that time I had already told him I was from out of state and did not have the ability to return, and so I refused to sign as I would be perjuring myself to a law officer. He insisted that I sign anyway or else I would goto jail.

I pointed out that the rear of the ticket was where you sign if you are pleading guilty but he was having none of that. Ultimately he allowed my to line out the 'I agree to show up' part but I was still forced to sign the agreement. I explained to him that he was personally taking on a serious liability as he was forcing me into an agreement that I was not willing to be party do thru duress.

This fits the classic legal definition of blackmail. I related the events to my attorney and he agreed that was the case.

I called the courthouse and they seemed to think that signing the front of the ticket was correct, despite the language of the agreement. So clearly either they are not reading the text with comprehension or they are rather corrupt.

Not wanting to fight such stupidity, I sent a check, but included a certified letter explaining exactly what happened. Its not likely to change things but I feel better...

A man driving a farm tractor ran over eight vehicles in the parking lot of a Vermont police station in an apparent revenge scheme, according to local reports.

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hahahahahahaha

Granby Killdozer.

NVR FRGT

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“It felt like I was in a Monster Jam rally or something,” witness Rene Morris told WCAX.

How come witnesses in the news always say "it was like I was in a Monster Jam?"

felt like nba jam te

How come he got charged with leaving the scene of an accident when it was clearly on purpose?

When I shoot myself I use my dominant hand but I sit on it until it falls asleep first. I call it "the stranger."

Airloom removes tampy pad.

oh no airloom's tampy pad. BUSTED.

Orey told her family she remembered the second she realized she was about to get shot.
"She saw the black smoke and the fire coming from the barrel," said Morgan. "When she got shot, her initial reaction was the pain and then she went to put her hand on the officer who shot her and he said, 'Get your hand off me.'"

one shitty cop fired in FL

florida wtf.

One down, a whole Florida-load left.

From Boris' Story: Gore said the deputies thought Orey's open gate looked suspicious, so they went into her backyard. The deputies ran into Orey, and one of them had a "spontaneous reaction."


So, they went into the yard because the gate was open? And shot her. What the fuck.

I am partially gratified by the Pensacola firing because the victim did not have to be an eagle scout before the asshole's superiors acted.

and nobody will ever know how many times cops get away with such brutality for every rare occasion that one actually get's fired for it.

No serious person has any doubts about how many times, and that's something.

boris parsley
8/23/12 10:53 AM

I am partially gratified by the Pensacola firing because the victim did not have to be an eagle scout before the asshole's superiors acted.


same here.
my mom told me about this story last night, since it happened in my good ol' hometown.

ACAB: Know it, believe it.

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Minneapolis Police Arrest Man for Photographing Arrest

I'm sure saying "fuck the police" before he was even threatened with arrest really helped the guy's case, there.

Yeah, 'he was asking for it', is that what you mean, Dustroyer?

that article is super well-written.
not.

yes obviously saying that to a cop is stupid and you are likely to go to jail. what else does that imply about police and our freedom?

treat cops like any other stranger with a gun:
don't escalate the situation, and gtfo as quickly as humanly possible.

in other words they (police) are not protectors of freedom and justice.

nope. just strangers with guns. that's scary.

I hope that overreactionary punk kid inside you will never die, t-rux.

But, yeah, that's EXACTLY what I was saying. Additionally, if that guy had just stayed inside and watched TV that night (or, hell, had never been BORN) none of this would've happened to him.

And, teddy, next time I see you in a miniskirt...I just don't know if I can be held accountable for my actions.

stay home and watch King of Queens, stay on the right side of the law.

damn dude, why would you say "fuck the police" if you haven't even been arrested yet? You're supposed to wait to say that until you are being unfairly beaten. ;)

All kidding aside, tho...there's asserting your rights as a photographer, and then there's telling the police to fuck themselves before shit has really even escalated. I mean, c'mon...saying "fuck the police" to a group of cops (You know, cops? That bunch of testosterone-addled authority junkies with hair-trigger temperaments?) and then crying foul when you end up getting arrested? Sure, it proves once again that cops are just looking for an excuse to arrest people and fuck with them, but let's not get too surprised at the outcome, here.

It's like pulling the tail of a dog that's already growling at you. Sorry you got bit, bro, but...DUH.

any sensible person knows that the cops are thugs.
thereby any sensible person shouldn't expect to yell at them to fuck off with impunity.
it ain't right, but the cops will always win. that's why they be thugs.

at least they didn't shoot him.

