The Right to Physically Assault others?

[Radrook]

I have repeatedly encountered individuals who feel entitled to physically assault based on such things as:


1. Rejection of dating proposal
2. A certain facial expression
3. An opinion
4. Voting for a disliked candidate

just to name a few.

Seems as if they automatically assume that such reasons justify a physical attack.

Where does this presumption that one can inflict severe physical pain on another human being when that human being's behavior isn't what we prefer come from? One fellow who was rejected on a date proposal threw a bowling ball at a lady's head and sent her to the hospital. I mean, there are other alternatives to violence. So why this radical, irrational predisposition to hurt and maim others who are exercising their basic human rights?

 

[EmmaCat]

My Mom and I were looking here, and she saw this. Mom feels that people aren't taught to be good sports when they lose, and God is not in their lives.

I think as usual, she's right.

All good things
Emmy

 

[Radrook]

My Mom and I were looking here, and she saw this. Mom feels that people aren't taught to be good sports when they lose, and God is not in their lives.

I think as usual, she's right.

All good things
Emmy

Then the parents are failing them, the school education system is failing them and their religion if they have one is failing them as well.. All of these are supposed to inculcate values in a person via a socialization process that teaches civilized behavior. So it isn't the people's fault. It is the fault of those who are supposed to be supervising our human society to make sure that we are producing citizens that know better.

 

[rturner76]

Mankind has been struggling against his violent desires since Cain slew Abel. I don't know why God put that in us. I suppose it was useful when we had to fight off lions, tigers, and, bears to survive. It probably was useful when mankind was just a bunch of marauding, pillaging, warlords. Now that we live in relative peace, some people haven't adjusted to our new way of life I suppose?

 

[LivingWordUnity]

I believe that today's abortion culture has a lot to do with the general rise of violence in modern society.

“By abortion, the mother does not learn to love, but kills even her own child to solve her problems. And, by abortion, that father is told that he does not have to take any responsibility at all for the child he has brought into the world. The father is likely to put other women into the same trouble. So abortion just leads to more abortion. Any country that accepts abortion is not teaching its people to love, but to use any violence to get what they want. This is why the greatest destroyer of love and peace is abortion.” - St Teresa of Calcutta

 

[rturner76]

I believe that today's abortion culture has a lot to do with the general rise of violence in modern society.

“By abortion, the mother does not learn to love, but kills even her own child to solve her problems. And, by abortion, that father is told that he does not have to take any responsibility at all for the child he has brought into the world. The father is likely to put other women into the same trouble. So abortion just leads to more abortion. Any country that accepts abortion is not teaching its people to love, but to use any violence to get what they want. This is why the greatest destroyer of love and peace is abortion.” - St Teresa of Calcutta

I disagree.. The mother with no desire to have a child ends the pregnancy thereby hurting herself no question. However if she were to have an unwanted baby and treat that child with disdain and resentment, the child could grow up not knowing a mother's love and be a ruined person, prone to fits of rage and plagued by uncontrollable emotions if not afflicted by Feral Alcohol Syndrome or another such malady.

Prayerfully, any unwanted child would be born healthy, free from any affliction and given to a loving adoptive family so it would never be an issue.

 

[JackRT]

Mankind has been struggling against his violent desires since Cain slew Abel. I don't know why God put that in us. I suppose it was useful when we had to fight off lions, tigers, and, bears to survive. It probably was useful when mankind was just a bunch of marauding, pillaging, warlords. Now that we live in relative peace, some people haven't adjusted to our new way of life I suppose?

Evolution has shaped not just our bodies but also our instincts as well but evolution is a very slow process. We are no longer living in small family groups or clans but in a much larger society where survival demands co-operation rather than 'fight or flight'.

 

[Armoured]

I believe that today's abortion culture has a lot to do with the general rise of violence in modern society.

You can believe that all you like. It may interest you to learn that humans had been violent before modern legalised abortion. For quite a while, actually. There was this thing called the Trojan War, thousands of years ago. Several people hurt, and quite a bit of bad language.

 

[Armoured]

I disagree.. The mother with no desire to have a child ends the pregnancy thereby hurting herself no question. However if she were to have an unwanted baby and treat that child with disdain and resentment, the child could grow up not knowing a mother's love and be a ruined person, prone to fits of rage and plagued by uncontrollable emotions if not afflicted by Feral Alcohol Syndrome or another such malady.

