An interesting case of social engineering

I noticed an interesting thing the other night while I was watching television, in how certain "groups" of people are portrayed.

In African-American circles, there's a lot of outcry about how television wrongly depicts black people as this or that and how American television is actually responsible for a large portion of racism in modern America. From what I've seen and read, that is mostly viewed as borderline conspiracy theory. I'm not so sure I can say that television is responsible, but I do believe that television certainly perpetuates it, or at least doesn't do anything to abate the tide of racism that we have in our country. And really, I'm not so sure that it's television's job to conquer racism, especially Prime Time television. I certainly believe, however, that television should not be promoting racism as it appears to do on a regular basis.

In the past decade or so, a new "group" of individuals has been "showcased" on television: homosexuals. From what I've observed from the shows I've watched and the pop culture I understand, I've begun to see a bit of social engineering.

Just from what I've seen, I think that homosexuals are over-represented on television, just as much as black people are under-represented and stereotyped.

Basically, homosexuals represent a very, very small portion of the population, but they are represented through television in a large portion of shows. If you look at how often black people are represented, you will notice that black people are under-represented. Meaning, that, in real life, you will more likely run into a black person (about 17% of the population) than you will a homosexual (about 3-5%, according to most studies). In fact, it is a bit more likely you will run into say, an atheist (about 9% of the population), than a homosexual, but the representation of atheists on television is extremely small. Of course, that also leads to another question: Atheism is something you can't see, unlike race, as is homosexuality. Why is it such a big deal that some characters are determined to be characterized by something that is practiced in private? Does it really matter?

Additionally, something I've noticed is the kind of representation that homosexuals receive on television. Black people are generally represented as a kind of "token" character, like "we have to have a black person on the show, or else the show won't be believable." But, in a lot of these shows, black people are given every type of character, good and bad.

However, in all of the shows I've seen where a homosexual is in the cast, they are all cast as a "super-normal" individual. No crime. No hang-ups. Just a homosexual trying to make it through life, all the while letting everyone know that they are gay. Not only is this odd, it's completely illogical.

It is unreasonable to believe that homosexuals don't commit crime or don't encounter the same societal issues that the heterosexuals do and if they do have the same struggles as heterosexuals do, it is certainly unlikely that all of them come through it as easily or heroically as portrayed on television.

Why am I getting hung up on television when we all know television is fake? Because we don't all know that television is fake. Yes, we can intellectually understand that television is fake, but psychologically, when we are exposed to the same stimulus over and over again, fake or not, we tend to believe it as reality. We are basically conditioned by television every day of our lives.

So, am I saying that homosexuals shouldn't be portrayed on television as generally good people? Am I saying that homosexuals shouldn't be portrayed on television as much as they are? Not really. What I am saying is that it is completely ludicrous that homosexuals are being portrayed as often as they are, without all the problems that the rest of us face.

Of course, I don't watch every show on television, and I certainly don't watch every show that has a homosexual on it. So, it's possible that I simply haven't observed enough television to make an accurate statement. But, isn't that the point, that the television I do watch, about 2-3 hours a day sometimes, is approximately the same amount of television (at least!) that everyone else watches? Is it really fair that African-Americans get portrayed the way they do, usually with many issues, many times related to crime or poverty, but homosexuals are portrayed nearly as often as African-Americans, but without any of the hangups?

Pacifism isn't what you think it is...

One of my favorite conservative pundits that I have ever known is Michael Graham. (His blog is on my links section.) Back when I lived in SC, he was a radio host on the local station. He was funny, irreverent, but really, he was very, very smart and he knows the business of politics. He's never run for office, that I know of, but I know he has participated in a few campaigns.

So, moving to the point. Somewhere, he got involved in the VA Tech massacre discussion and said something incredibly profound and now there's a bit of a backlash. To make a long blog short, he simply asked the question why no one in VA Tech actually did anything to stop the killer. During that brief time, where he killed 32 students and then himself, he came into contact with dozens, possibly hundreds, of students. And not one of them did anything to stop him.

Apparently, no one tried to talk to him. No one tried to physically apprehend him. No one tried to rush him. No one tried to band together, a la Flight 93, to end his murderous rampage. That is an important question, I think, because it says a lot about what our parents are teaching our children.

In this discussion, he's been placed in the line of fire by a Lefty group, Media Matters. They posted a story, linked in Michael's blog, to what he said and what others have said.

One comment summed up what I think is the crux of how many people feel about violence. "I've never met a parent who did not teach their kids that it's OK to protect themselves and others. My wife was a pacifist and she and I raised our children to never fight, unless there is no other option." Sure, it sounds nice and makes you feel good. But it's dumb.

