The Era of Bad Samaritans

[Mountaineer]

The article also references a book by Robert Nesbit, entitled he Quest for Community: A Study in the Ethics of Order and Freedom, published in 1953.  I've not read this book (though I will try to soon).  I found a great quote and comment in an article about Nisbet in Front Porch Republic:

Nisbet wrote (with amazing prescience), “our present crisis lies in the fact that whereas the small traditional associations, founded upon kinship, faith, or locality, are still expected to communicate to individuals the principal moral ends and psychological  gratifications of society, they have manifestly become detached from positions of functional relevance to the larger economic and political decisions of our society.  Family, local community, church and the whole network of informal interpersonal institutions have ceased to play a determining role  in our institutional systems of mutual aid, welfare, education, recreation, and economic production and distribution.”?  Absent a rich and interconnected set of mutually reinforcing local institutions and practices that supports the “work”? of family, and are in turn supported by families, then family becomes untethered and increasingly irrelevant.  With the decline of strong ties of locality, Nisbet’s analysis fully predicts the decline of family, or its replacement by easy-going relationships that reflect a dominant ethic of mobility, individual self-expression and detachment.  While conservatives have been vocal in a defense of “family values,”? they have been far less successful – one is even tempted to say even negligent – in defending the moral ecology in which good families thrive.

One of the main reasons for this implicates the second area of Nisbet’s concerns, namely, the Economy.  At base, Nisbet holds, a good economy exists for the sake of supporting and maintaining a diversity of local communities.  It exists to serve society – not vice versa.  A market comes into being inside the city walls or town limits, not vice-versa.  The basic presuppositions of modern economic theory – premised on the idea that economic decision-making is undertaken to increase individual profit and liberty, and undergirds a society of mobility and efficiency  – contradicts the central understanding of community as a place of continuity, stability, order, and interpersonal identification.  Modern economic demands of comparative advantage, mobility, efficiency and profit maximization result in a set of practices that undermine the existence of communities that, arguably, economic life was originally created to serve.

Nesbit seems to point out that loss of commonly held morals in our country has an economic as well as other consequences.  It seems our US founding fathers had it right:

http://famguardian.org/subjects/politic ... ff0200.htm

... Mountaineer

[Mountaineer]

Nesbit seems to point out that loss of commonly held morals in our country has an economic as well as other consequences.  It seems our US founding fathers had it right:

http://famguardian.org/subjects/politic ... ff0200.htm

... Mountaineer

I partly disagree with (or perhaps misunderstand) your comment.  It seems to me that Nesbit (and Patrick Dineen, the author of the article) is saying the link between morality and economic life goes both ways: the manner in which we have chosen to structure economic life has destroyed the underlying societal elements (family and local community) that support a moral people.

After I read the article you posted, I asked myself "why?" re. the events described.  The root cause conclusion I came to, based upon my presuppositions, is "many in our US society are trying their damnedest to throw Christianity (or its moral code for the secular among us) out of everything public".  That, combined with the postmodernism view of do whatever is right for you, results in what Nesbit (or Dineen) observe in the first paragraph of the article.  Based on my presuppositions, I equate my conclusion to throwing a commonly held morality out the window.  Thus, the link to Madison et. al. words from our country's foundation that stress the importance of a moral society for a lasting government.  In other words (my opinion), if people do not have a strong sense of absolute right and wrong in their hearts, no government, however forceful or benevolent will survive.  But then again, perhaps I missunderstood the article.

... Mountaineer

[clacy]

Without getting too deep into the causes and your morality discussion, I agree that it's getting a little absurd that all instances of stupid parenting are now handled as criminal cases.  Obviously most of these cases sited are borderline, but I feel like the benefit of the doubt should be given to the parent in most situations.

I read about a mother who was ticketed because her 3 year old son had pulled down his pants and peed in their front yard.  Peeing outside, is a technique that has been used forever, in getting a toddler to stop using their diaper.

As anyone who has ever had children knows, you can take your eye off of them for a split second, and when you turn around they are doing something stupid (like getting naked and peeing for instance).

Why anyone would get so offended as to call the police, or why a police officer wouldn't use some common sense and say "Ma'am, next time please have your son go indoors rather than urinating in public" is so beyond how my brain works, I can barely believe that things like this could happen.