Prayerfully, any unwanted child would be born healthy, free from any affliction and given to a loving adoptive family so it would never be an issue.

When you're motivated by a single issue, all issues start to look like your pet cause is responsible.

P.S. "Feral Alcohol Syndrome" I'm not one to pick on people's accidental typos, but I'm just pointing that one out because it made me smile

 

[Look Up]

Where does this presumption that one can inflict severe physical pain on another human being when that human being's behavior isn't what we prefer come from? ... So why this radical, irrational predisposition to hurt and maim others who are exercising their basic human rights?

Mom feels that people aren't taught to be good sports when they lose, and God is not in their lives.

Mankind has been struggling against his violent desires since Cain slew Abel. I don't know why God put that in us. ...

"For before those days there was no wage for man or any wage for beast, neither was there any safety from the foe for him who went out or came in, for I set every man against his neighbor." Zech. 8:10​

I believe that today's abortion culture has a lot to do with the general rise of violence in modern society.

I. Possible and plausible causal responses to the OP (Radrook) question(s) are not all necessarily mutually exclusive, e.g., sinful nature (cf., trunner76), misguided nuture (cf., EmmaCat), social trend / Zeitgeist (cf., LivingWordUnity), among others. I would here merely footnote the assertion that divine causality (cf. trunner76, Zech. 8:10) behind wicked violence does not imply either divine sin (as if that were possible) or the negation or moderation of human causality or culpability.

II. Using LivingWordUnity's comment more or less as a springboard, though moving into psychological motivation more than moral consequence and economic domain rather than abortion per se, I am reminded of Elliott Wave Theory (so far as I may understand it in part) to the effect that mass mood drives market.

In brief, when a herd of humanity (it's fractal, so comes in big and small groups in overlapping waves) feels optimistic and hopeful (or greedy), those emotions drive bull markets; when pessimistic and negative (or fearful), bear markets. Violence then is perceived as a kind of peer-supported trend, part of a bigger mass mood, bear market picture (whatever the size and scope of the human mass).

One can perhaps also imagine God behind the geo-politics, technology, and socio-economic, meteorological, circumstantial, neighborly, etc. forces--again not to ignore or dismiss the individual human level.

III. Or perhaps in more traditional psychological terms, an individual act of violence may (making no claims to be universally applicable) constitute a kind of release of pent-up emotions, perhaps transferred from many varied perceived offenses against oneself to a single object: One strikes an unknown member of a different race on the streets because one has been frustrated by a mother's manipulative boss and the shame of not being able to pay utility bills and being victim to a school bully ... and ... and. Moral responsibility for violence is not erased, but violent acts may have psychological motivation (itself perhaps partly comprised of sinful internal reactions).

And individual psychological motivation may be part of more broadly applicable trends as God moves human history forward.

 

[Radrook]

Mankind has been struggling against his violent desires since Cain slew Abel. I don't know why God put that in us. I suppose it was useful when we had to fight off lions, tigers, and, bears to survive. It probably was useful when mankind was just a bunch of marauding, pillaging, warlords. Now that we live in relative peace, some people haven't adjusted to our new way of life I suppose?

Well, I guess we must assume that God made such degraded psychological tendencies inevitable for fallen mankind as he also made sickness aging and death inescapable. But socialization can either strengthened weaken that violent predisposition. Unfortunately, in this satanically governed world it is being reinforced. It is provided as morally acceptable entertainment via games and films where the heroes are ultra violent and winning the game requires unmerciful violent concepts. World leaders resort to it when when peaceful negotiations bear no results. Nations are constantly preparing for it by increasing military capabilities. Kids who enter this realm of existence are similar to recently arrived extraterrestrials are quickly taught by us just how violence fits in here. So society is indeed a prime contributor to this pernicious attitude.

 

[rturner76]

Well, I guess we must assume that God made such degraded psychological tendencies inevitable for fallen mankind as he also made sickness aging and death inescapable. But socialization can either strengthened weaken that violent predisposition. Unfortunately, in this satanically governed world it is being reinforced. It is provided as morally acceptable entertainment via games and films where the heroes are ultra violent and winning the game requires unmerciful violent concepts. World leaders resort to it when when peaceful negotiations bear no results. Nations are constantly preparing for it by increasing military capabilities. Kids who enter this realm of existence are similar to recently arrived extraterrestrials are quickly taught by us just how violence fits in here. So society is indeed a prime contributor to this pernicious attitude.