I've been trying to think of a word for stuff like this, for incomplete thoughts, or positions held about a certain idea that are just so out in left/right field that they are actually dangerous. The best I can come up with is "Not Thought," as in, not thought out, or not educated enough about a topic to be able to think something through. Tune in to future blogs for other Not Thoughts.

First, let me define Pacifism. The Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary defines it as:
1 : opposition to war or violence as a means of settling disputes; specifically : refusal to bear arms on moral or religious grounds
2 : an attitude or policy of nonresistance

So, right off the bat, this is not pacifism. It's non-confrontationalism. Or passiveness. Or just plain wimpiness.

The problem is, pacifism equals no violence. Period. Gandhi was a pacifist. MLK Jr. was a pacifist. They faced personal danger and death many times and at no time did they physically defend themselves. At any time, their opponents could have killed them with no resistance from Gandhi or MLK Jr.

What the person in the comment above is talking about is nonsense. See, in an effort to shield their children (and everyone else) from violence, they have not taught them how to use violence to actually defend themselves. No Karate. No Concealed Weapons permits. Heck, they probably don't even watch the Three Stooges. So, when the time comes to actually defend themselves, they are impotent, incompetent and inept. That is, of course, if they can actually discern when the time is right to defend themselves.

In a effort to pacify others, these so-called pacifists have taken away or paved over a person's primal instinct to defend themselves. (More on that later....) For years, this person has been taught that in no situation is violence appropriate. What do you think is going to happen when the "acceptable" time to use violence occurs? If a person has been trained to not defend themselves at any time, that is exactly what they will do. Furthermore, as we humans are terrible at determining risk to our own safety AND we see others as we see ourselves, it is unlikely that a pacified person will actually know when a situation is dangerous enough to actually defend themselves. And if the situation warrants a defensive action, well, the person has no tools to do so.

But let's go deeper than just conditioning. Let's move into the brain for a moment. There is a part of our brain that separates us from our dogs/cats/fish. It is the fore-brain. It is in the fore-brain that we rationalize, that we set goals, that we experience guilt and have the ability to socialize with others. Our dog can't do that on the level we can.

All animals have what is called the mid-brain. This is the instinct part of our brain, where we have fight-or-flight, or where we process certain instances of danger and how we determine that we are hungry or need to reproduce. Humans are the only animal in the world that can override their mid-brain... because we have a fore-brain.

It is the mid-brain that causes a snake to bite you when you step on it, or a dog to attack with no warning when you enter its territory. It is absolutely instinctual for an animal to react violently when its life is threatened. There is no overriding this because they don't have the capacity to do so.

(Also, as a side-note, nearly every other animal, maybe except for primates, has some method of self-defense: Fangs, teeth, claws, horns, antlers, hooves, etc. Humans have no such defenses. Don't tell me about punching and kicking, either, since most folks have no idea how to do that right without hurting themselves. Our primary method of self-defense is... yup, you guessed it, our fore-brain, since unlike animals, we can generally discern what is truly life-threatening and what is not, unless of course we have been conditioned otherwise.)

Another thing that separates us from animals is that we are virtually the only animal on the planet that kills its own kind. Snakes don't kill other snakes of the same species, even though they could. Dogs rarely kill other dogs. Virtually no other animal will kill another animal of the same species because the most important facet of an animal's being is the perpetuation of the species. There's some really fascinating reading on this subject if you care to go into it. I won't for the sake of time.

That said, in our mid-brain, we understand this. Call it what you want- spirituality, lawfulness, common sense- but we just know that it is wrong for us to kill another human being. It's deeper than that, but if you strip away all of the rationalizations, you basically will come to, "It's just wrong!" with most people. But remember what I said about our fore-brain?

As humans, we can override our mid-brain with our fore-brain, just as our mid-brain can sometimes override our fore-brain. This is why we are virtually the only species on the planet that will kill another of the same species: because we can rationalize it away.

So, where am I going with all of this, and how does our fore-brain overriding our mid-brain have anything to do with pacifism? Simple: we can become pacifists because of our fore-brain.

In other words, it is counter-instinctual to be a pacifist. I'll leave you to figure out the ramifications of the points I have just made. As you may be able to tell, you can go many directions with this.

But specifically pertaining to this point about what was said way up there about raising kids to be pacifists, by continuously overriding instinct, almost irreparable psychological damage has been done to a person. Judgment is altered. Reactions are altered. Discernment of risk is altered.

And that is one reason why no one stopped the VA Tech massacre... even when he stopped to reload.