apropos of very little

[redbird]

In between working on manuscripts and discussing at least vaguely-related matters (like sf and other book awards) at the NYRSF work weekend yesterday, I found myself in a discussion of whether/why the US is more violent than other countries. And thinking about it later, I realized that what I'd been unhappy with in Eugene's theories wasn't just that they were single-variable, but that they assumed that the US is exceptional. And it's not just that there are problems with the specific exceptions that were being claimed, but that the last few hundred years of science are a series of lessons in not assuming that your situation or location is a special case.

The point here, if I have one, isn't that all cultures are the same: it's that they're all different, and in several different ways, and it's unlikely to be useful to divide everything into plaid and not-plaid, or assume that there is one important way in which one society is unlike all others, and that this explains all the differences between it and any given other society.

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I've also been doing some noodling about relationships and such, but that's mostly in comments to rysmiel's recent posts.

Comments

[jenett]

If you haven't seen the movie "Bowling for Columbine" yet, and are wanting more food-for-thought on the issue of 'why is the US so violent in comparison', I strongly recommend it. (It's playing mostly in arts houses out here, but a couple of more mainstream theatres.

I just saw it yesterday - there is some disturbing footage in there, but it's also very intriguing (and most of the disturbing stuff stopped just before I was wanting to really cower and hide my eyes and stuff.)

It doesn't have answers, but it does look at the issue from a bunch of different view points.

[redbird]

The movie was actually the starting point for that conversation.

[jenett]

Ah, several steps ahead of me :)

I'm still processing what I think about it, except for the bit I knew going in, namely 'this is a big complicated issue, and I don't think that anything that simplifies it down to even a handful of causes is going to be accurate'.

[rysmiel.livejournal.com]

I saw the trailer for this, and it struck me as something that would come across as controversial and challenging in the US, and stating the obvious to most of the rest of the world.

But then, I come from a country where ordinary decent criminals don't carry guns - or at least didn't up until a few years back - and going armed is the mark of the political terrorist.