News Las vegas massacre

[Friday]

Spoiler: For continuity purposes only

Interesting thought @scout86

So what was going on at the turn of the century in the US?

- Western expansion ceased. Both sides of the country were connected, with only a small island (Arizona & New Mexico) of territory left. <<< I suspect this is one of the biggest pieces, as we'd been claiming territory westward for about 500 years.

- The Civil War was a full generation distant (modern conflicts included putting down the boxer rebellion in China, Venezuela crisis of 1902/03 & lots of friction between Europe over various Latin American countries, US Panama Canal Zone, Philippines American War 1902, Gentlemans agreement with Japan, etc. See below).

- Roosevelt Corollary established the intent that the US was now "international police power" / Big Stick Policy / Interventionist (held for the next 30 years and we went isolationist in 1934) and would intervene in all European, South American, & Asian affairs as we saw fit.

- Big Govt. Domestically (We start churning out laws, law enforcement agencies, oversight agencies, at breakneck speed. FBI created , Food Purity -byproduct of paper 'The Jungle' & precursor to the FDA-, Monopoly Busting on one hand & Conglomerate Founding on the other, Child labor laws, Unions, WorkSafety, Health codes, Fire codes, public decency acts, trade commissions, railways acts, list goes on. Essentially? We started regulating *everything*, from the top down. USGovt, for the first time, really got it's fingers in every pie.

- Henry Ford revolutionized factories with assembly lines, & consumerism exploded with "ready wear" anyone could afford. From cars to clothes to plumbing supplies. MASSIVE change in everyday life. On every level. Similar to how the industrial revolution changed everything, 100 years earlier. Or how farming changed everything 10,000 years earlier. Or how tech is changing things now. Everyday life gets fundamentally altered? Society changes, every time. <<< I think assembly lines get missed a lot in major change, because we view it as a natural extension of the industrial revolution. Which it is. But the difference between "We can make a lot" & "People can afford it" is huge. Prior to assembly lines factories were supplying governments & corporations. Post assembly lines factories were supplying individuals.

- Education changed for the first time (in this country) since the 1500s in 3 foundational ways over about 15 years: Compulsory education, segregation by age, & factory line curriculum (which is a natural byproduct of age segregation, as students are no longer taught & tested on material at their own pace, but year5 does this, year6 does that, etc....nut we also went a little extra nuts about it because our entire country not long after fell in loooooove with standardizing & "how much better it made life for everyone"). This was a HUGE change, and whole libraries have been written on the sociocultural fallout from it. In no small part, because pretty much no one liked the long term effects. So about every 25 years we've tried to re-do our education system to have different effects, whilst still doing compulsory education, segregation by age, & factory line curriculum. (Standardizing, BehaviorMod, & TouchyFeely are a loose overview of 1925, 1950, 1975). The current generation has kind of exploded education-wise as (very) roughly / conservatively... 1/3 of today's children have been pulled out of public education and moved to private-homeschooling-online alternatives that all focus on multiage classrooms &/or individualized education. Clearly there are private schools which don't, but trending is massive, whether you're looking at Montessori schools or Prep Schools. IE reverting to what was considered normal education -for those who were educated locally, either privately or day schools; and not sent away to school- in the US & EU until the 1900s.

<PERSONAL OPINION> I've come to believe that Personal Accountability & Individual Responsibility as cultural aspects took a nosedive in the US in direct response to the change in our education system, advent of Big Govt., factory/standardized Culture, and then nail in the coffin nearly 2 entire generations serving in 2 big damn wars (no one has a chain of command as absolute as the military has a chain of command). Instead of learning to solve our own problems? It's always someone else's job to solve our problems for us. Whether it's not fighting your own -or anyone else's- battles in school (let the teachers handle it) to not fighting your own -or anyone else's- battles on the street (call the police, sue someone in court, report them to an agency); to not determining your own schedule (school bells to factory bells, it's a always someone else's job to tell you where you're supposed to be, when, and what you'll do when you get there), every aspect of modern life is a structured...thing...where YOU? Are never the top dog. You're just a cog in a machine, not responsible for following the dictates of your own conscience, but in doing what you're told, when, and reporting anyone who doesn't. :meh: Bystanders. To our own lives. Anyhow, I think this has been a gathering storm that kicked off roughly 100 years ago, and that we are seeing more and more of these "blame everyone else" & "make them all pay" revenge sprees as a part of that. Which dovetails with the change in crime types premise. However, I don't think that's the whole story. Just a piece of it. <BACK TO BIG EVENTS AT THE TURN OF THE CENTURY>

...lol... Or not. There was a lot going on. & my brain is about done.

 

[hodge]

I can certainly see the "blame everyone else" and "make them all pay" attitudes at work in terms of white people going after immigrants and people of color. In my own life, and people I know, we've always worked and paid our own way (except me, when the PTSD got me so bad in my 40s I couldn't work full-time anymore).

There certainly was a lot going on in the 20th century in terms of new regulations, thanks to the Progressive Movement, to which we owe so much. I trust you're not suggesting that things like child labor laws, monopoly busting, fire codes, health laws, etc. were a bad thing?

