What is the world coming to

[zark]

Is it just me or has there been an abundance of "evil" in the world lately? Stuff hitting the headlines of course.

First there's the Washington sniper. I hope the arrests of the two suspects will spell an end to the nightmare.

And now the Moscow hostage situation.

Not to mention all the rape that seems to be going on these days. It's like virtually every day there's a new story about horrific murder or rape or other evils.

What the hell is the world coming to?

[IMJack]

The world has always been this way. You just started noticing it.

I started noticing it when I was in high school.

[DooMBoy]

I started noticing when I first started to comprehend what the hell those newspeople were talking about :)
Anyway, to answer your question Zarcy, the world is going to hell in a handcart to put it plain and simple. I don't think there's any doubt about that. We're all in a downward spiral and it's only a matter of time before we all come crashing down.

[Fletcher`]

Yup.

[Ultraviolet]

Seems people are getting stupider as well, decreasing our ability to, as a race, fight the bad.

[Captain Red]

What are you all talking about? The world isn't any better or worse then it's ever been. God some people are naive.

a few thing you lot should realize:

1) The have-nots has ALWAYS outnumber the haves.

2) There has ALWAYS been war. it comes in different shapes and sizes, but it's always been there.

3) There have ALWAYS be psychopaths. people who decide to randomly kill other people because they feel like it (or some other half assed reason)

But you know what there hasn't been before? A MEDIA! A media to hand out fresh buckets of fear to the lowly naive idiot.

If you Thing you can fix things, then by all means, go out there and fix things! Just as long as it don’t involve blaming a particular race/ religion / country / entertainment for the worlds ills, then go nuts.

[Livo]

Ultraviolet said:

Seems people are getting stupider as well, decreasing our ability to, as a race, fight the bad.

And the stupid people always drown out the intelligent ones no matter what, and they are reporudcing at an alarmingly rate :/

[m0l0t0v]

I believe things ARE getting worse.
The rich are getting richer and the poor are getting poorer...
The powerful get more powerful and the desperate more desperate...

In the last 100 years the world witnessed two World Wars (before there were none).
If Bush (=the Third Anti-Christ) continues provoking his (chosen) enemies a Third World War in not farfetched. Then we will withness true EVIL...

Things will get a lot worse before the get any better.

[DooMer 4ever]

There has always been evil in the world, but I do agree that things are going worse now, but it doesn't mean this time would be worse than, let's say 1000 years ago.

[Disorder]

I believe the world has always been this way, it's just the weaponry and way of using evil that is changing. We used to kill eachother with axes and swords, today we blow ourselves up with bombs and threaten to kill hostages.

[myk]

Nope. Things change all the time. There's always been whatever but we are indeed passing through, or going to a really bad moment, but its been gestating for some time now. What happened is that recently (particularly since after the end of the cold war) there was an increase in the gap between wealth and poverty. Now poverty and lack of employment is becoming more evident, and power is more centralized with a rogue, unorthodox kind of opposition (naturally, since a the standard type of opposition isn't even possible.)

[NoPoet]

But you know what there hasn't been before? A MEDIA! A media to hand out fresh buckets of fear to the lowly naive idiot.

This remark is spot on. Remember the asteroid that was going to hit the Earth in 2019 and wipe us all out? My newspaper, the Daily Express, put this story on page 3, while the front page was dedicated to the wretched Geri Halliwell's new romance...

[Shaviro]

There is no such thing as 'evil'.

[Little Faith]

Do you believe we were set on this earth to be nice to eachother?

[Shaviro]

Little Faith said:

Do you believe we were set on this earth to be nice to eachother?

People don't do 'evil' for evil's sake.

[GS-1719]

I'm more concerned about the greater evil the world ignores.

[Sephiroth]

no there is not anything new. violence and peace run in cycles. some decades may seem to be fairly tame, others out of control. Given situations current i am surprised it is not worse. The economy usally will reflect how bad violnce can get. good time means everyone can get in on it(or the opposite if only big boys make the cash) now that jobs are going as fast as old milk people, mainly stupid ones, turn to other means. Countries that are made weak by this will be under attack from internal forces. This is by no means the most violent time in human history, dont listen to churches and anti-violence groups cause they think every time is before the end of the world. there have been far worse times and places.

[myk]

Not really. The "economy" is things and spreading poverty is the concentration of capital and production power elsewhere. Violence is a result. There is no spiritual macro-law governing social or moral behavior.

