We need a better name for these mobs, one that captures the essence of what they are. I like a "Sam Harris Mob," but that's too much of an inside joke. Are they a secular humanist mob? Just what is the term for modern America's culture? Hmm. There's some cogitating to be done, for sure.
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Monday, March 31, 2014
Was It A Secular Humanist Mob?
There plenty of examples of civilizational decay arising from the destruction of traditional values and the nuclear family. For example, the video below deals with a mob of 300+ "teens" rioting for no apparent reason at a mall in New York. Just like the Knockout Game, the vast majority of the "youths" were black, which leads to ignorant people assuming it's a racial thing. It's not. It's the result of a fatherless generation, a generation raised on subjective morality and the do-your-own-thing culture.
We need a better name for these mobs, one that captures the essence of what they are. I like a "Sam Harris Mob," but that's too much of an inside joke. Are they a secular humanist mob? Just what is the term for modern America's culture? Hmm. There's some cogitating to be done, for sure.
We need a better name for these mobs, one that captures the essence of what they are. I like a "Sam Harris Mob," but that's too much of an inside joke. Are they a secular humanist mob? Just what is the term for modern America's culture? Hmm. There's some cogitating to be done, for sure.
Um.
ReplyDeleteSo, we had a couple of girls and their friends get into a fight in the mall. In the video, I never saw more than maybe 6 people tussling. "No arrests were made, no injuries were reported", and the only actual property damage mentioned was somebody smashing a candy jar. Followed by the mall authorities basically losing their minds and kicking out all the teenagers.
So how did the reporting on this turn it into a 400-strong mall-trashing mob that is supposed to be prime evidence of the impending collapse of civilization?
I saw other videos covering the event where mall store owners locked themselves and their customers in their stores while this was going on. That's a siege, that is.
ReplyDeleteAlso, this is not an isolated incident. Many of the others were much more violent. The issue isn't whether the mall was damaged and then reacted disproportionately, it's that the thing was conceived and carried out en masse. To me, it looks like the Vikings raiding the coast of England.
The big question that this raises to me is: Why not? Why shouldn't they do this? Losing 1 person out of 300 to the authorities is pretty good odds in my book. How would you persuade them not to do this?
From a rationalist point of view, their actions make perfect sense.
Addendum: As I understand it, secular humanism relies on people making rational decisions for themselves and coming up with their own interpretation of moral behavior. For the life of me, I can't see how this behavior was wrong to the participants. Nor can I see how anyone could argue that it was.
ReplyDeleteIf you saw these other videos that made your point better, then why did you link to this pathetic specimen? Could it be, perhaps, that the whole thing actually *is* just a schoolyard-type tussle[1] that happened to go on in a mall, and got blown way out of proportion?
ReplyDeleteAnd that maybe this sort of thing is *not* all that common, but what is common is the scare-mongers playing them up to boost their ratings and pageviews?
" For the life of me, I can't see how this behavior was wrong to the participants."
Oh, come on. How does risking injury and arrest, for no material gain, in a way that makes people demonize you and refuse to deal with you, make any kind of logical sense?
You keep saying this sort of thing, but repetition doesn't make it true.
[1] You remember how schoolyard fights go, right? A couple of kids and their friends hurl insults at each other until they finally get into a fight, and all the other kids circle around them, shouting and yelling and egging them on, until the teachers show up and break it up? Yeah, that's exactly what this video looked like.
ReplyDelete