You’re regular Monday words, brought to you on Tuesday by Stephen L. Hall
In recent conversations and personal observations of the past, there appears a phenomena which occludes people’s understanding of the society around them and inhibits their ability to communicate one with the other.
Human nature is such that oft mankind cannot, or rather will not, see the forest for all the trees which seem to get in their way. That is to say, one’s immediate surroundings, associates, and experiences cloud their perception of reality itself, skewing their beliefs, arguments, and values.
In one recent conversation, it was mentioned that as the police arrests one person three more criminals will rise up to take their place. This is of course a misapplication of such statements expressed elsewhere, particularly the movie Casablanca:
“If I didn’t give them to you in a concentration camp, where you had more persuasive methods at your disposal, I certainly won’t give them to you now. And what if you track down these men and kill them? What if you murdered all of us? From every corner of your Republic, thousands would rise to take our places. Even Nazis can’t kill that fast.” – Victor Laszlo.
The sentiment is of course misplaced in the context of criminals as the idea of others rising up to take the risk to take ‘their’ place is naturally contingent upon a noble cause which would instill such courage, and criminality is certainly not a noble cause.
While it has been maintained that 1/3 of Americans have a criminal record of some type, this is a gross overstatement for political purposes of what most people consider a criminal record, which generally implies a felony or time spent in jail: “6.5 percent of the U.S. population has a felony record, and one in 15 people have gone to prison at some point.”
So what would cause a person to so misperceive the prevalence of criminality in society? We know that crime is often concentrated in bigger cities, and within certain neighborhoods in every city or town. To someone growing up and living in a crime ridden neighborhood, crime is seen as common, even prevalent.
It is because that is the view of society that person sees from day to day, surrounding them. They presume and project that what they see around them prevails in the society at large and everywhere.
Picture the typical modern college student, those we derogatorily call ‘social justice warriors’, and think about what they see on a daily basis all around them. Professors and administrators, even secretaries, who have all been carefully screened by a highly politically motivated grading, hiring, and promoting process, insulated from market forces through subsidized funding.
This used to be euphemistically referred to as an ‘ivy tower’, due to the encouragement of ivy growing on the buildings of university campuses, to indicate that in their isolation academics were separated from the daily concerns of the working classes to concentrate on erudite and esoteric matters of a purely intellectual nature, unconcerned and untroubled by the pragmatic concerns of vulgar fields like politics, commerce, defense, or agriculture.
However, once education became a tool of the government, and thus a weapon of choice of socialist reformers, they plunged heartily into the realms of politics to effect their own agendas. They remain as isolated as before, but no longer academic or intellectual, they gleefully roll around in the mud slinging of politics alongside the worst of politicians.
The student sees around them political activism everywhere they look, and overwhelmingly of a leftist, progressive, socialist bent. Their professors are overwhelmingly ‘liberal’, and by ‘liberal’ obviously socialist whether they feign any other name, about 87% of them compared to about 13% conservative.
Thus, as the person in the criminal area looks around and sees criminals everywhere, the college student looks around and sees socialists everywhere. But, in the working, middle class neighborhoods? The children in the suburbs look around at their parents, still married, going to work, paying bills and taxes, and also thinks other families are stable, industrious, even conservative.
A couple decades ago, I had occasion to review some FBI criminal statistics pertaining to assaults and batteries as it related to domestic violence questions. Looking at the statistics, a number of things appeared which would not otherwise have occurred to me.
The numbers were, fortunately for discussion purposes, nearly perfect in their approximation of a model scenario. I’m sure that the trends since them have moved the numbers to a less convenient symmetry. However, for the sake of that symmetry, I shall recall the numbers as they appear in my memory of the 1995 statistics, without distracting reference.
At the time, feminists were complaining about the lack of attention paid to domestic violence, despite the fact that domestic violence had its own special laws and was even, at that time, getting special prosecutors dedicated to just for such cases.
Looking at the assaults against women, it was easy to see why they may voice such concerns. About ninety percent (90%) of assaults against women were by men, and the overwhelming majority of those were in the domestic setting relating to boyfriends, husbands, and various ex-es. Only about ten percent (10%) of the attacks women suffered were from other women.
When you looked at the men’s side of the equation, you saw a starkly different and strikingly similar picture. See, about ninety percent (90%) of the time a man was assaulted, it was by another man. Only about ten percent (10%) of the attacks against men were perpetrated by women.
Viewed in this light, it certainly paints a picture of the predatory male that the feminists kept preaching about men in general. But, those statistics are not the whole truth. When one takes an oath before a court, it is not merely the truth, and nothing but the truth that one must give, but the whole truth. Those statistics leave out much.
You see, about ninety percent (90%) of all assaults were against men, and only ten percent (10%) were against women. Men were the victims of assault nine times (9x) as often as women.
Which meant, when you broke down the numbers, assuming that the majority of assaults by men against women and women against men were of a domestic nature, the totals were pretty much equal. Which corresponded to all the scientific studies I had read that domestic violence was pretty much equal between men and women. (However, the numbers diverge significantly when one focuses upon child abuse and murder.)
Why is this relevant? Because, domestic violence being relatively equal between men and women, makes up the overwhelming majority of violence against women. Thus, to women this becomes a major concern. However, to a man, that domestic violence accounts for less than a tenth of the threats of violence against him. It is thus a far less concern to men, not because it is not important, but because there are greater threats.
It is a matter of perspective, and it is that perspective which is our topic. There was once a time when during any rational debate, a person could simply tell the person with whom they were engaged to “take a step back and look at the big picture.” And, the other person would.
It was a commonly accepted signal to disengage oneself from their personal bias, to see if there was more going on in reality than they had previously considered. Statistics was a common way of looking at that big picture and getting away from the narrow personal view to a more objective, holistic view of society and society’s problems.
Academics once strived for objective truth, to break free from their own biases and preconceived notions. Now, objectivity has become career suicide in what feigns to be academia. That ‘ivy tower’ was once disconnected because it was objective; now it is disconnected because it is subjective, nearsighted and narrow-minded.
“Myopia is the medical term for nearsightedness. People with myopia see objects more clearly when they are close to the eye, while distant objects appear blurred or fuzzy. Reading and close-up work may be clear, but distance vision is blurry.”
Think of the Obamacare discussion, or any other modern topic. Ask if anyone is actually willing to look at the big picture, to reason the principles, to discuss the implications, or any actual, earnest seeking of truth or understanding. Or, has our society become politically myopic?
