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The Impact of constant violent events
I was reading this article from the Telegraph and I wanted to raise the question here aswell. I think it is one that needs to be talked about too.
It seems we cannot go a week without an act of terrorism, police related shooting, and now, Coup d'etat. The connectivity of our modern world amplifies this and makes it worse, as you now can hear about an event in china within minutes on your cell phone. How is this constant cycle of violent acts affecting you. Personally, mentally, your life style. Are you afraid of large crowds? Are you angry at a certain group of people? Maybe you just don't want to live on this planet anymore. Are you coping? Tell me below how you are handling all this? It can help to get it out! Feel free to discuss others feelings as well, but please keep it Grated! |
I honestly am sad all of this is happening. No one deserves to be hurt unless they did bad things. It doesn't affect me too much since no one has been affected personally but I'm still sad about this stuff all happening.
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It's honestly made me so depressed that I can't even find any motivation to continue trying to get my career life set up. I just end up thinking there's no point because by the time the election comes, the world will have pretty much collapsed.
So now I'm just playing video games until November, at which point I will probably die because Police State USA |
Do I fear large crowds and people in general? Certainly—for me this goes without asking. I can't go for a walk at night anymore without having to constantly look around at me, I can't even go out in daylight without doing this. If a person, family, or any sort of group of people is coming towards me on a walk—I turn the other way and take another route. In big cities this is even worse for me, my safe spot is the mall but even malls have their risks these days. I'm in fear daily whenever I go outside, sometimes I don't even feel safe in my own home, but I take relief in the fact that we're a small town of about 200, we here are some of the safest.
Even as a person living in Canada, one of the most stereotypically-friendly places (FYI, it's not all that), I still have my fears as an LGBT+ citizen, and I still have incredible anxiety towards the fact that tons of awful things are happening just three hours south of me in the USA, and that they're happening to begin with. The rest of the world's not doing any better, even if the recent coup d'état is mostly under control—that happening just proves it's capable of happening, that's where our world's going. |
in an awful, awful way i suppose i've sort of gotten used to it. when i wake up and there's a terrible incident that's gone on somewhere in the world, obviously i'm hurt & upset but i'm not surprised and it doesn't seem to do any psychological damage. i'm not sure if that's to do with my low empathy ( not low compassion ) or something else, but the constant cycle of violent acts doesn't seem to be affecting me personally... makes me seem sort of cold, i know; it's not that i don't care & it doesn't hurt, i just can't feel other people's pain i suppose?
that's not to say, however, that it's not changing minor things in my life style. i've always been afraid of large crowds; but now, living in a major city and following events like this, it's certainly gotten a bit worse. my city was a target for a minor terrorist threat a few years back ( it was quickly stopped ) and i can't help but think about what an obvious target we are. in addition, terrorism as a whole has made me much more terrified of public transport; i'd much rather walk than get a train, bus or plane just because of how common transport-related violence is. in contrast, the aftermath of these attacks and watching the people who rush out to help has actually almost done something positive. witnessing so many people working hard & saving lives & preventing future attacks makes me more determined than ever to follow a career path that involves helping others; perhaps even helping the families of those affected deal with the trauma. i think that's one strength humans gain from witnessing these events; a unified will to be stronger, to do better, and to protect others from these events reoccurring in the future. as for who i'm angry at... i suppose i'm the same as everyone else; angry at the people who commit these heinous, violent acts & the ones who administrate the order. i don't know enough about the attacks to be angry at the government, so most of my anger is dealt to the people directly responsible. #thiswaslong |
Re: police shootings. Within a 28 day period this month, there were three men shot by NZ police. Two dead and one injured. All mentally unstable, drug-addled violent threats. This is quite odd considering police shootings here are typically far apart, though last year had a spate of close shootings as well. These aren't related - it just happened to be a bad week for crystal meth users, apparently. Note that police here are not typically armed with lethal weaponry (I believe only diplomatic corps and airport police can carry firearms at all times) and that armed police most often fall under a different classification altogether, the Armed Offenders Squad. These are the people called out when a threat is confirmed to be armed and either it has been immediately determined normal weaponry will not subdue them or previous attempts have been made and failed. Most cops are armed with non-lethal weaponry like pepper spray and batons. Anyway, the point is that fatal incidents are typically quite few and far apart in comparison with the rest of the world. But a key difference is that two fatalities within a four day period has already resulted in calls for reviews on police firearms. Which is quite a dramatic response in comparison to, well, you know which country. Bit of a ramble here, to be honest. What I'm trying to point out is how low the threshold for bloodshed apparently is here.
