Violence as a contagious disease?

Jestor wrote: I havent looked at the TedTalk yet...

But I wanted to say that I have had about enough of that 'ren' fellow, not to mention that "Wescli" character!!!!






:woohoo: :woohoo: :woohoo: :woohoo: :lol: :lol: :lol: :lol:

Does that mean that I can stay for a while ... Or, is it out with me too ? :blush:

Ren-

"To call something a disease, you first have to assume that it's bad"

.. I'm not sure everyone assumes disease a bad thing. Disease (in my mind) is a part of nature (albeit a potentially deadly one) and similarly one could say violence is also a part of nature.

"Physical violence is everywhere. We kill plants and animals on a gigantic scale. Why is it that we consider physical abuse worse than psychological abuse? "You can break my body but you can not break my mind". It's worse to have your mind broken than your body. Yet people get away with manipulation all the time. You've even been manipulated into making it easier for them to manipulate you further: They didnt force the TV on you, you actually paid or it."

Yes I agree on the whole. Again, personally I consider damage to the mind worse than to my body.. Saying this though, I think we NOTICE physical abuse more than psychological abuse, partly because a) we keep our minds fairly closed off from one another and b) we don't realize how influencable our minds actually are (Agreeing with the manipulation idea you put forward). We don't understand our own minds much: People will more often open up and complain to their friends about the people in our lives who have hurt them somewhere, but much less often confront the people themselves. We often do physcological damage to ourselves..

"If psychological abuse is worse than physical violence, doesn't it mean that, if someone manipulates you and your countermeasures are a punch in their face, your are actually decreasing the abuse? (they cant manipulate you anymore, because you fight back, but you hurt them less than they hurt you...)"

Not sure I fully understood sorry? Seems like an eye for eye idea? Brings the question to mind- Can physical abuse be weighed in terms of pyschological abuse (and vice versa)?

"In terms of evolution, violence is very good. The fittest/smartest will always win, ensuring a high quality gene pool.
To call violence a disease seems misguided."

Violence or death sorry is good for the gene pool? In general (and in an attempt to be objective)- agreed. I'm sure there's been many conversations about the morality of that however. Seems again a part of nature.
To call violence a disease seems misguided... Excuse me, wordswordswords, let us call violence *LIKE* a disease instead rather than a synonym..

Orion-

""Nul ne sût si bien aymer, que luy quy s'y connoist en mal."

~ Alexandre Orion, 1544 à Lyon"

, Translation sorry mate? I think that's older french than I'm used to trying to translate! aymer- aimer?

"Man is a curious mixture of violence, compassion, terror and gentleness."

, That feels true to me! As an add-on I'd say that we can develop more specific traits with practice,

Ricky- Violent video games.. There's been debates about this before with what I feel no conclusive decision. Yes if you expose a child to violent video games, there might some later event which one might trace back to it. However, there are plenty of people who play violent video games and feel they are socially fine and UN-violent outside of the game... Yours Truly, I've played violent videogames but I wouldn't say I'm a particularly violent person. Ready to defend myself against real threat but otherwise, I'm pretty safe to be around,

Wescli- Thanks. Mob Mentality seems natural and a part of nature whether for 'good' or 'bad' which is partly explored in the video, slowly changing people's attitudes... Argumentum ad numerum however doesn't strike me as reasonable or right (however true it might be as an implication of Mob Mentality)..

Mob mentality seems to get us stirred in a direction. Which is odd because we do not always agree with, understand or support (sometimes all or part or variations of the three) what is projected by the mob. Almost as though there is a desire to fit in with everyone else that outweighs our independence or uniqueness.

Argumentum ad numerum… I added that to remind people that just because everyone else agrees with something or is doing something does not necessarily make it right or right for you. What I mean is if you take the same mentality that says everyone is doing it so it must be okay, then smoking shouldn’t be all that bad. Or, if you take it purely by numbers (IE: the more doing it the more right it is) we might want to look into eating poop… I mean, twenty trillion flies can’t be wrong!
Hahhahahahha

Sorry, that last bit was just my bad humor… but you get the idea.