I agree however this is nothing new. Many many societies before the modern age and even many in our modern age were reared in a warrior class society. For example every male Spartan was forces to join the army and their entire culture as a people was based on military prowess. The Assyrians 10th to 7th century BC, raised their children to fight and they conquered everything from Egypt to Iran through violence The Roman Empire. At the Battle of Cannae, Rome lost 48,200 soldiers in a single day in hand to hand combat. The Huns who were called "The scourge of God's fury" The Franks, The Vikings, The Normans, The Mongols, The Samurai, The Mamluks, The Ottomans, all throughout history these peoples glorified killing in military or marauding campaigns, finding death on the battlefield being the ultimate glory and a belief of a heaven for warriors for many of them. The children would have seen killing, beheading and torture. Even in the United States in the 18 and early to mid 1900's besides war we had violent behavior being glorified in the south with lynching's and beatings being a normal part of everyday life. Gang violence and free reign of domestic violence with no recourse for citizens.

I would say that though violence on TV, video games, and in movies is bad no question and gang violence is still bad. We are doing better than ever as a society about violence. We still have war in the Middle East and some small conflicts around the world that we probably aren't shown on TV but violence isn't a part of our everyday lives like it was when Genghis Khan was running around killing people.

I don't know, maybe I'm off base and it is getting worse. Who am I to judge. I'm no sociologist or historian.

 

[Kenny'sID]

One fellow who was rejected on a date proposal threw a bowling ball at a lady's head and sent her to the hospital.

They say rejection can be rough on some but, Yikes!

Fortunately, things like this are the expectation rather than the rule, at least that's what I've seen in my lifetime. Just like Bowling Ball guy there, the more insecure a person is, the more likely they can go bananas at the drop of a pin. At least I think that's the main basic cause of all the OP mentions.

 

[JackRT]

I would say that though violence on TV, video games, and in movies is bad no question and gang violence is still bad

About 25 years ago I attended a seminar presented by a retired US Army general. He pointed out that it is very difficult for most people to be motivated to kill another human being. This is a very real problem for the military. In a combat situation many soldiers 'freeze up' in various ways. Some simply refuse to shoot, others will shoot but not at the enemy and some others will simply go through the motions without actually firing their weapon. For example, following the Battle of Gettysburg approximately 11,000 unfired muskets were recovered. The vast majority had been loaded and reloaded sometimes over a dozen times but had never been fired.

In the mid 1950s following the Korean war this officer was tasked with finding a way around this problem. As a psychologist he decided to try desensitization techniques. Recruits were shown professionally prepared extremely graphic films depicting military actions that included soldiers being wounded and/or killed.

Did this approach work? Yes, it certainly did as witness the Viet Nam War. Some American soldiers were desensitized to the point that military discipline was broken and mass killings of enemy civilians occurred.

So, what was the point of his presentation? He pointed out that desensitization actually works very well but it is no longer limited to military training purposes. The population, particularly the young and most impressionable, are now being exposed to movies, TV programs, comics and video games that are far more graphic and brutal than the military films that were prepared under his direction.

His concern was very simple and straightforward --- we are in the process right now of desensitizing an entire population to violence and death. It should be no surprise to us at all when we see young people brutalizing and killing each other sometimes on a large scale.

Is this a problem that we should be concerned about?

I think so.

 

[jayem]

Violence is part of human nature. We all experience those impulses. Example: a driver in the lane to your left suddenly cuts directly front of you--no blinker, no warning--you have to slam your brakes to avoid hitting him. First, there's the immediate fear response--you feel your heart jump in your chest, your pulse quickens, and your muscles tense. Then you're enraged. For an instant, you really want to seriously hurt this jerk. But for most of us, it's only a fleeting reaction. Our inhibitions on acting violently kick in, and we vent our anger in some choice words of Anglo-Saxon origin directed at the idiot driver who nearly killed us. We're able to contain our violent impulses. But some people--probably due to a combination of how their brains are wired, and how they've been socialized, don't have these inhibitions on aggressive behavior. They lack impulse control. And that's what leads to road rage, and the situation described in the OP.

