Wednesday, August 24, 2005

Ending Gang or Mob related violence

I have always had a particular animus towards gang members. Comparing them to wolves is an insult to wolves. Wolves kill what they need and use violence for a purpose and then it stops.

The problem is we allow people to claim I was swept up by a mob. This is a falacy and no excuse. I understand the herd instinct but we are suposed to have a higher function then Wolves.

I would like to see all penatlties for mob violence multipled by four. Thus a group that robs would be looking at four times the penalty. The current flaw is that a person can get swept up by a crowd lessening the crime. This is dead wrong logicaly as the attack is more cowardly due to numbers the penalties should increase.

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

A summary from the net on mob behavior from Freud's "Group Psychology and an Analysis of the Ego"...

"Followers observed the rules of the hive or the herd -- or like bad children are deviants who can either expiate their sins under the gaze of forgiving or punishing leaders or be eliminated in one way or another. Each good follower craves the love or at least the tolerance of the leader and tries to maintain the illusion that he fairly has it. The primary access to that love is submission to the rules, including ad hoc rules imposed by the leader. For group psychology only one side of ambivalence makes easy appearance at one time: love and safety during stability; murderous hatred and fear during instability.

The Leader loves none of his followers. He loves only himself. But as long as leadership is preserved the illusion is supported that in his person are pooled the functions of collective ego ideals -- prescriptive rules for actions -- and its collective prohibitory rules -- proscriptive rules for the limits of permissible behavior. As Freud also remarked, the leader also usually needs some powers of coercion (1927, p. 8). And most actual leaders of groups which are too large for personal relationships assume that they themselves have a right to ignore rules, or make up special ones that apply only to themselves. Warriors, shamans, physicians, clowns, and fools have selective rights to break rules which apply the others, but leaders do not like to be restricted in any way. If successful, such people are dubbed heroes, or at least shivered before as tyrants. But when leaders are deposed, or pretenders merely presume for themselves these rights of specialness, we call them criminals, or psychopaths, or narcissists."

-FJ

ps - Don't be so hard on them beak. The "followers" have been "hypnotized".

Anonymous said...

pps - Punish the leaders both publically and consistently. The group will surely "feel his pain". Now THAT is "terrorism".

-FJ

I liken it to contemporary attempts to drag Jefferson's name through the mud (Sally Hemmings - wink-wink).

Always On Watch said...

FJ,
Remember Leopold and Loeb? Had they not "found" one another, the Frank boy might not have been murdered. The same applied to Hickcok and Perry (Do I have those names correct? I'm referring to the murderers of the Clutter family as told in Capote's In Cold Blood)

Or so I've read. Catalyst?

Anonymous said...

Perhaps,

It does take at least one "other" person to serve as ego-ideal. And if that ego-ideal is "permissive", and similar enough, who knows what restraints to "civilizational" standards of behavior will be torn down if the right hemisphere "adopts" it, thereby unleashing the ego to "do as it pleases".

Which of course, seems to have been the "project" of Herbert Marcuse and adopted by todays "progressives"... only he/ they think(s) it'll lead to a "love fest"... men are basically "good" in his/their opinion(s), and all "repression" is a result of the evil Thanatos and must be "eliminated". Marcuse will "unleash" Eros and usher in the "Age of Aquarius".

And so, humanity will come to resemble a herd of deer, trapped on a tiny island... with the food supply slowly being consumed... the bark stripped off the trees... etc., etc. For the grim reaper took a holiday. But one day, he'll come back.

-FJ

Anonymous said...

Plato, "Statesman"...

"STRANGER: The quiet orderly class seek for natures like their own, and as far as they can they marry and give in marriage exclusively in this class, and the courageous do the same; they seek natures like their own, whereas they should both do precisely the opposite.

YOUNG SOCRATES: How and why is that?

STRANGER: Because courage, when untempered by the gentler nature during many generations, may at first bloom and strengthen, but at last bursts forth into downright madness.

YOUNG SOCRATES: Like enough.

STRANGER: And then, again, the soul which is over-full of modesty and has no element of courage in many successive generations, is apt to grow too indolent, and at last to become utterly paralyzed and useless.

YOUNG SOCRATES: That, again, is quite likely.

STRANGER: It was of these bonds I said that there would be no difficulty in creating them, if only both classes originally held the same opinion about the honourable and good;--indeed, in this single work, the whole process of royal weaving is comprised--never to allow temperate natures to be separated from the brave, but to weave them together, like the warp and the woof, by common sentiments and honours and reputation, and by the giving of pledges to one another; and out of them forming one smooth and even web, to entrust to them the offices of State.

YOUNG SOCRATES: How do you mean?

STRANGER: Where one officer only is needed, you must choose a ruler who has both these qualities--when many, you must mingle some of each, for the temperate ruler is very careful and just and safe, but is wanting in thoroughness and go.

YOUNG SOCRATES: Certainly, that is very true.

STRANGER: The character of the courageous, on the other hand, falls short of the former in justice and caution, but has the power of action in a remarkable degree, and where either of these two qualities is wanting, there cities cannot altogether prosper either in their public or private life.

YOUNG SOCRATES: Certainly they cannot.

STRANGER: This then we declare to be the completion of the web of
political action, which is created by a direct intertexture of the brave and temperate natures, whenever the royal science has drawn the two minds into communion with one another by unanimity and friendship, and having perfected the noblest and best of all the webs which political life admits, and enfolding therein all other inhabitants of cities, whether slaves or freemen, binds them in one fabric and governs and presides over them, and, in so far as to be happy is vouchsafed to a city, in no particular fails to secure their happiness.

YOUNG SOCRATES: Your picture, Stranger, of the king and statesman, no less than of the Sophist, is quite perfect.

-FJ