 

[scout86]

I trust you're not suggesting that things like child labor laws, monopoly busting, fire codes, health laws, etc. were a bad thing?

No, I'm actually not suggesting that anything is a bad thing. (OK, I think randomly shooting people for no good reason is a bad thing.) I'm not saying things were better before 1900 either, just that, among the many things that have changed, the inclination of people (mostly male people, actually) to kill largish groups of people in what amounts to public spectacles seems to have increased. And I'm wondering what the reasons might be. Google didn't let me read far enough to find out if that author has any ideas and my local library doesn't have the book. But, I'm curious enough I might work a bit more at tracking a copy down.

I really do think there must be reasons and I think it would be good to figure out what they are. It doesn't make sense to me that it's just access to guns, because people in this country have always have access to guns. Could be that media attention is a factor, but maybe it's something else. I'm seriously wondering if anyone has any ideas. We've always had guns and we've always had bad people. We haven't always had this kind of public mass shooting. (In the past, they were usually committed by law enforcement, the military, a mob, etc, not a lone wacko.)

 

[hodge]

Scout, my tiny town's public library is part of a larger library system and has inter-library loan capability, so maybe yours does too, and there may be a library in your system that owns that book and can loan it to you? At my library you just log in and request the title and it's usually in your local library within days. I can no longer read books, so if you can get it and can share the info and insights here, I, for one, would greatly appreciate it.

 

[shimmerz]

I'm seriously wondering if anyone has any ideas.

GMO's, prescription drugs, people zoning out in front of screens, disconnection from society (even though they say we are all more connected now with the internet), lack of accountability because nobody knows their next door neighbours even anymore, rage issues, f*cked up reality tv shows that dwell on crushing others as a form of entertainment, terrorism and apocalypse hype on a regular basis, most people having guns back in the day to protect themselves , which would have been a natural deterrent for wingnuts who like to kill people, being blasted by various sundry waves and frequencies ....

I could think of more, but goddam it hurts my head. Super interesting information Scout. Love where you are going with it. I will be watching this thread with interest.

 

[scout86]

My library has a system like that too & this book isn't part of the collection. But that doesn't necessarily mean they can't find it. (Books on mass murder aren't popular? Go figure!) Anyway, if all else fails, I'm going to check my favorite used book site. (It's occurred to me that I'd probably better hope no one has any reason to track my internet searches. LOL)

 

[Enaila]

I truly believe the biggest difference is the type of guns available to use. It used to be only military had access to semi automatics.

 

[Friday]

@hodge ... Oh Drats. I was hoping I deleted that before anyone had to slog through it. I'll undelete so things make sense in thread. Well, as much sense as my blathering on about sociocultural constructs allows for, anyway. I get sick and start spouting the obvious, at length. Shit happens, things change, everything else is affected by those changes.

.
There certainly was a lot going on in the 20th century in terms of new regulations, thanks to the Progressive Movement, to which we owe so much. I trust you're not suggesting that things like child labor laws, monopoly busting, fire codes, health laws, etc. were a bad thing?

And, no, not at all. Just that they're part of a very complicated organism. Those same things not only exist in countries where personal accountability IS still a valued and very present cultural trait, but are much stronger & more prevalent. So what's the difference between 2 nations? All the other parts of the organism all creating side effects and ripples. Like do you -as a culture- teach your children to wait for the light to change & look both ways? (US) Or do you teach your children to judge speed & distance & jaywalk? (Italy). Thousands and thousands of smaller lessons, inside of background environments, creating cultural norms (follow the rules blindly, vs situational awareness).

 

[scout86]

@shimmerz, the thing is, this seems to have started in the 60's & 70's, so it pre-dates the internet. In the early part of the 20th century, mass killings tended to be gangster related, which seems like a slightly different category.

The type of guns matters when it comes to body count. It doesn't really affect the willingness of someone to do something like this.

 

[shimmerz]

so it pre-dates the internet.

Yes, but it doesn't pre date tv. So I am thinking the influence of screened entertainment in general.

I am looking at the second article in this link and noticing a huge dip from the 30's to about 65? Then another dip in and about the 90's? Not sure of the accuracy of the data. Does it match what you have observed in the book you are referencing?

Link Removed

 

[scout86]

Yes, it pretty much does. The author said the data was a little hard to trust. They didn't keep this kind of record so much before the 60's. But, I have a theory. The first dip coincides with WWII, more or less and Korea & Vietnam. That kept a particular group of people occupied, true? I'm not sure that's a reason. Could be a coincidence. The second dip....Well, there was a dip in crime in general in the 80's that kind of coincided with "20 years after birth control was legalized". Interesting, huh? I heard this afternoon that the "average" mass murderer is in his 30's. I don't know that anyone has ever established a direct cause & effect relationship, but we kind of know what happens to kids no one wants, don't we?

 

[hodge]

@hodge ... Oh Drats. I was hoping I deleted that before anyone had to slog through it....

Lol, Friday. No worries. Maybe your brain just works a lot faster than mine does these days. My question to you was really rhetorical -- of course, I know you value child labor laws, etc. I guess I was just trying to get a handle of all the info you were throwing out. Don't mind me :-)