Second bit about American police shootings/brutality in general - how odd it is that people start seeing the rampant brutality (particularly when race is involved) only when middle-class White America cannot ignore it any longer. Anyway, I'm fine, which speaks a lot about my relative status and where I live. Yadayada yes broke and trans but ultimately in an area where I can assume my physical safety is not at risk, either from ideological terror, police wrongdoing or outright war. So I can't say my mentality has been that adversely affected by the recent goings on. I have more intimate matters causing harmful effects to my wellbeing than the tragic events in communities not of my own. Well, the Pulse shooting horrified and infuriated me more than I expected of myself, but it was still somewhat muted compared to what I thought I would be like. Or what I should be like. I've noticed an increasing exhaustion from just keeping up with the actions of an exponentially more terrified world. Even my anger at the various injustices, usually fiery and unquenchable, is unable to keep going so consistently. That's what I'm worried about. |
I am wary of certain groups of people. I mean, I mostly always have been, but I'm more aware of the potential for violence. Anytime I see a bunch of men hanging around and being sort of loud or obnoxious I worry that they'll want to start something either because they think they can do whatever they want or because they feel like something in the world is threatening their masculinity and they want to strike angrily at someone. That kind of thing happens all the time. The terrorist attacks recently feel like they're just that taken to an extreme. And when you have all these events that pit different groups of people against one another I feel like more and more people are going to get caught up, either as victims because they similar enough to the "enemies" in some sociopath's mind, or as perpetrators of violence themselves because someone, somewhere either encouraged them or didn't stand up to violence and hatred and basically said "Yeah, this is okay to do."
It is pretty exhausting and it makes me want to hide away, ignore it, distract myself with other things. It seems overwhelming and most of the time the only thing I feel I can do is iterate my views and hope somebody somewhere listens to my or anyone else's plea to calm down and not resort to violence and have some compassion and understanding. |
I'll keep mine short but I find myself getting more and more cynical with every event. Are we really a species worth surviving if we can't even go a week without causing some horrible massacre on ourselves?
I don't blame any ethnic or religious groups for the events (though I do blame religion as a concept for some of it.) After all, we're all just people and if anything we all need to lean on each-other to get through this terrible time... |
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It's not an uncommon reaction, mind you, but it rubs me the wrong way to see such erasure of the good aspects of humankind because it is easier to focus on the awful rather than the good, or even the average. It just seems a bit self-involved to question whether we are worthy of survival because of the existence of numerous bad apples. |
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And today another terrorist attack in a train.
To tell you the truth I was a little scared when the coup started in Turkey... the relationship between my country and Turkey is not the best. I'm mostly angry with the people and the government here ago don't give a shit. But no, I'm not afraid. I think that the most media make you afraid but I don't know why. Besides, what can you do abou this if you are scared? Stay at your house forever? That's not a solution. You should continue your life and your routine. This is the way I see it in my country. No terrorism attacks yet here and I hope never. That's it and sorry for my bad English. |
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let's just say that this all is screwing me up a tiny bit which is sad week ago i was out and about with couple fellow pokemon go players, strangers really, we took a little trip to a good spot the spot was crowded, probably more than 200 people... and even though i enjoyed myself and i got cool pokemon... i did not feel a 100% comfortable because of this world chaos basically. it was late at night, freaking dark and that also did not help i was looking around constantly, trying to see if nothing out of the ordinary was happening see if everybody was chill and playing pokemon i mean... that was the perfect spot for some crazy guy or woman to go and you know how sad is it that a big group of people + awesome game to play, which normally i would say is fantastic, has to be ruined by the sad fact of mayhem we are dealing with on an extreme level these days |
I think the news is frankly boring and untrue. Not untrue in the specific events it portrays, but untrue in it's portrayal of the world and how it is at all times.
