Everything you know is wrong: the modern decline in violence

Discussion in 'Science & Society' started by ElectricFetus, Jan 10, 2013.

  1. billvon Valued Senior Member

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    Yes. And often women lose to men. On the whole, though, more women win custody battles. In other legal areas it's closer to 50/50.

    Probably far fewer than the number of women who died in childbirth striving to create that family to begin with.

    ?? Courts weren't a joke. Indeed many of the legal precedents we live by now were created back then. They were just enforcing bad laws.

    Legal equality.
     
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  3. youreyes amorphous ocean Valued Senior Member

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    You are saying more women have died giving childbirth than men who died while working or finding money for their families?

    Are you for real?
     
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  5. billvon Valued Senior Member

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    Yes. In the 1840's, 1 out of every 5 women who tried to give birth died, primarily due to puerperal infection. By the 1900's that had been cut to about 1 in 100. Nowadays it's around 1 in 10,000 in Western countries.
     
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  7. youreyes amorphous ocean Valued Senior Member

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    and how many men died while working on a job and had a family to look after?

    Anyways your statistics smoothly saying don't add up. Here I found UK's childbirth statistics which show that in a period of which you state 1840's the rate of childbirth deaths was 5 out of 1000 live births. That is not 1 our of 5 women, that is 1 out of 200 women.

    http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1633559/
     
  8. Orleander OH JOY!!!! Valued Senior Member

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    still don't understand what this all has to do with violence.
     
  9. youreyes amorphous ocean Valued Senior Member

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    well I guess your right, what I am trying to say by all this is simple. As the physical violence declines with our more civilized ways, we are incurring more psychological violence against others and ourselves.
     
  10. Orleander OH JOY!!!! Valued Senior Member

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    I don't think we are more psychologically violent. I have more rights than my grandmother did. Just because she wasn't hit didn't mean she wasn't hurt by how the laws viewed her
     
  11. billvon Valued Senior Member

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    Changing the stat here? You were talking about jobs that CAUSED their deaths - not just where they happened to be when they died. Most people spend 1/4 of their lives at work today, and thus a lot of deaths occur at work. That does not mean the job resulted in their death, that's just where they were when it happened.

    Contrast that to childbirth, which is the cause of both death during delivery and puerperal infections that kill women.

    Better than the 1900's! Wow, more women survived before they understood what germs were?

    One of the more 'colorful' stories from the 1840's was that medical students would work on cadavers, recently dead from infectious disease, then go directly to the obstetrics area to deliver babies. Infection rates were high. Not until the 1850's - 1860's did they realize the simple expedient of washing their hands could cut this down greatly.
     
    Last edited: Jan 13, 2013
  12. ElectricFetus Sanity going, going, gone Valued Senior Member

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    Here is a quote from someone that did not like Mr. Pinker book:

    My opinion is that Pinker is more than a bit naive. He obviously lives and works in the USA in a position of privilege and comfort and reflects the American perspective to a great degree. He therefore propounds many wonderful and lovely thoughts that many less well-placed humans on the planet would find hopelessly credulous. My biggest gripe is that the economic foundation of current society receives short shrift. By definition, our capitalist order rips away as much of the productivity of human labor as is possible for profit. To discount the violence to individuals and communities in this context of current affairs is a little bit naive. If you ask a Bahraini, Iraqi, or Congolese scholar about violence, my guess is you'll get a quite different take. Ask a Haitain or Chinese sweatshop worker about the violence of being paid $3-$4 for a 14 hour work day. Ask Indian farmers about the violence of debt slavery that leads to suicide plagues. Ask Filipinos and Cambodians about the decline in sex slavery. Ask a Chilean, Bolivian or Indonesian economist about having your country's future sold off into debt at outrageously inflated prices for the benefit of dictators and multinational corporations and sent to offshore bank accounts. Just because they don't go in an beat the workers and citizens over the head with clubs on a daily basis doesn't mean it's not violence, and to make generalizations implying otherwise is a blinkered analysis. - http://www.amazon.com/review/R2197M...0022950&linkCode=&nodeID=&tag=#wasThisHelpful

    So what do you think, do you think working in a sweatshop for meager pay is "violence"? Does it compare to not working for any money for your abusive husband so he will beat you less, from dawn to suck collecting firewood, cooking food for him, push babies out your vagina for him all the while? Or working since the age of 6 plowing and growing your own food on what little you can to survive? In Peace Corps I met many subsistence farmers that wanted sweatshop jobs over their present conditions! But no I think this comment has a point: has suffering, not just violence, gone down per person over the years, centuries, millennia, etc?
     
