Sapientivore
Registered Senior Member
People are more dangerous to themselves than each other, imho.
Why is it taboo to discuss the responsibility of victims?
- Thread starter wynn
- Start date
Not in my own life, but your mileage may vary.
Sapientivore
Registered Senior Member
Fair enough. I've just seen way more misery from people stressing over the possibility of others harming them, than from actual harm.
Enmos
Valued Senior Member
This is true. People tend to stress themselves out over possibilities they have no influence on whatsoever.
I could reduce my chances of robbery and stranger rape to almost zero if I carried an AK-47, a riot shotgun and a sixpack of grenades with me everywhere.
My back would be sore more often, but still totally worth it.
:thumbsup:
When you say "everywhere" does this include the loo?
see also:
So is it better to die of dehydration or suffer rape? Decisions, decisions
Fraggle Rocker
Staff member
A classic example of irrational risk analysis. Road accidents are among the top five causes of death everywhere in the world, and they cause far more injuries than deaths. Even in places like Africa where most people can't afford a car, and even in places like Iraq where people are shooting at each other.
And aren't you the one who bought a motorcycle? That increases your probability of being killed or seriously injured in a road accident by an order of magnitude. Yet you're worried about being killed or injured by one of your fellow citizens, the probability of which is so low that it is entirely rational to ignore it. Out of every hundred Americans, three will die in road accidents. The number who will be killed by other people is on the other side of the decimal point.
Unless you're in the 15-25 age bracket, in which murder is one of the top five causes of death, but only because they're too young to die from cancer, heart disease and falling down. Their #1 cause of death is road accidents, and suicide is also one of their top five! I think drug overdose is one of the others and I can't remember the fifth.
You are greatly degrading your quality of life by walking around fearing your fellow citizens, and the impact of that wariness on your life expectancy is almost negligible. Especially considering that stress is a major factor in diseases that cause premature death, and I don't see what can be more stressful than walking around distrusting everybody!
You don't need a gun. You need a more competent shrink.
Well, yes, of course.
...Had no idea how common sexual assault was in the military...read stories of individuals though.
It's especially nasty if it's the CO forcing sex on you:
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/03/18/magazine/18cover.html?pagewanted=all
So I guess one way to reduce the chances of getting raped: don't join the military.
Sapientivore
Registered Senior Member
I really wish I could understand your mindset.
Overall - agreed. The number of people who kill themselves because of overeating, smoking, drinking, doing stupid things (i.e. shooting themselves, driving drunk etc) outnumbers the number of people killed by other people by several orders of magnitude.
Bells
Staff member
Look at how you posed the question and ask yourself why I raised my eyebrows when you first wanted to debate this as you posed the question (refer to post 222). Others also queried you, to which you pretty much told them how wrong they were.
You wish to withdraw from the debate? That's fine by me. But there is no "win" or "winner". This was just a discussion.
Goodbye Randwolf. I won't say it has been fun, because well, it really hasn't been.
Fraggle Rocker
Staff member
These are people who have been brainwashed (they euphemistically call it "basic training") into believing that violence is a perfectly normal way to deal with other human beings. So you're surprised that when one of them wants sex he just goes out and assaults someone to get it? Duh?
What do you expect him to do, establish diplomatic relations, talk about it, decide who is right, compromise, and sign a treaty? That would be the civilized way, not the military way.
When you're in the military your CO has complete power over you. It's not like a real job, where if you get tired of the abuse you can give him the finger and walk out. Sure, if there are enough of you you might manage to arouse some interest from the press or even the legal system, but by then you've all been raped about six times.
* sigh * There is so much truth in that. As much as I cheered when the draft ended, even I have to admit that an all-volunteer army has a major down-side. When most of the people in the army were regular folks like you and me, they acted as a buffer against the real hard-core guys. Now that they're all real hard-core guys (and gals) there's no brake on their hard-core behavior.
Guys who are veterans of WWII, Korea and Vietnam read the reports about Abu Ghraib. They said, "Ya know, guy, we were no angels. War brings out the worst in everybody. We might very well have done something like that. But we would only have done it in retaliation for the other guys doing it first. If our own hard-core guys went into a town and started raping the women and doing shit like that, the rest of us would do our best to stop them, or at least minimize the damage.
"Sure, it happened a few times, the history books won't let us forget it. But those were really big wars involving a lot of soldiers! This is a little pipsqueak war, so small that it's fought entirely by volunteers, with so few casualties that you can print all of their photos in the newspaper. Yet the modern U.S. military has arguably committed more atrocities in this little dip-shit war than we did in all of WWII."
People have always taken risks with their health and life. We're all happy to risk something bad happening in the future in order to have some enjoyment today. The difference is that in those days a far greater percentage of the population died at the hands of other humans than die that way today. In the cities of medieval Europe, the murder rate was something like a hundred times greater than it is today in, say, Washington DC, one of the most deadly cities in America.
People aren't really killing themselves in greater numbers. It just looks that way because fewer of us are murdered so we survive to die from the effects of our own dissolute lifestyles.
Who was that masked stranger anyway?
You can also thank the 24 hour news cycle for that. Because everyone can find easily find out about pretty much every murder in the developed world, and the fact that particularly gruesome or unusual murders can gain nationwide or even worldwide media coverage, people think that more murders are taking place. We, as a whole, are still stuck in the "small village" mentality but we have access to worldwide information, that's not a good combination.
Who said PTSD's rational?
Too, you think in terms of getting killed...
Who said I was afraid of them killing me?
Bleeding out in 5 minutes or less is probably one of the easiest ways to go.
It's more about not being a helpless victim...again.
No guarantees on that, but I'm determined to go down fighting.
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Sapientivore
Registered Senior Member
People can be a victim of their own fear, as well.
Beats that helpless feeling.:shrug:
Right - now apply to this to every place and situation where rape is likely.
I didn't need to see this, but since I did, you get to see it, too.
The BBC today runs this depressing headline: "John Dillon jailed for rape of grandmother in 1982".
And let us note the lede, so that there is no question about the nature of the crime: "A man has been jailed for life under the double jeopardy law three decades after raping his own grandmother."
Okay ... mitigation advocates ... go.
You know, explain the risk assessment criteria here: How does a sixty-five year-old woman reduce the risk of being raped by her sixteen year-old grandson?
Or should we just shrug and say, "So much for holidays with the family"?
____________________
Notes:
British Broadcasting Corporation. "John Dillon jailed for rape of grandmother in 1982". BBC News. December 1, 2011. BBC.co.uk. December 1, 2011. http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-tyne-15166179
The BBC today runs this depressing headline: "John Dillon jailed for rape of grandmother in 1982".
And let us note the lede, so that there is no question about the nature of the crime: "A man has been jailed for life under the double jeopardy law three decades after raping his own grandmother."
Okay ... mitigation advocates ... go.
You know, explain the risk assessment criteria here: How does a sixty-five year-old woman reduce the risk of being raped by her sixteen year-old grandson?
Or should we just shrug and say, "So much for holidays with the family"?
____________________
Notes:
British Broadcasting Corporation. "John Dillon jailed for rape of grandmother in 1982". BBC News. December 1, 2011. BBC.co.uk. December 1, 2011. http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-tyne-15166179
...Which is why I'm paranoid.
Since, as far as I can tell, rape is a potential when any other human is present.