Statistically though, most data I've seen indicate that we are less violent than we've been in the past. The link discusses a fairly recent (2011) book by Harvard psychologist Steven Pinker on this topic.

http://isn'tsocietybecomingmoreviolent/Pinker/philosophy/violence.php

 

[quatona]

I have repeatedly encountered individuals who feel entitled to physically assault based on such things as:


1. Rejection of dating proposal
2. A certain facial expression
3. An opinion
4. Voting for a disliked candidate

just to name a few.

Seems as if they automatically assume that such reasons justify a physical attack.

I seriously doubt that a great many of these persons actually assume this or would justify such a "right" - I´m pretty sure most cases are a matter of poor impulse control.

 

[bhsmte]

I have repeatedly encountered individuals who feel entitled to physically assault based on such things as:


1. Rejection of dating proposal
2. A certain facial expression
3. An opinion
4. Voting for a disliked candidate

just to name a few.

Seems as if they automatically assume that such reasons justify a physical attack.

Where does this presumption that one can inflict severe physical pain on another human being when that human being's behavior isn't what we prefer come from? One fellow who was rejected on a date proposal threw a bowling ball at a lady's head and sent her to the hospital. I mean, there are other alternatives to violence. So why this radical, irrational predisposition to hurt and maim others who are exercising their basic human rights?

Most likely they have developed psychological qualities, that include a lack of empathy.

 

[Jack of Spades]

About 25 years ago I attended a seminar presented by a retired US Army general. He pointed out that it is very difficult for most people to be motivated to kill another human being. This is a very real problem for the military. In a combat situation many soldiers 'freeze up' in various ways. Some simply refuse to shoot, others will shoot but not at the enemy and some others will simply go through the motions without actually firing their weapon. For example, following the Battle of Gettysburg approximately 11,000 unfired muskets were recovered. The vast majority had been loaded and reloaded sometimes over a dozen times but had never been fired.

The same happens in combat sports with beginners. When guys go to the ring for the first time, surprisingly many are very reluctant to hit another guy in the face, even though it's just a sport and it's voluntary and the point is not to seriously harm the opponent.

I think people who have developed a normal sense of compassion towards others are instinctively reluctant to harm other humans, even in a situation where doing so would be justified and would serve to protect others.

Edit: And before I get a response with the standard boasting from people bragging with their natural born super killer instincts, I want to clarify that I was talking about impulse level thing, not meaning that it's totally impossible thing to do or even very difficult to learn to compartmentalize that impulse out of the way, even if one has it.

 

[Cearbhall]

I have repeatedly encountered individuals who feel entitled to physically assault based on such things as:

1. Rejection of dating proposal
2. A certain facial expression
3. An opinion
4. Voting for a disliked candidate

Yikes. Simply put, stay away from those people. They're not in their right mind.

 

[Radrook]

Yikes. Simply put, stay away from those people. They're not in their right mind.

One wanted to fight because she placed her son in front of the outward-opening store door and when I opened it from the inside it almost hit him. The door was plastered with advertisements and her son wasn't visible from my side. So I just opened the door to leave. She began shouting like a wild beast about my opening the door and would still not move her son. I was forced to wait as she angrily ushered her son in front of her still barking.

A few weeks later a man placed his son in front of a store door and it was raining outside and I was outside. I figured he would move since he knew I was trying to get in him but he didn't. So I tried to squeeze between the door and his son and he wanted to fight because my shopping cart came to close to his son.

Another was when I reported to a mother that her kids had just assaulted my son. Her response was that if it happened then GOOD! Also, that if I thought she was bad her husband was worse. That she was going to get her husband who was about to get out of prison to take care of me.

Another fellow hopped up from where he was sitting playing chess in order to intervene in an argument I was having with someone else who was hounding me and demanded I shut up lest he savage me. No need since if I was annoying him, [his belligerent friend wasn't?] in any way he could have simply taken the matter to the store manager. But he happily chose to take sides with his ethnic buddy and threaten violence instead. When I was about to leave lest I get savaged by the brute, I approached the other fellow calmly addressing him now in a calm voice and he, knowing he had the brute's back-up, also threatened violence. The observers, all good friends, smiled at one another with a smug self-satisfaction.

Evade them?

HOW?


Leaving the Earth?