People feed off of the news and actually take what's happening to be true all around. As many of you said, you have a lot of fear going out, or get more depressed, because of the news, and I have a solution for that. Stop watching/listening/hearing from others about the news. It's exactly what I've done for years, and it's a good thing that I did. So many people have neurosis, fear, and anger at these events that don't involve them, and that in most cases they are powerless to stop. They don't involve you or even need your approval, they happen. People live in fear of these things, but they don't even attack the root cause of them. They just attack specific instances, police killings here, a mass shooting there, and then they try to stop future instances by stopping what they believe to be the cause. A mass shooting? Take away guns! News flash, if I am deranged enough, I will simply buy an illegal gun and kill whoever my "targets" are. A law wont stop me from a crime of that scale. That's not the answer. Below is. To the people who said that responses to these incidents have had a positive impact, on you, so much that you actually want to go out and help, that is great! Seriously, pursue that. To those who are depressed, don't just sit there and hide away behind games or whatever. You can't changes the events you hear about, but how about prevent the ones you don't? It is a duty as a member of a community to try to help keep that community alive. Why not become a volunteer at an animal shelter? Maybe a firefighter? Heck, you don't even need to go that far. Why not join a youth club, or even just a community get together? Play cards with the older people of your communities, listen to their stories. Help people cross the street. Pick up garbage. You know, the same stuff you're hearing about now has happened before. Lets not pretend that there weren't gangs in the 50s, young guys who were thuggish. Lets not pretend that muggings or rapes didn't happen either, because they did. But you know, people back then still lived their lives, and would play cards, go outside, etc. What do most people do these besides cope and moan and whine about all of these problems? What do they do besides hide behind their screens and pretend it doesn't happen? Again, lets not pretend like people haven't done bad sh*t to each other since humanity's inception. That's part of living in the world, part of being a human with free will. But you know, its not nearly like that all the time. A group of young guys comes down the street, and they are perceived as "thugs". Really, they are just a group of buddies hanging out on a Friday. Someone walks toward your direction at night at a fast clip and he's a "rapist". Actually, his wife just called him and told him she's having contractions. To make up these stories about not realistic, nor true. So don't pretend it is. Finally, that is not to say you shouldn't protect yourself. If someone is for sure mugging you or about to rape you, you use whatever tools to defend yourself. But to think every person is scary without proof is just a state of delusion. Thanks for reading. |
I am genuinely surprised at you folks. Not that your sad about crime, but at how shocked you are. Crime is crime, there has always been crime and there will always be crime. For those that are genuinely interested, I urge you to use the FBI's UCR database. I urge you to inform yourself and others.
For example, I took the number of violent and non-violent crimes reported (very, very different from statistics) from Los Angeles Police Department's data from 85'. During which, there were 777 reported murders that year alone (the key here is crimes reported). Watch the murder/manslaughter numbers for the following years: 85' 777 86' 834 87' 811 88' 736 89' 877 90' 983 Alright, you could do the math I'm sure, but I'll do it for you: that's 5,118 murders/manslaughter in a span of 5 years. Keep in mind, these numbers are what the LAPD has collected, which means there were, very likely, murders that were never found, substantiated, or discovered to be murder/manslaughter. Now let's look at some of the 00's. To be fair, I'll start at and throw in a bonus of two years: 05' 485 06' 480 07' 395 08' 384 09' 312 10' 293 11' 297 12' 299 These numbers are at the local level, by the LAPD alone. You might say that those numbers don't mean anything. True, they may not convince many of you of a decrease in murder or non-negligent homicide but there they are. 2,945 murders in a span of seven years. Further more, the last time California itself (state wide) made it past the 3,000 murders/manslaughter was back in 95'! Nationwide, for about the past decade we've been hovering at around 14,000 to 16,000 murders/manslaughter a year on average. We haven't seen numbers this low since the good ol' sixties folks. These are, again, reported numbers. Not estimates, figures or guesses. Take into account that we haven't had the ability, the tactics, or the miraculous tech that we have now. Social media has blown up the way we hear about things. A million, billion voices all clamouring and shouting over one another to be heard. You're safe, for the most part. Your parents, most likely, had it worse off than you in terms of homicides. However, violent crimes have gone up. We're hovering at about 1.2 million each year since 09'. Keep in mind, that at no point in time have we seen a dramatic decrease in terms of the nation's population total. It would make common sense that where there are people, there is crime. Where there are more people, there is more crime. You guys just didn't get to see it as often. We now have youtube, imigur, twitter, facebook, Google, online news sources, reddit, Tumblr and the beat rolls on. My point is the news tells you that you're in constant peril. And by the same token, the same people argue against owning firearms and CC laws. Makes you wonder, huh? One man stranded on an island makes it very hard to be a murderer. Unless he already ate the friend he was stranded with. http://www.ucrdatatool.gov/index.cfm |
