[Jtsummers]

Re replying: True, and I should have mentioned it, but I think most people don't know about it (evidenced by even older HN members still side-replying to messages far down a thread).

Re main topic: I'm trying to state my position and view more clearly. I'll either edit this later or post another reply. Short version: In my view violence is a product of the cultures it occurs in (or cultural boundaries).

[aaronem]

Not to preëmpt your longer formulation, but just as culture can engender violence, successful violence reinforces the culture which engendered it. Interrupting the cycle at the point of culture strikes me as a long and subtle process by comparison with interrupting it at the point of violence; after all, once people realize something won't produce the result they desire, they won't bother to waste their effort doing it.

[Jtsummers]

Well, it's a really long rambling mess. So I'll pose this question instead. I type my long replies in emacs so I'll keep tinkering with what's probably best used as a blog post (if only I blogged) or essay than an HN post.

How do we interrupt the violence if we don't try to change the cultures that the violence comes from?

EDIT:

BTW, I really do think we agree on the end goal, it's just the way to it that we differ. I understand my view and will continue to try and get it down to less than 20 pages (exaggeration, though I've likely deleted about 10 pages of material so far in restating it over and over again), I just don't understand yours yet. And since I'm the one that's not understanding, I'd rather get your view first, I might find that my long-winded reply is unnecessary.

[aaronem]

(I also write long replies in Emacs, and use the "It's All Text" extension for Firefox to integrate Emacs more directly into that workflow. If you use Firefox but don't use It's All Text, you might want to give it a look; if you don't use Firefox, I'm sure other browsers have something similar.)

> How do we interrupt the violence if we don't try to change the cultures that the violence comes from?

Outlaw the violence, and make it stick, by passing laws which motivate those with the power to curtail such violence to act in a fashion which does so.

Consider, as a somewhat caricatured example, a state law under which school officials, specifically including principals, who are demonstrably aware of bullying among the students for whom they are responsible, but who do not act effectively to curtail it, can be considered accessory after the fact to assault and battery, or to some similar violent crime whose definition is more closely satisfied by the events over which they have so blithely presided. Consider the effect such a law is likely to have after the first two or three school principals are convicted of violating it, and imprisoned accordingly -- as Voltaire put it, pour encourager les autres, and encourager les autres it would! Sufficiently encouraged, they will find a way to solve the problem.

Consider further the effect on federal law it is likely to have when it's not just a single state which passes and enforces this sort of law, but five, or ten, or twenty -- it worked for marijuana legalization; why not for this purpose as well? And consider how well it might work if, in the fullness of time, parents of bullies are themselves implicated in similar fashion -- granted that schools stand in loco parentis, and no progressive is going to want to roll that back save a few homeschoolers who inhabit the wild-eyed radical leftward fringe of the movement, but a certain judicious revitalization of the concept that parents are responsible for their children's behavior seems like something which would have a salutary effect in this case.

Culture change is almost of necessity a generational process; legislation is not, especially when you can trivially tar opponents of legislation like this as enablers of bullies and bullies themselves -- tactics which, while perhaps slanderous and certainly unsavory, are well within the progressive playbook, and far from the only pages of that playbook which could be deployed in favor of an effort like the one I describe.

I'm a theorist and a (sloppy) rhetorician, not an activist. I wouldn't know where to begin putting together a campaign actually to enact such legislation. But I don't see where the idea is intrinsically flawed, and while it lacks the theoretical elegance of extirpating the problem from the roots on up, it most certainly offers the prospect of saving a lot of kids from a lot of beatings, and I think much more quickly and comprehensively, too.

[Jtsummers]

(Thanks for the tip, I use Safari at home 90% of the time, I'll look for something like that because that'd be a great improvement.)

Ok, I think I mostly agree with you. I realized in my umpteenth draft that I'd missed an important detail: violence is obviously criminal behavior, authority figures (in particular) should also be held accountable (potentially criminally) for the violence committed by those they are responsible for, specifically in instances where they are able to but neglect to curtail it early on. On this we absolutely agree.

I wasn't intending to restrict my anti-violence position to one of just targeting culture, and some of my earlier replies may have implied that.

In the case of the editorial that started this thread, this is where my "fix the culture" thing really comes into play. Gaming culture (as perceived by the author, I'm so far outside that group that I'm really only familiar with a caricature of it so can't personally comment) is transphobic. But this isn't resulting in real world violence yet (? unless I've missed other articles and reports on the subject, which is possible). My view is this, if a culture tacitly endorses violence but no member has yet committed violence, it's just a matter of time. Some moronic 15 year old is going to decide that he needs to show his peers he's a "big man" and go out and beat the crap out of someone. Or a group of them will. By challenging this culture at this stage we may be able to prevent the violence altogether.

Your approach is sound, and I agree with it, but it's not going to work on its own (IMO). I'll liken this to another problem I once faced. Ants in my family's apartment kitchen, lay down poison and they left. To our neighbor's kitchen. Who laid down poison, and they left. To our kitchen. Only when attacked from both fronts did we drive them out (or perhaps finally killed them, they didn't come back over the next year we lived there).

Violence is like that. It can be somewhat cyclic, moving from real world, physical violence to words and emotional abuse and back again. While your approach may work for curtailing the physical violence (or reducing the number of qualified principals), it doesn't, on its own, deal with the underlying culture that the authority figure either ignored or enabled.

So recognizing that violence can develop from cultures where prejudice and discrimination are considered acceptable, we need to find a way (and yes, this is long term, generations possibly) to change those cultures or discourage their discriminatory attitudes from rising to the level where real physical violence occurs.

TL;DR: Do both. Create real penalties for authorities and leaders who ignore or permit violence. Target the cultures where prejudice and discrimination and violence are tacitly endorsed, but real violence may not yet have occurred, to try and redirect it before real violence breaks out, and not just harsh words in a video game (in this case).