[Spike]

DooMBoy said:

We're all in a downward spiral and it's only a matter of time before we all come crashing down.

Poetic and true, all at once. Excellent.
Anyway, a return to the death sentence for serious sex offenders would be a start.

[myk]

A good start down the spiral?

[Xanthier]

DooMBoy said:

I started noticing when I first started to comprehend what the hell those newspeople were talking about :)
Anyway, to answer your question Zarcy, the world is going to hell in a handcart to put it plain and simple. I don't think there's any doubt about that. We're all in a downward spiral and it's only a matter of time before we all come crashing down.

Agreed, only getting worse

oh and ditto for Spike's comment, Death sentence would be nice.

[Spike]

myk said:

A good start down the spiral?

No, but it would hopefully be a temporary cure at least. It would give the criminals something to fear - how many criminals really fear the penalties anymore? They get sent to a cushy cell, they get food, TV, a variety of priveleges and even an early release. The victim on the other hand, usually ends up with a meagre cash sum and a lifetime of psychological scarring.
The real problem to be adressed is the method of prevention. Psychological screenings are conducted within the institutions where sexual abuse occurs the most, but the offenders still slip through. However, if we went the 'whole hog' and detained suspects before the act is commited on the strength of these psychological analysis, we'd be living in a society where free will is being gradually - yet harshly - stamped out.
Unless a better idea comes along, we're screwed for the time being.

[Wobbo]

Actually things are beter than theyve ever been, but the media is being more honest

We dont have planes flying over farms killing millions

People are protesting war before it even starts- rather than veitnam when they waited 7 years

Yeah the pro-capitalism stuff like Nafta WTO and so on are bad and destroy the environment and the thirdworld, but its better than "old" imperialism and when there were *no rules at all*

Around the world corporations are taking away labor rights and whatnot, but think about before the 1900's when we HAD NO LABOR RIGHTS

Yes George Bush the II is waging war and participating in atrocities now, but Geroge bush is no Nixon- hes not even a Reagan.

The UN is being ignored by dictators all over the planet - but go back 70 years and there was no United nations at all

I think things are improving to be honest with you, and im sorry if its a big quote but...
Chomsky: There is no measure of how optimistic you ought to be. In fact, as far as optimism is concerned, you basically have two choices. You can say, "Nothing is going to work, and so I am not going to do anything." You can therefore guarantee that the worst possible outcomes will come about. Or, you can take the other position. You can say: "Look, maybe something will work. Therefore, I will engage myself in trying to make it work and maybe there is a chance that things can get better." That is your choice. Nobody can tell how right it is to be optimistic. Nothing can be predicted in human affairs... nothing.

Take a look at some of the World Bank predictions. They are ludicrous. It is not because they are stupid. It is just that you cannot predict anything. Human affairs depends on choice, and we do not know anything about choice. Therefore, all sorts of things happen that you cannot explain. In 1990, for example, you could not have predicted that apartheid is going to disappear. In fact, it looked quite the opposite. The regime was getting more and more repressive. Anti-apartheid activists in the white community were thinking of going underground. The U.S. and Britain were supporting the apartheid regime just as they always did. It looked very grim. A couple of years later, it (the apartheid regime) was gone. You do not know how optimistic to be, but you do know that if you do not act on the basis of the assumption that something can change, it is just going to get worse. The guys on the other side, they never stop. They are very optimistic. They are always going to try and make things as harsh and brutal as possible. And, if people who are opposed to that give up, they win.

Take the movements against corporate globalisation. Where do they come from? From the South. From places like India. There were mass popular protests in India... huge ones... You know better than I do... long before Seattle or anything like that. Or, in Brazil. One of the major popular movements is the landless workers' movement in Brazil, which has been around for more than 15 years. They have done really important things. They have taken over the unused land - there is very high land concentration in Brazil - and a huge number of landless workers. It is a lot like India. The movement has acted by setting up cooperatives to use the unused land. They face a lot of brutality, a lot of state terror and get killed. They have support from activists in the cities and elsewhere who can give them some protection, help and advise in the usual fashion. But they are the leaders. I have met them down there. Very impressive people, huge mass movement and they have done a lot of things. That is coming from the South.