^

haha well I suppose people have been shot for less...

teddy i often read your posts and agree with you in theory, but i feel like you live in a total dream world. obviously it's fucked up and obviously cops are thugs, as pitpat stated. but "taking a stance and confronting the issue" in the middle of a conflict is just plain stupid. you will not win. you can't fight the establishment with your back is against the wall, and it's ridiculous to think that's an opportunity to successfully address corruption. that's just (justified) anger taking precedent over intelligent action.

but, you have to admit, getting a headlock and thrown in a car isn't really anything of note. He didn't get beaten or anything..just arrested, and he did commit a crime, by the books.
(not defending, just sayin')

Whoa, did someone just try to establish an argument here in a confrontational yet respectful manner?

I think you definitely have a point. I didnt watch the video, and honestly, I certainly DO enjoy spouting with a lot of bluster (someone else used that word here recently and I can't get it out of my head!) sometimes.

However, what many people might easily call 'trolling' (????) is nothing more than off-the-cuff hyperbole. I like to think I am writing at preeeeeeetttty muich the same speed that i am thinking, and yeah, people say stuff without considering all the nuances in reception all the time.

So, that said, perhaps this guy with camera was doing just that as well. Thinking without speaking, exhibiting spontaneous emotion, etc. I cannot blame him. When you face something terrible happening (i didnt watch the video, again)it's only natural to react as such. More than anything, then, I'm curous about the ACTUAL LAWS that might ionhibit such displays of ye olde "Free Speech" and how they relate to police arrest protocol.

slow down now I'm confused....he did get a disorderly conduct ticket, and I thought (plz correct me if I'm wrong) it is currently illegal to photograph police officers on duty.

Thanks for the info, SK. The ACLU bit is really interesting, especially the distinctions between audio/video.

ok I get it..it's not illegal to photograph cops, but it is illegal to get near them.
so basically all you gotta do is photograph from across the street.

"Thinking without speaking"


WHOA. That was an honest-to-gosh typo.

I'm sure there's some red states that have laws on the book.

ACLU says the jury's still out (hahahahahahahahahaha) on the legality of this shit.

It sounds more to me like he was arrested for disorderly conduct, which would be not "moving along" when asked plus verbally abusing officers, not "arrested for taking photos." Having a hard time feeling much of anything for this guy.

Yeah, i sorta get it now. conduct schmonduct, tho. am i correct?

it's almost as if cops care very little about the community and rather just want to play cowboy.
but surely that can't be the case....

don't call me Shirley.

I think this is one of those situations where they single out a guy for being a dick. Because that is indeed what he was doing. No idea what they were arresting this original dude for, but they don't need people up in their faces when they're doing what was, statistically speaking, probably legitimate work.

My take on this is: photographer was looking for a fight and he got one.

So basically, dude martyrs himself for 15 seconds of internet fame.

I just read this thread for the frst time.

Coincidentally, perhaps, I also heard Rage Against The Machines "Battle of Los Angeles" for the first time today. It's really quite good.

I cant wait until election season is over and to see who the new President is in 2000.

I think you'll like him.

My house got broken into in December. They stole my tv, playstation and an external hard drive. The thieves have been using my playstation to stream Netflix. Netflix confirms that they can supply the IP address to the police (but not to me) from which they can track down an address. The officer handling my case has refused to contact Netflix though because, “they could be pirating a signal.” Isn’t this akin to the fire department not showing if I told them I’m on the corner of 38th and Cedar an there is a fire down the street?

What have they been watching?

Buddy action/comedies and kids shows.

good taste at least

I remember working at a previous job in Minneapolis and someone ran out the door with our donation box, after they signed in register with an address.

The address was just down the block, but the officer refused to check it out since it was probably a fake name. GO FUCKING KNOCK ON THE DOOR.

man I can't believe the cops won't do that. Nice to know you are on your own. What Do you suppose the cutoff is to make the cops actually do something?

I’m pretty sure if you kill a cop or are a cop that killed several people then they’ll take care of it. Other than that it’s a crapshoot.

If only the people who stole your stuff were dirty hippies, preferably involved with the RNC protests...

A number of years back at around 8AM, there was a car parked in front of my house with two obviously drunk dudes inside still drinking cans of beer. I could even see that it was Miller beer.

I called the cops, I'm right next to a school, and there were lots of kids arriving for the morning.

Cops came, dudes threw the cans into the curb. Cops talked to them, I saw one of them grab a bottle of Mt. Dew, sort of pointing at it like "We are drinking soda, officer". Cops left. Car left 5 cans of beer in the gutter. I called them again, cop dept. said that the officers determined they were drinking soda. I was on the phone with 911 while the cops were there, telling them about the cans in the curb. Nothing to see here!

Sheesh.

Maybe goatcart should tell the cops they streamed Al Gore's sad earth documentary.