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I grow more and more cynical with each passing day, honestly. Being someone from the United States, I've almost grown completely numb to the idea of mass shootings and all the war we have perpetuated because of special interests. Doesn't matter who we elect in the next cycle, the issue of war will only continue to escalate and worsen. No one is going to actually do anything about gun violence or police brutality. The powers that be don't want anything to be done about any of it. We'll elect another puppet this year with empty promises and falsehoods and things will continue as they are and people will vote again, rinse, repeat. Tensions will only continue to escalate as "trade deals" like the TPP come to pass and become law.
I honestly fear for future generations because it doesn't seem like anything is getting easier or better. I feel like the answers should be simple, but they aren't. In short, I pretty much feel like George Orwell's 1984 is an accurate prediction of the eventual future. I really don't want to be around to see it. |
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The solution is again, to unite our communities by doing what we can, not do nothing, or live in fear, or think it's all hopeless. That's a recipe for failure, and it separates everyone, which is exactly what they want. Life is what you make of it. Your actions define who you are to others. Do nothing and you are nothing. Help out, and you become somebody. Shit, this country is in such a state that you don't even know your neighbors in an apartment complex! Like, really, it's pathetic and degrading. We aren't sheep, ao lets stop acting like them, and act like actual human beings. Thank you for reading. |
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OP just wanted to know how we were feeling about all of it, so I let my cynicism come out, is all. lol |
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I think that is different from some of the social media. Social media seems to be putting the spotlight on events that the mass media wouldn't normally bother with, or at least wouldn't give much attention to. So, yeah, we are getting more images and messages about violence, but depending on the source it's not going to be the same message or be done for the same purpose. Quote:
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There is nothing that automatically makes you a great person. That is something one strives for. Frankly, it's naive to think you can't do something that will have meaning. Impact and meaning aren't defined by "Oh, gotta find the cure to cancer. Oh, gotta help everything I can! Oh, gotta go to foreign countries to help children find clean water!" It's not defined by being super well known, or being rich, donating huge sums of money to charity. Saying that such things are unnecessary, and don't really have meaning is again, useless. Listen, I know I can't help everyone possible in the world, it simply is not gonna happen. But you know, that doesn't make cleaning up garbage off the street, for example, useless. I've had several people thank me when I did so, people walking around, or just driving, and perhaps I have inspired people in these cars to do similar, or believe change is possible. Sure, no one knows me, but who cares? That's not what generosity or meaning is to me. I know that by doing such simple, obvious things, it does help the community. I create meaning in such actions, but I am only one person. Imagine if every single person, just random people, cleaned up a single piece of garbage for a year in your city. I believe it would be clean by the end of it, even if 20 percent of the people kept throwing down garbage. And that's just a single example. Imagine if we did various helpful things, in our own communities. That would be meaningful, and far more meaningful then being scared of cleaning up garbage with someone, because "the news makes me think random people are suddenly going to shoot me." I know, it's a bit repetitive, but it's a valid point. It both addresses the very question of the fear, and it's a solution to the problem of failing communities, where no one even knows each other. Communities like that are places of fear, because anything goes. To summarize, meaning isn't appealing to the world, or doing world class help. It's really what you give it, and in our discussion, doing helpful things in our own communities and building unity between us, is better then doing nothing, complaining and wishing that someone would do something, or living in fear of each other. "I will do this" is more useful then, "I wish someone would do this." "I will be afraid." Is useless compared to "I will be brave." This one was a bit hard to write, and I don't know how well I got it across, but there it is. Thanks for reading! |
The police issue in the US: As Bill Maher has stated recently on Late Night, you show enough videos of police beating, shooting, and killing unarmed black people, eventually someone will fire back. The Dallas shooting is a prime example of that. Everyone with half a brain knows that most police officers are decent people and that there's always going to be a few bad apples. However the higher ups in the police departments need to weed out these bad apples the best they can so that police brutality will become non existent. People need to stop attacking the police as well and assuming that the entire police force is just as bad as the 1-2 officers that sparked that assumption in the first place.