  13. youreyes amorphous ocean Valued Senior Member

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    No Suffering has not gone down. Many men getting hurt and dying while doing construction jobs or electrical maintenance would rather work as a Starbucks barrista with more pay and safety in mind...but society does not want them there.
     
  14. Randwolf Ignorance killed the cat Valued Senior Member

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    Really? So you're saying that society would prefer that these "Many men getting hurt and dying while doing construction jobs or electrical maintenance" continue to do so? As opposed to being baristas? Cite the evidence that society does not want them there. Something beyond youreyes myopic opinion please...
     
  15. youreyes amorphous ocean Valued Senior Member

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    Society rules are simple, statistics of who works where and does what. Almost every construction worker out there is a man, this is how society distributes job. Risky jobs are taken by men, not so risky jobs are taken by women. Obviously you have an agenda against me Ms.Randwolf and I fully comprehend your hatred of my non-liberal views, but stick with labels to yourself.
     
  16. ElectricFetus Sanity going, going, gone Valued Senior Member

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    And it was better off in the past?
     
  17. youreyes amorphous ocean Valued Senior Member

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    No it was not. In the past however the suffering was more physical and could be identified easier.
     
  18. Randwolf Ignorance killed the cat Valued Senior Member

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    What century do you live in? Statistics can be very misleading but I'm sure that point is way to subtle for you to even begin to comprehend. Oh well. *sigh*

    That's hilarious. You attempt to rebuke me for applying labels in the same sentence that you refer to me as "Ms." Randwolf - that's an exquisite example of your inability to see your own hypocrisy. I have no agenda against you but I maintain a serious agenda against double standards and I can't recall a more blatant and egregious proponent of such. Do you live in a world of labels, boxes and pigeonholes in real life or do you reserve such behavior for internet forums? Your attitude would be laughable if it wan't so pitiful...
     
  19. youreyes amorphous ocean Valued Senior Member

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    What Century I live in? Statistics of men doing more dangerous jobs is somehow possibly misleading that its actually women carrying metal rods and bricks around instead of serving coffee to customers?

    Yes I admit I do have emotions and I did label you as Miss out of the negative emotions you are steering in me, for that I apologize truly. I am sorry for labeling you for who you are right after you labeled me.
     
  20. Randwolf Ignorance killed the cat Valued Senior Member

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    No, statistics are misleading when taken out of context. The reasons men tend to have the more "dangerous" jobs in society are manifold. The correlation does not suggest causation in the sense of "society deeming it appropriate". Go away and think about that for a few days - see if it sinks in.

    Oh youreyes... Stop being such a little bitch. Your ruffled feelings will heal.

    Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image!

     
  21. youreyes amorphous ocean Valued Senior Member

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    If society does not deem it appropriate than why doesn't the society do anything about it? Send women to mining coal and men to doing pedicure for customers?
     
  22. Randwolf Ignorance killed the cat Valued Senior Member

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    Society is. As a matter of point, I thought (perhaps erroneously) that this was one of your complaints as to how society is going to hell in a hand-basket, no?

    Women are pursuing careers much more often in traditional male oriented fields than 25, 50 or a hundred years ago. Remember, they are not staying home catering to their husbands every need anymore, or spending all their time learning to play the simplest of musical instruments. (That was you, wasn't it, that brought this up as a complaint about today's women?)

    No matter, the fact is that society is evolving. I might suggest that you join the twenty first century at some point, but take your time. Here is a bit of reading googled at random to entertain you:

    5 Dangerous Jobs
    In trying times, it's tempting to play it safe in your career. But here's another idea: Be bold. Meet five American women who have taken on some intensely gutsy gigs.​
    Link
     
  23. youreyes amorphous ocean Valued Senior Member

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    Oh wow 5 American women doing dangerous jobs? vs...millions of men doing even more dangerous jobs? Truly, I have succumbed to the fault of my argument. My hands now tied, how will I ever prove myself? ... Now, I admit more women nowdays want to do the jobs men did traditionally. In terms of the actual thread topic, the violence as a result of this movement has included women as well. They now have all women jails. In terms of whether this switch of women to a more manly jobs did actual good to the society, for womens' sake it seems yes, for they as you have said it Randwolf are no longer playing the musical instruments back at home but diving for gold in the Bering sea (as an example). Men on the other hand are taking up babysitting. Physical violence has indeed decreased. But how has the psychological state of people has changed? I feel like people now project their hate and negative emotions into acts that do not result in violence but result in some sort of negative impact on someone else. Empathy has grown to a large extent...
     

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