Smiley Town, Episode II: Attack of the Grin [Now with over 1.5 million page views!]

[Gavin Luper]

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.

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.

Awww, I would've laughed. And then told you to get me an iPod or something. XP

Haha, nice form!

[Crystal Tears]

Yesss, it gets warm here. It must, during the warm months, Canadians forage and frolic, looking for food and mates. When the cold returns, we retreat into our dens and hibernate, working off the fat we’ve built up from summer months. :3

Some of us emerge next summer with cubs. You don’t want to get near a Canadian and her cubs. We’re vicious when defending our young.


This isn’t defending the morons who burn, pillage and plunder but…

Can’t the mob-mentality be used also for good? When say one or two assailants are threatening a group of people, the victims can form a group or mob and defend themselves adequately. Rally the forces, so to speak?

[mr_pikachu]

Can’t the mob-mentality be used also for good? When say one or two assailants are threatening a group of people, the victims can form a group or mob and defend themselves adequately. Rally the forces, so to speak?

In theory, yes. In practice, no. This has been thoroughly tested in both experimental and real-world settings... I'll explain.

Generally, when a number of people could help, each person is significantly less likely to do so. Each person thinks, "Well, someone will help," and no one does. "Someone will grab that mugger." "Someone will call 911." Etc., etc. The infamous Milgram studies ultimately progressed to the group stage, where a number of people all had the opportunity to save the "learner" who was supposedly being electrocuted. Groups were even less likely to help than individuals. This is why, when you need help in an emergency, it helps to give specific orders to specific people -- it's an implicit statement that the selected individual is the only one who can perform that task (and it's an order, which further plays into Milgram's authority experiments).

Weak humans... always looking for someone else to do the hard work. *shakes head*

[Crystal Tears]

I suppose, I guess I never thought about it because I'm one of those people who stand up and say "Help this person!" or "Don't do that!" Then others follow suit, my friends do this a lot to me. They won't make a sound until I say something.

Either way, was daydreaming on bus, got a new idea for a fic maybe? Probably, I got an RPG already. XD IT ALMOST MADE ME MISS MY STOP! D:

Has that happened to you people? Daydreaming/imagining ideas for something or another and suddenly you almost miss/miss something completely?

Strange question, when you quote something like "Don't do that!" and it's at the end of your sentence, do you put a period after it or just leave it with the exclamation mark? @_@