[Pointedstick]

Why anyone would get so offended as to call the police, or why a police officer wouldn't use some common sense and say "Ma'am, next time please have your son go indoors rather than urinating in public" is so beyond how my brain works, I can barely believe that things like this could happen.

I think a lot of this is because many police officers are PTSD-ridden power-tripping maniacs, and the militarized nature of the profession's modern incarnation increasingly attracts bullies and thugs rather than the kindly middle-aged men commonly portrayed in the media. As a result, they are more willing then ever to hurt people for basically no good reason. The thing that boggles my mind is how few people seem to realize this and still believe that police officers are these noble, selfless defenders of the peace.

Another problem is that people seem to be losing confidence in their own judgement and becoming more willing to blindly involve authority figures. Perhaps it seems easier to "fire and forget" by calling in someone whose full-time job it is to interact with potentially difficult situations than run the risk of being yelled at or being involved in something personally challenging.

So the dual trends of people feeling the greater need to involve authority figures rather than trust their own judgement, and those authority figures becoming psychopathic thugs, seem to have combined in predictably ugly ways.

[clacy]

This good Samaritan was unfortunately killed yesterday by the type of police officers you're talking about Pointed...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PZEYOSRiQno

http://www.newsday.com/news/new-york/er ... -1.8837654

I realize this guy is enormous and not exactly happy that they're trying to arrest him, but it was obvious that he stopped resisting and was saying he couldn't breath, yet 6 police officers are basically standing on top of him and cramming his head into the ground.

What a tragedy.

[Pointedstick]

"Selling untaxed cigarettes???" STRINGEMUP! Such dangerous criminals don't deserve to live.

the purge (parody) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i0cKEuBRnY4

[Pointedstick]

I blame the MBA/management culture.  I'm serious.  There are systematic procedures and processes for everything now, the point of which is to eliminate people's ability to apply their own judgement in various situations.  The main reason this is done, of course, is to reduce labor costs: any idiot can follow a process, and any idiot is certainly cheaper than an intelligent person with good judgement.

Yes, there are times where following a process can be beneficial and helpful.  But I think the mindset penetrates into areas of life where it is detrimental.

I think it's a lot of different things, all perhaps multiple sides of the same coin:

1) As you say, "management culture."

2) Specialization and interdependence. Most of us work in a job where we do one thing very well, and everything else we need to do that job is given to us by others. This specialization breeds interdependence. Interdependence is the antithesis of independence. Little wonder we've become trained to rely on others whenever anything seems to go awry. Our own jobs have caused us to lose our belief in our own competence outside of a very narrow range of routinized tasks.

3) The professionalization of everything. We're constantly encouraged by the world around us to bring in "experts" for everything more complicated than picking our own noses. Professionals wash our carpets, clean our gutters, tidy up our houses, keep our lawns looking good, fix our cars, often cook our food, and sometimes even raise our children. Even consuming media can be seen as a form of outsourcing entertainment to professionals who craft entertaining experiences in the form of movies, video games, packaged vacations, stuff like that. For everything you can do yourself, there's an "expert" you can hire to do it for you with the promise of doing it way better than you could ever do yourself, you ignorant doofus.

4) The regulation of everything. You practically need to fill out an application for a permit to apply for a license to unplug your own refrigerator. The government encourages an attitude of "everything remotely dangerous must be overseen by an expert or an inspector" and expresses this in a multitude of minute laws governing the precise details of a whole host of ordinary activities, and requiring "oversight" by an overworked inspector whose time you're paying for with your protection money permit fees.


It's regulation, regimentation, specialization, organization, separation, productization, routinization, you name it. All of these things encourage us to see ourselves as cogs in a gigantic machine rather than strong, empowered, independent thinkers and actors capable of having a profound influence on the world around us. They encourage us to consume the results of others' work rather than learn to do the work ourselves. They make us see ourselves as small and insignificant and incapable, even when those we're relying on obviously exhibit those same traits themselves.

One of the reasons why I'm so obsessed with ERE is because I see it as a potential means to break these chains on a personal level. By becoming financially independent, I no longer need to be a wage-slave cog. And the process of becoming financially independent very rapidly requires that I learn skills to build and produce for cost savings and even profit rather than compare and consume, which profits others and drains away my own money. And the more ERE money I've socked away, and the more practical skills I've gained, and the more useful things I've fixed and built with my own two hands... the more I feel myself escaping from this mindset.