Terrorism: This all boils down to a couple of issues, culture clash and the 2 wars that the US started in the middle east. Culture clash is the result of 2 or more cultures growing into one another for whatever reason, be it a lot of one culture activating the hot coffee mod, or a mad dictator oppressing his people like in Syria. The war thing: I think it's common knowledge that the US had no business to be in Iraq and Afghanistan to begin with. As it turns out, Iraqis and Afghans don't like being shot at by US soldiers, nor do they like being invaded. Who would've thought? When Saddam Hussein was still in power in Iraq, he kept everything peaceful, despite him doing typical dictator stuff. The coup in Turkey: I don't know that much other than what I just read about it via Wikipedia, which isn't the best source to find out about this stuff to begin with. This is also an event that is way too recent for us to know anything other than what we hear from the news. On top of that, we will never know the full story since this involves a government entity. |
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"However the higher ups in the police departments need to weed out these bad apples the best they can" protip, they do! That is the exact problem with mass media. You have a specific incident, in some tiny town, some place in this country, of which we've probably never heard of, where a questionable police officer was let into the force, maybe hates blacks or people in general, and it becomes really widespread. As you said, anyone with half a brain knows that police are generally friendly. I had one come in the other day in my place of business, and he was a pretty friendly guy. The other employees either knew him, or whatever, because they were laughing along and such. To blame it on the higher ups doesn't really apply. For example, lets say you work in a retail store or something, or even a classroom. If there is some guy that smokes pot and generally doesn't work, it is possible for him to hide it from his boss/teacher whenever they come around. It's not ineptitude on part of the boss/teacher, but the cleverness in which the employee/classmate hides it. Same here. Hell, for all we know, a coworker or classmate could be a serial killer, but they are simply great at hiding it. It's not hard to wear a mask after all, and someone who is in the police force is no exception. "As it turns out, Iraqis and Afghans don't like being shot at by US soldiers, nor do they like being invaded." that bit was pretty funny mate. The bit about Saddam was also very interesting, and could be explored further in debates about the war. However, terrorism is more of a mental war then a physical one. If you blow up a few buildings, everyone is set on edge and won't know where the next one can come from. With a name like ISIS, it sounds very scary and threatening, when for all we know, it could be a simple group of like minded people making up the fact that they are a group. Sort of like Anonymous, except ISIS may have a figure head. IDK, as I don't keep up with them. Again, that's another point of fear that wont help me in the slightest, so why should I focus on it? If ISIS has a bomb or what ever the hell, you can't protect against that if you're the target, so really, why worry about it? If ISIS is right next to you in a mall or something, you're toast regardless, nothing you can do about that. "Plus little things can sometimes have big effects." Esper gets me here with this point. That is not the whole picture, but part of it. I'm sure the shop keeper who sold Wozniak parts for the Apple I didn't know that Apple would become a monster of a company, but it did. For all we know, being friendly to that lonely kid who sits by himself could help him become the greatest president of all time. The other part is that, while the world isn't perfect, we do have control over some parts of it. Communities are one of those things that the members can improve. The tasks that I mentioned above are a much better use of ones time then worrying about ISIS, reading about the latest black killing, or being afraid to go out at night because of ones shadow. Thank you for reading! |
Talking about violence and terrorism while keeping it G rated? Well I'll just say I personally enjoy violence and despair. I prefer violent events over peace, because you aren't going to feel despair when no ones fighting or doing anything bad, right?
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