Quote Originally Posted by Blademaster View Post
And that description rings of a healthy, unbroken society to you?
No, it doesn't sound healthy or unbroken at all - I'm just saying the problem shouldn't be projected onto "society".

I'm not usually a conservative person (as most of you know), but Maggie Thatcher's famous "there is no such thing as society" quote rings true for me here:

"I think we've been through a period where too many people have been given to understand that if they have a problem, it's the government's job to cope with it. 'I have a problem, I'll get a grant.' 'I'm homeless, the government must house me.' They're casting their problem on society. And, you know, there is no such thing as society. There are individual men and women, and there are families. And no government can do anything except through people, and people must look to themselves first. It's our duty to look after ourselves and then, also to look after our neighbour. People have got the entitlements too much in mind, without the obligations. There's no such thing as entitlement, unless someone has first met an obligation."

There is a hell of a lot of common sense/pragmatism in that quote, I think.

I'm not saying there aren't real problems here, I'm saying that projecting them onto the illusion of "society" is unhelpful and not going to actually solve the problem. If you're poor, rioting and destroying things is not going to fix that. And, taking one step back from that stage, blaming society for your problems is not going to fix your problems. There is no "society" consciously creating problems for you: if you have a problem, to a large extent I think it is up to you to find a way to fix it.

I'm not an expert in British history, but I know that boatloads of migrants came to Australia over the last century, the overwhelming majority of them poor and with little to no English-speaking abilities, from places like post-WWII Italy and Greece, Vietnam (post-Vietnam War), and so on. These migrants didn't live in a world as tolerant as the one we live in today: they were confronted with outright racism, social ostracision and certainly a whole host of difficulty in succeeding financially.

I'm harping on about this because it's my reference point: those people were faced with a host of problems but they didn't blame it on society and then, in turn, expect society to fix it all for them. They recognised the nature of the beast - as sucky as it is - and went out and did something about it. They got jobs and started businesses. And if the economy went to hell, like it is now, they made the best of their impoverished situation instead of making a bad situation much, much worse by spreading violence, crime, fear, death and destruction.

I might be overreaching a bit by saying "go get a job" when the economy is weak and the job market not faring well, but the underlying point is: your life is your problem, find a way to take care of yourself and your family and fix your problems.

Quote Originally Posted by mr_pikachu View Post
Egh. The whole mob mentality. It's... disgusting, yes. I can't think of a better word for it. It's also sad that this continues to serve as one of the most practical applications of social science to date. (Relatedly, thank you, Philip Zimbardo.) That fact does, in my opinion, say a great deal about society itself.
Mob mentality ftl.

Quote Originally Posted by classy_cat18 View Post
Awww, I would've laughed. And then told you to get me an iPod or something. XP
Haha, nice form!