This is also horseshit that led to castle doctrines that have universally led to good things and never bad ones. Enjoy your good gal with a gun victory lap I guess, it’s hard for me to agree with your principles.
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That’s actually not true. Infantacide was common in ancient societies, as was child sacrifice, paedophilia, and child labor. Abuse and seperation were common. “Childhood” wasn’t really important until recently.
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Well, that got dark fast.
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“I love Humanity, but I hate humans.”
-Albert Einstein
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Nothing in this quote contradicts in any way what I wrote…
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You might find this amusing.
I hope to someday write something that equally viciously satirizes the opposite side, but I haven’t yet found the inspiration…
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I did enjoy that, but there’s little room for implying my views are extreme to the point of satire when you cannot come up with a reason why your feelings make good policy.
There’s a lot to unpack here but most of it can be filled under “people can be shitty.” “I know what’s good for my kid” is the mantra that allowed, and still allows, a lot of this to happen. The fact remains that we as humans still have a drive to protect our “offspring” when they are young and vulnerable. The real change is that society has decided that that age is closer to 25 than 13, and that maybe some people really don’t know what’s good for any kid.
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I’m glad you liked it, anyway. Half my friends are vehemently pro-gun and half are equally vehemently anti-. I think they’re all nuts, and sometimes I can’t resist tweaking them, but I love them all regardless.
Gotta go to fix the lock on the church door now, over and out.
Long ago as a bullied kid, I eventually adopted “nerd rage” as a defense mechanism.
If talking a bully down, or ignoring them, or walking away failed, then when push came to shove (literally) I worked out it was more effective to just go all-out.
I had thought about it, and couldn’t see why any of someone else’s made-up Queensbury Rules should apply to me in a fight I didn’t want to be in. I had zero “street-cred” to begin with, so I had nothing to lose with nut-kicking, hair-pulling, scratching, or continuing to kick them on the ground until I could be sure they would not get up again and keep harassing me.
It certainly counts as over-escalation to observers who thought that a good old faceful of dirt for the nerd was just the “game” that was being played. But I didn’t give a shit about their rule-book.
But simply not having the tough guy credo of knowing where to stop before someone went to the infirmary … certainly made the problems stop happening PDQ. #noshame
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You said that we’re descended from humans who defended their children instinctively, and that only a tiny fraction of us were capable of resisting that instinct. That’s not actually true. Even today, some children suffer the most at the hands of their parents. The only difference is that it’s socially unacceptable in some societies.
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There is a fundamental difference in the way that we relate to children now than we did in the past. Yes, humans did parent, and children survived to adulthood, but it wasn’t because of an overwhelming drive for protection. Child mortality was an expected part of life.
Er, yes horrible neglect happens, but I think it is indeed still a tiny fraction.
Yes, I did. That is well documented historically, and a fair bit of scientific research shows humans are both hormonally conditioned and biologically programmed to care for our children - which is how the species persists despite our being born completely incapable of fending for ourselves. Children immediately abandoned at birth simply do not survive to breed. Our children live because we are wired to protect them from the ravages of nature.
As I already noted, this does not in any way contradict what I’ve said. There’s nothing about defending another entity that prevents you from victimizing said entity yourself.
However - I am both an adoptive and biological parent, and I was required by the state to learn some stuff. According to all the data the US government has collected, biological parents are the best protection a child can have. Children living in households with unrelated adults are nearly 50 times as likely to die of inflicted injuries as children living with two biological parents. This doesn’t mean it doesn’t happen, but child abuse by biological parents is quite statistically rare, and that’s a fact that has significantly shaped legal policy in the USA.
The information presented to me said children living with their biological parents are least likely to be abused and exploited. Children living with adoptive parents are less likely to be abused than children in states’ care. Children living in states’ care are less likely to be abused than children who are bought and sold. I don’t have the cites to hand - my youngest child is 18 years old now - but the data convinced me at the time.
This is a statement often repeated by my History professors. But they all said that the difference is children were treated like more like little adults and less like a special privileged class. None of them said parents didn’t feel the same biological protectiveness that modern parents do!
For contrast consider Neanderthals, who I understand worked their children quite brutally, according to the bones we find anyway.
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Except it was widely acceptable to abandon them early on, as was early seperation.That is also well documented. Yes, hormonal response exists and contributed to our success, but you’re projecting your own present feelings on to past civilizations.
If it only came down to “being wired” to protect children, why would we victimize them ourselves? It’s obviously not so universal or simple as that , which is the point I made initially.
In spite of that, 78.1% of perpetrators of child abuse were biological parents, and 90% of abusers were related to the victims.
http://www.nationalchildrensalliance.org/media-room/media-kit/national-statistics-child-abuse
http://www.facesofchildabuse.org/stats-facts.html
If you read my earlier link, you’d see that it was more than simply “adult treatment”. Again, in the right circumstances, attachment bonding certainly can contribute to a parent’s protective feelings. But it’s not simply a given, or an uncontrollable urge.
None of this means that I want things to regress. Empathy and attachment make for a less brutal existance. But humans are not always gentle attached caretakers, nor we they in the past.
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If you read the link I posted above, you’d see that what we consider to be horrible neglect has changed quite a bit over time. That is the context of my above comment.
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Again: what you are saying is not inconsistent with or contradictory to anything I’m saying.
I didn’t say only, you did. And as to why, I do not purport to explain, merely to observe the actuality that provably exists regardless of explanations or reason. That is how people are behaving, both according to my own observation and those of others.
I disagree; you did not make this point at all, you simply stated that I was wrong.
To reiterate my own point: our current state of historical and scientific knowledge indicates that every living human is descended from someone who was physiologically primed to protect their offspring.
You are disputing this claim, but without basis as far as I can see.
Even you have to admit that that’s a broad statement that you can’t prove. Many of of us descended from people who sold us, or tried to kill us, or who weren’t there at all, in spite of “priming”.
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Well, that depends on the standard of proof. I can prove it to most people’s satisfaction by simply observing that human babies can’t survive unattended.
Also, anyone who has been around a parent whose child’s life was in danger will be predisposed to believe me. Personally, I will react faster than the speed of conscious thought or conditioned response - I know this to be true from experience. It’s physiologically completely unlike my reaction to a beloved pet, parent, friend or sib in danger. I’ve hurt myself saving a child’s life and didn’t realize it until afterwards.
I suspect all of us are descended from someone in at least one of those three categories, if not all.
At the very least, I’d concede that I’m not certain this womans’ choice to pull a gun in a retail store was driven by a protective urge. Pointing a gun into a scuffle in to which her daughter was one flailing body is terribly dangerous, nevermind actually shooting.
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