Really? *AKA Look at me talk about social issues!*

[xanithofdragons]

I came across something that bothered me just now: not this article itself, but the comments about it. In short, what bothered me was the number of people blaming this incident on new technology, politics, bad parenting, et al. (many, also, of course, denied that they would act similarly if they were in that situation), while not a single comment on the first few pages pointed out what was really going on: something called The Bystander Effect. It's a phenomenon where, when there is a large number of people present in an emergency situation, people are less likely to help, thinking that someone else will help. This theory in psychology goes back to the 1960s, which makes it nothing new. It took until the 5th page of comments to find people referencing this. It also doesn't help that the article itself does nothing to point this out either, seeming to imply that the incident is related to new technology.

It bothers me how readily people will attribute perceived problems in society to something new or some other social issue that could be described as something of their pet issue when the perceived problem isn't anything new. A widespread instance of "Did not do the research" I guess. I suppose I just want to tell everyone to remember this when looking at modern issues, and not be so eager to draw a cause and effect relationship between things, especially when the "effect" far outdates the "cause".

To relate this all, tangentially, to something we talked about in my Gender in Japan class recently, in an article we read about male-male sexuality in Japan during, I think, the Taisho period (early 1900s), it mentioned that people would attribute the perceived problem of male-male sexuality to things like capitalism or whatever else they thought was the big problem in society of that day. Yet, male-male sexuality had been occurring in Japan for hundreds of years, and worldwide for thousands of years, although not always in the same forms, but certainly in a wide variety of economic and governing systems.

In short, people bs causes for whatever they think is wrong in society (whether or not it's really a problem) throughout the years as well.

Comments

[violettango.livejournal.com]

I think that people really need to think about what they're saying before they go and put the blame on something or someone. As human beings, we have knee-jerk reactions when something upsets us. We blurt out what's on our mind, which sometimes is helpful but isn't always so. I'm guilty of it too! Sometimes we should just stand back if something upsets us and ask "Why does this make me angry/upset/confused/whatever?" and think before we blurt out what's on our mind.

P.S. Saying that male-male sexuality comes from capitalism is a very weak argument. Homosexuality exists throughout the ages and economies!

[xanithofdragons.livejournal.com]

Yeah, it's just insane some of the things people say.

That article mentioned a LOT of crazy stuff people thought about homosexuals in that time period. And since they themselves didn't have much of a voice (and wouldn't want to have one for fear of what people would say) people could just bs whatever they wanted.