These movements mostly grew in the South where people are supposed to be voiceless. They finally made it to the North. When Seattle takes place, you cannot ignore it any longer. As long as it is just a matter of Indian peasants or Brazilian workers being killed in the streets, you could say it is not happening. But when you have massive police violence in Seattle, you have to notice it, although you do not call it police violence. That is the reason they (WTO) are meeting in Qatar. It is insulated from popular pressures.

I do not think one should be pessimistic. A lot of things have been achieved. Actually, the world is a lot better than it was 30 years ago. Just to give you one example, take restraints on state violence. What powerful states can do is pretty awful. But nothing like what they could do 30-40 years ago. Now, they are attacking Afghanistan and causing huge massacres, but the B-52s were attacking heavily settled peasant areas of South Vietnam 40 years ago. Millions of people died and many are still dying from the effects of chemical warfare and unexploded bomblets. The U.S. cannot do anything like that now. And remember, that (Vietnam) went on for years before there were any protests.

Finally, some protests developed and it had an effect. It had a very civilising effect on the whole society in many respects. Out of that ferment came all sorts of things, including the women's movement, the environmental movement and all sorts of other things. It kind of grew out of this dissidence. One of the things that did develop was a restraint on state violence. It is pretty ugly what results, but it is nothing like what it was. Those are reasons for optimism.

I will just say one last thing that happened which is pretty striking in the United States. There were 10 million people living in the U.S. when it was invaded in the 17th century. It was a pretty advanced civilisation by 17th century standards. They (native American Indians) were exterminated by British colonists, actually religious fundamentalists. For hundreds of years this was not part of American history. Anthropologists and archaeologists were lying about it. They were claiming that there was nobody here except a bunch of hunter-gatherers. In the 1960s, that changed. For the first time in hundreds of years of American history, consciousness changed significantly about that. It is still pretty awful - I do not want to say it is utopia - but for the first time there was a willingness to recognise that something pretty horrible had happened. The kind of textbooks that you had in the 1970s, you cannot possibly have them now. They were hopelessly racist textbooks. Those are big changes - a lot to be optimistic about

[myk]

Xian, who cares what happened centuries or decades ago in respect to this question? Compare now and 10 years back. Also, you speak of the movements now appearing in the 3rd world. You seem to not notice the suffering that is causing them to exist. It's not just a game. Also, counter-reactions from wealthier groups are surging in the same places, controlling the media and instigating crime and police abuse.

Spike, why would a death sentence help at all? It hardly has a greater scare factor than prison. Either way the criminal's life is going to be screwed. As for sexual abusers, those are not likely to weigh the consequences much. They just try to get away with it when they feel they won't be caught or accused.

Also, the death sentence applies only to poorer people or those that aren't associanted with power. And think about it. We say "the world is fucked" is the reaction supposed to be "oh well, lets kill some lame fuckers, maybe this fixes something"? It doesn't even help whoever suffered from the misfits' actions. You could have thought of thousands of things to do to improve something before asking the governmet to kill people. How can you then be surprised when there's evil or violence? What were you asking for?

[NoPoet]

I reckon that if all the truly evil, corrupted people were killed in their sleep, we'd lose less than one per cent of all humanity during the night.

[Wobbo]

myk said:

Xian, who cares what happened centuries or decades ago in respect to this question? Compare now and 10 years back. Also, you speak of the movements now appearing in the 3rd world. You seem to not notice the suffering that is causing them to exist. It's not just a game. Also, counter-reactions from wealthier groups are surging in the same places, controlling the media and instigating crime and police abuse.

I didnt mention ANYTHING centuries ago, not ANYTHING. Dont put words in my mouth. name one thirld world country that was better off 10 years ago that it is today

[myk]

Liar! How long ago was the 17th century?

I can tell country is is worse off, for starters. It the last 10 years it's been literally looted to the bone. The story is similar in most other 3rd world countries. Or did you mean better off in respect to the 1st world corporations (and local oligarchies) which made fast and easy deals here and the left or removed their capitals when things kind of sucked, and the politicians who received their bribes? Oh yeah, they might be better off now.

[fodders]

Xian said:

I didnt mention ANYTHING centuries ago, not ANYTHING. Dont put words in my mouth. name one thirld world country that was better off 10 years ago that it is today

Zimbabwe

[DooMBoy]

Xian said:

I didnt mention ANYTHING centuries ago, not ANYTHING. Dont put words in my mouth. name one thirld world country that was better off 10 years ago that it is today

The United States, mayhap?

[Fletcher`]

What is the world coming to?

Shit.