[moda0306]

Nesbit seems to point out that loss of commonly held morals in our country has an economic as well as other consequences.  It seems our US founding fathers had it right:

http://famguardian.org/subjects/politic ... ff0200.htm

... Mountaineer

I partly disagree with (or perhaps misunderstand) your comment.  It seems to me that Nesbit (and Patrick Dineen, the author of the article) is saying the link between morality and economic life goes both ways: the manner in which we have chosen to structure economic life has destroyed the underlying societal elements (family and local community) that support a moral people.

After I read the article you posted, I asked myself "why?" re. the events described.  The root cause conclusion I came to, based upon my presuppositions, is "many in our US society are trying their damnedest to throw Christianity (or its moral code for the secular among us) out of everything public".  That, combined with the postmodernism view of do whatever is right for you, results in what Nesbit (or Dineen) observe in the first paragraph of the article.  Based on my presuppositions, I equate my conclusion to throwing a commonly held morality out the window.  Thus, the link to Madison et. al. words from our country's foundation that stress the importance of a moral society for a lasting government.  In other words (my opinion), if people do not have a strong sense of absolute right and wrong in their hearts, no government, however forceful or benevolent will survive.  But then again, perhaps I missunderstood the article.

... Mountaineer

I really don't see the connection.

If we have, on one hand, people "trying" to undermine Christianity in the public sphere, that is one way to look at it, but people who call the cops for every little thing, or expect every little offense to be a police matter, are hardly the same people who have a "everything you do is right for you" mentality.

Those people both might be right or wrong in certain ways, but they are hardly the "same group," IMO.  Busy-body liberals OR conservatives always want their view of morality enforced for everyone else.  Obviously there are "public" morality issues (murder) and "private" issues (sex), but a lot of times the lines are blurred, and they love to make everything a public policy issue.  These people, whether hippy liberals or reactionary conservatives, want to encode and enforce their views, way too often (IMO), into the legal system.


On the other side you have the more libertarian wings of liberal/conservative thought, that basically realize trying to make everything a legal issue is not effective.  These people are usually very leery of police and centralized power when not serving some very unique purpose (for libs, universal healthcare... for conservatives, national defense).

Also, I'd say that passive-aggressiveness has lead to a lot of this.  People just simply do not have the balls to confront someone, but they KNOW there is someone who will do it... if there's a law in place, even if they don't agree with it, if a person is bothering them and the law helps them, CALL THE COPS!  I can understand this, as it can be really difficult to upset a "neighborly" relationship (that sometimes-uncomfortable place between friends and strangers) with a confrontation, but you're hoping the cops will just come by and give them a warning.



If I had two neighbors, and one was a Christian who always advocated for his religion to be recognized and celebrated at the public level, and the other was a "do what you think is good for you" hippy civil libertarian, and I get the cops coming to my house 6 minutes after "quiet time" in the noise ordinance the night of my birthday, I think I know which one called the cops .

That's not a judgement on either philosophy.  I see things in Christians that I wish could be present in the moral structure of the atheist friends I have to a HUGE degree, sometimes.  Just giving my take on this specific phenomenon.

[Mountaineer]

I partly disagree with (or perhaps misunderstand) your comment.  It seems to me that Nesbit (and Patrick Dineen, the author of the article) is saying the link between morality and economic life goes both ways: the manner in which we have chosen to structure economic life has destroyed the underlying societal elements (family and local community) that support a moral people.

After I read the article you posted, I asked myself "why?" re. the events described.  The root cause conclusion I came to, based upon my presuppositions, is "many in our US society are trying their damnedest to throw Christianity (or its moral code for the secular among us) out of everything public".  That, combined with the postmodernism view of do whatever is right for you, results in what Nesbit (or Dineen) observe in the first paragraph of the article.  Based on my presuppositions, I equate my conclusion to throwing a commonly held morality out the window.  Thus, the link to Madison et. al. words from our country's foundation that stress the importance of a moral society for a lasting government.  In other words (my opinion), if people do not have a strong sense of absolute right and wrong in their hearts, no government, however forceful or benevolent will survive.  But then again, perhaps I missunderstood the article.