Think for yourself. You know what is right for you whether everyone else is doing it or not. Whether the media says it’s bad or some study suggests something, when we are still and calm it is easier to find the answer.

Vusuki wrote: Ren-

"To call something a disease, you first have to assume that it's bad"

.. I'm not sure everyone assumes disease a bad thing. Disease (in my mind) is a part of nature (albeit a potentially deadly one) and similarly one could say violence is also a part of nature.

Disease is by definition an abnormal state,

"a disorder of structure or function in a human, animal, or plant, especially one that produces specific symptoms or that affects a specific location and is not simply a direct result of physical injury"

Because we usually do not consider every abnormal thing to be a disease, especially when it is useful (like superior intelligence) but does not have any side effects (crippling pain), I think it's fair to call disease the "bad" kind of abnormality.

"Physical violence is everywhere. We kill plants and animals on a gigantic scale. Why is it that we consider physical abuse worse than psychological abuse? "You can break my body but you can not break my mind". It's worse to have your mind broken than your body. Yet people get away with manipulation all the time. You've even been manipulated into making it easier for them to manipulate you further: They didnt force the TV on you, you actually paid or it."

Yes I agree on the whole. Again, personally I consider damage to the mind worse than to my body.. Saying this though, I think we NOTICE physical abuse more than psychological abuse, partly because a) we keep our minds fairly closed off from one another and b) we don't realize how influencable our minds actually are (Agreeing with the manipulation idea you put forward). We don't understand our own minds much: People will more often open up and complain to their friends about the people in our lives who have hurt them somewhere, but much less often confront the people themselves. We often do physcological damage to ourselves..

I think the reason why we see it more, and find some physical abuse intolerable whilst other forms are completely ignored shows , imo, that we are more concerned with appearing "civilized"... Herd mentality, as wescli put it.

"If psychological abuse is worse than physical violence, doesn't it mean that, if someone manipulates you and your countermeasures are a punch in their face, your are actually decreasing the abuse? (they cant manipulate you anymore, because you fight back, but you hurt them less than they hurt you...)"

Not sure I fully understood sorry? Seems like an eye for eye idea? Brings the question to mind- Can physical abuse be weighed in terms of pyschological abuse (and vice versa)?

no. This is an example situation where there is one manipulator and one victim. That victim decides to fight back, but not by manipulating, by punching the manipulator in the face.
If we agree that psychological abuse is a worse thing to do to a man than physical abuse, it's not an eye for an eye, is it?

"In terms of evolution, violence is very good. The fittest/smartest will always win, ensuring a high quality gene pool.
To call violence a disease seems misguided."

Violence or death sorry is good for the gene pool? In general in an attempt to be objective- agreed. I'm sure there's been many conversations about the morality of that however. Seems again a part of nature.
To call violence a disease seems misguided... Excuse me, wordswordswords, let us call violence *LIKE* a disease instead rather than a synonym..

Yet it seems to me that violence is nothing *like* a disease. Even the contagion theory would have to be proven to be a major source of violence.

Alexandre Orion wrote:

Jestor wrote: I havent looked at the TedTalk yet...

But I wanted to say that I have had about enough of that 'ren' fellow, not to mention that "Wescli" character!!!!






:woohoo: :woohoo: :woohoo: :woohoo: :lol: :lol: :lol: :lol:

Does that mean that I can stay for a while ... Or, is it out with me too ? :blush:

On l'attend a la sortie?

Beh ... que pour le ramener. Tu sais dans quel état il va finir.

:huh:

On peut le passer un savon plus tard ...

Ren- To avoid a huge thing, I've only quoted your last reply rather than the entire convo..

