Has This Type Of Thing Always Happened, Or Are Some Of Today's Kids Becoming More Violent?

[anotheoldgit]

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2384792/Korean-War-veteran-Barney-Alcock-81-beaten-yobs-outside-home.html

[viv38]

The soft approach definitely hasn't worked kathyann and we are now reaping the "rewards". Human rights, the curse of the 21st century!

[Octavius]

"When I was a young girl in the fifties and sixties, children were scared of the police, but we respected them and I remember one day a police officer stopped me and a couple of mates and asked our names. We weren't doing anything wrong but I was so frightened that my Mum and Dad would find out that he had been talking to us!"

Ah, so we need to go back to a society of fear and anguish then, where children are afraid of authority?

[viv38]

^^^ YES !!!!

[anotheoldgit]

/// The trend in homicides (including murder, manslaughter and infanticide) has also been upwards since the early 1960s. From around 300 homicides each year in the early 1960s, the current average is around 600. ///

http://www.historytoday.com/victor-bailey/crime-20th-century-britain

[anotheoldgit]

Hypognosis

/// I've seen far too many threads like this before. Quite often, one of the first replies in the thread is
"Stop Reading the Daily Mail!" ///

/// No one else has, so I thought I would. ///

So perhaps these things don't really happen, it is just the Daily Mail who makes them up, so if we don't read that paper all our ills will go away, I wonder if those injuries on that poor 81 year old will now disappear if his assault didn't really happen?

[viv38]

And maybe the pictures of his poor beaten face were photoshopped !!

[jim360]

A respect that is only based on fear is hollow. I think this is what we've seen. You need to build respect based on trust.

[anotheoldgit]

/// Ah, so we need to go back to a society of fear and anguish then, where children are afraid of authority? ///

Perhaps we should all go back to a society where we are all afraid of authority, if and when we happened to break the rules of that society?

That is the trouble with some of today's society, no respect for authority, and no respect for themselves.

[Hypognosis]

Great! I get an excuse to post this link again.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-15391515

Enter a birth date of 1/1/1960 and see if the world population has doubled since then or not.

Okay, strictly speaking we need a chart of UK population but the point is that you need to 'normalise' the data to a consistent unit, such as "violent crimes per 100,000 population" before you can make proper comparisons with the past.

Common sense tells you that more people arranged in a more crowded manner = more interpersonal interactions. Is it a fixed percentage of those interactions which end in violence or is there some synergistic factor related to how crowded our cities become?

Or do the statistics reveal that we're no worse, per head of population but, with more people around, it multiplies up to more incidents overall?

[anotheoldgit]

jim360

/// A respect that is only based on fear is hollow. I think this is what we've seen. You need to build respect based on trust. ///

And who's trust were these little thugs after, were they perhaps trusting that poor chap not to tell them off for throwing berries at his house?

Any society needs a threat of fear, Isn't it the 'FEAR' of being found out that stops many committing crime.

[viv38]

I was scared of the police when I was a kid, especially when one stopped me because I didn't indicate I was turning when I was on my bike, got a telling off from Dad too. And here I am, a happy, well adjusted adult who wouldn't dream of thumping a pensioner or kicking someone's head in and who abides by the law - didn't do ME any harm being afraid of authority, did it??? Kids today have rights, and boy do they know it !

[Octavius]

"That is the trouble with some of today's society, no respect for authority, and no respect for themselves"

I didn't mention respect. I was talking about fear. Not the same.

Do you think my young girls should autoatically be scared of the police?

[jim360]

I'm not saying what we have at the moment is perfect -- but then neither was it then. We've probably knocked down a system that didn't work and not figured out how to replace it. Oh, and the old system didn't work. There's no reason to be all proud about the fact that there were "only" 300 murders a year. We both know that is 300 too many. And not just homicides either. The entire set-up of society was based on fear, fear of authority, fear of making mistakes. What happened whne you "slipped up" by those standards? You ended up shunned, ostracised, punished by society, punished for mistakes that maybe even were not your fault -- and even if they were, did it help to punish people and make them feel bad for making one false step?

No, I wouldn't want to go back to those days for anything. For every lovely story about how "we could play out on the streets without fear", I hear the sad tale of someone afraid to leave those streets and return home to their family and parents who would beat them for breaking a hot glass dish because the oven gloves had a hole in. Return to that sort of idea of life? Never. We're well rid of it.

[viv38]

Read my post above, I was. I wasn't so scared that I wet myself with fear whenever one came within a yard of me, just scared enough to respect their authority and stay on the straight and narrow.

[viv38]

So jim, children today aren't afraid to return home to the beatings etc? What about little Daniel who we have all been agonising over recently, I'm pretty certain he was terrified to go home too, and he had a lot more than beatings done to him !

[jim360]

The poor child, I feel sorry for him. He wasn't exceptional, is the saddest thing -- and he wasn't exceptional back then, either. History is littered with the corpses of unwanted children. The lucky ones just starved to death in a rubbish tip.

[ummmm]

Some people talk complete rubbish.

[Hypognosis]

//So perhaps these things don't really happen, it is just the Daily Mail who makes them up,//

I didn't say that.

// so if we don't read that paper all our ills will go away,//

Of course not. It's intended to be a humorous reminder, that, if you stop reading material which incites you to anger, then you will no longer be angry. Stress actually shortens your lifespan, after all.

I realise that humour is an inappropriate response to such a situation but I am already miserable about the way society seems to be going and can well do without DM stories to make me feel worse.

Having said that, at least the DM have stopped him from being reduced to a crime statistic and retored his dignity by making his past known.

Now, if only they would reduce these offenders to faceless anonymity. In an age where celebrity is all that youths crave, I'm sure it only encourages them.

[LazyGun]

It has always happened.

[joko]

humans have always killed others. we have always been violent.

history is littered it appalling and abhorrent acts of violence - and also littered with appalling and abhorrent people known mainly for their violence and thuggery - ghenghis khan, pirates, the kkk, white supremacists, the rape and pillage of mediaeval times - the list is enormous, and thats not to mention all the wars, the conquering of nations, the slaughter of natives ... it is not a new thing.

we even fight for 'sport' and fun ...

why are people always so shocked every time it happens and begin to bemoan the decline of society?