Thoughts on violence in our culture

I am mindful that we are, at our core, omnivorous territorial predatory mammals. We believe – we hope actually – that we are civilized enough to live in communities, but I wonder whether or not we really are.

I was going to write a post about cops killing people and now we have cops being ambushed, and now I wonder if it isn’t all the same thing. I wonder if most, if not all, of this mess doesn’t come back to partisanship; a “we-they” view of the world.

I recently  went to a FEMA training with a dozen members in various divisions of LAPD, and I had a chance to talk with those at my table about why I thought the organization I work with partners so much more easily with Fire than with Law although Law is usually responsible for evacuations. It came back to their respective views of humanity; law enforcement is always scanning those present for the bad guy.

Law enforcement in our culture is a paramilitary culture that often appears to behave more as an occupying force to keep the population in line than as friends and neighbors doing a job. Few officers even live within the communities in which they serve anymore. I think that lack of inclusion, in combination with possession of deadly force on one’s belt and the need to make snap assessments and decisions, leads to mistakes in judgement.
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I’m not a sociologist – and don’t much care for sociology – but I can totally see a cop pulling up on a scene, jumping out of his car as he assesses the scene and reaches for his… baton? taser? pepper spray? service weapon? What criteria does he use in making the choice? (Why is it always a guy?)

On the other side of the conflict are those who also feel they are not a part of the community as a whole for a variety of reasons, or who are perceived as not being a part of the community. Again, it’s the “apartness” that gets people killed or leads them to strike out against the avatars of community standards.

The big argument I keep hearing for man’s supremacy is our cognitive abilities; but at every turn in the road we always seem to revert to that primal state. We judge our universities by their football teams.

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