"Disease is by definition an abnormal state,

"a disorder of structure or function in a human, animal, or plant, especially one that produces specific symptoms or that affects a specific location and is not simply a direct result of physical injury"

A 'disorder' certainly. Abnormal state? The words don't sound quite right to my ears.. Isn't disease (or illness) rather common (and therefore 'normal')? Our health fluxuates, and we may catch a disease at some point and then either recover (with or without the help of medication) or die.. Even if we are only 'diseased' for a short amount of time in comparison with being healthy, I'm not convinced that makes the 'diseased' period abnormal. It's just what happens; the way of life (as with our attempts to not to die) no? I'm starting to feel slightly ignorant with my comprehension of words here and that we're starting to deal in semantics and at cross-purposes, Eh, carrying on anyway..

"Because we usually do not consider every abnormal thing to be a disease, especially when it is useful (like superior intelligence) but does not have any side effects (crippling pain), I think it's fair to call disease the "bad" kind of abnormality."

Okay, I'm following you so far..

"I think the reason why we see it [physical abuse] more, and find some physical abuse intolerable whilst other forms are completely ignored shows , imo, that we are more concerned with appearing "civilized"... Herd mentality, as wescli put it."

In general yes, People are hypocrites even to their own 'ideals'. Although I hope that a few can be a little more 'uncivilised' ha and see and help people suffering from other *Unseen* types of abuse and violence. Perhaps people can choose what's right when they're away from their 'Herds' and then can get into the 'Herds' of (what they believe to be) better mentalities. (More Wescli stuff (Ty Wescli),

"Whether the media says it’s bad or some study suggests something, when we are still and calm it is easier to find the answer."

)

"no. This is an example situation where there is one manipulator and one victim. That victim decides to fight back, but not by manipulating, by punching the manipulator in the face.
If we agree that psychological abuse is a worse thing to do to a man than physical abuse, it's not an eye for an eye, is it?"

So an eye for a tooth? Heh, that made me chuckle.. But thanks for clearing that up.

"Yet it seems to me that violence is nothing *like* a disease. Even the contagion theory would have to be proven to be a major source of violence."

I'm learning something new here, contagion theory... *reads about Crowd Psychology on wikipedia after google-searching "Has the Contagion theory been proved"*... It does sorta make sense to me than the contagion theory/ crowd pyschology would have an effect (or cause) on/for violence indeed.

Re-listening to the video a little... The video seems to argue *partly* for the similarity between violence and a contagious disease but more strongly in the SIMILARITY in the METHOD of dealing with them both. What is it you don't like about comparing them as things that are similar? You think Violence can be good while Disease cannot be? Or that Disease can be good (ensuring a high quality gene pool) and the violence can do something similar (also ensuring the strongest survive?). I'm not sure I follow here..

Did you disagree with anything in particular or just in general with the video? Can you quote exactly in the video what you didn't agree with (Gary Slutkin) regarding how Violence is similar to a contagious disease sorry? I quite like the simple explanation from 6:14 till 8:05 which gives the idea of how to deal with them both..

Of your first reply you wrote at the end,

"To call violence a disease seems misguided."

Later on you wrote at the end of the next reply,

"Yet it seems to me that violence is nothing *like* a disease."

It seems to me as if by replying and talking more and more about it reinforced your opinion... Are we just debating for the sake of debating? And the more we go on, the more set on our opinion we get? It's still interesting whether that's yes or no! I believe I understand most of your reasoning Ren.. Perhaps it's just I don't like being told I'm wrong in my opinion when I'm thinking that violence *is* something like disease!

Thanks anyway Ren, you questioning me makes me think [strike]quite a bit[/strike] Alot more in replying. I could still be wrong in my opinion.. (but I don't believe it yet!) Do please reply, I quite like our debate.
But I'm sorry if this is starting to bore you, Not my intention!

My concern with calling violence a disease, is that like anything given the "disease" or "disorder" label, it gives it the perception that its beyond our control, and therefore beyond our responsibility.

Rickie The Grey wrote: It's all because of violent electronic games.

I play violent video games at times. I watch violent films. I surround myself in a demographic and friendship group with the same interests as me. Not one of us was left un enraged or undisturbed by the massacre's of last year. ( Colorado etc)

Is video games really desensitising people when I am still disturbed by that kinda stuff?