... Mountaineer

I really don't see the connection.

If we have, on one hand, people "trying" to undermine Christianity in the public sphere, that is one way to look at it, but people who call the cops for every little thing, or expect every little offense to be a police matter, are hardly the same people who have a "everything you do is right for you" mentality.

Those people both might be right or wrong in certain ways, but they are hardly the "same group," IMO.  Busy-body liberals OR conservatives always want their view of morality enforced for everyone else.  Obviously there are "public" morality issues (murder) and "private" issues (sex), but a lot of times the lines are blurred, and they love to make everything a public policy issue.  These people, whether hippy liberals or reactionary conservatives, want to encode and enforce their views, way too often (IMO), into the legal system.


On the other side you have the more libertarian wings of liberal/conservative thought, that basically realize trying to make everything a legal issue is not effective.  These people are usually very leery of police and centralized power when not serving some very unique purpose (for libs, universal healthcare... for conservatives, national defense).

Also, I'd say that passive-aggressiveness has lead to a lot of this.  People just simply do not have the balls to confront someone, but they KNOW there is someone who will do it... if there's a law in place, even if they don't agree with it, if a person is bothering them and the law helps them, CALL THE COPS!  I can understand this, as it can be really difficult to upset a "neighborly" relationship (that sometimes-uncomfortable place between friends and strangers) with a confrontation, but you're hoping the cops will just come by and give them a warning.



If I had two neighbors, and one was a Christian who always advocated for his religion to be recognized and celebrated at the public level, and the other was a "do what you think is good for you" hippy civil libertarian, and I get the cops coming to my house 6 minutes after "quiet time" in the noise ordinance the night of my birthday, I think I know which one called the cops .

That's not a judgement on either philosophy.  I see things in Christians that I wish could be present in the moral structure of the atheist friends I have to a HUGE degree, sometimes.  Just giving my take on this specific phenomenon.

Just a couple of comments on the red bold part from my perspective:

Knowlegable Christians, in my opinion, do not want "their personal" moral laws enforced by the authorities, they believe God's Word, an incredibly valuable gift, is what counts.  Thus my comments about the importance of an external source of right and wrong that is written on people's hearts.  I do agree with you that there a whole lot of self-righteous Christians "out there" that give Christianity a bad name.  However, we are all sinners, me just as much as the self-righteous, you just as much as your neighbors.  Thanks be to God we have a Savior that took all our sin upon Himself - what Martin Luther called "the great exchange" (2 Corinthians 5:21).  The challenge for us all is "don't reject Christ's gift" or we will have a "horrible exchange" waiting for us:  rejection of Christ's forgiveness for eternal damnation (by the way, Satan is an inmate in hell, not the ruler; God rules all so you won't ever be escaping Him  .

It seems the whistle blower Christian you describe does not understand the Scriptural guidance for resolving conflict with one's neighbor, hense my adjective "knowledgeable" above. 

... Mountaineer

[Mountaineer]

As followup to my last post where I used the term "Knowledgeable Christian",  I could have been a bit more accurate if I said "Marks of the True Christian".  If we all acted like this, the world would certainly be a more congenial place.

Romans 12

Marks of the True Christian

9 Let love be genuine. Abhor what is evil; hold fast to what is good. 10 Love one another with brotherly affection. Outdo one another in showing honor. 11 Do not be slothful in zeal, be fervent in spirit, serve the Lord. 12 Rejoice in hope, be patient in tribulation, be constant in prayer. 13 Contribute to the needs of the saints and seek to show hospitality.  14 Bless those who persecute you; bless and do not curse them. 15 Rejoice with those who rejoice, weep with those who weep. 16 Live in harmony with one another. Do not be haughty, but associate with the lowly. Never be wise in your own sight. 17 Repay no one evil for evil, but give thought to do what is honorable in the sight of all. 18 If possible, so far as it depends on you, live peaceably with all. 19 Beloved, never avenge yourselves, but leave it to the wrath of God, for it is written, “Vengeance is mine, I will repay, says the Lord.”? 20 To the contrary, “if your enemy is hungry, feed him; if he is thirsty, give him something to drink; for by so doing you will heap burning coals on his head.”? 21 Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good.

... Mountaineer