Violence; does it work?

[Universalchild]

That "native vegetation" you're talking about has been lost along the south-eastern coastline, for the most part. The cattle stations I'm referring to are in areas where the only clearing has been for the house block and a bit of an area for drenching etc, the rest is open country. I know, I've been on cattle musters where the only way to get to the stock is via helicopter as they're in the middle of the bush about a hundred kilometres from the station house. When you only look at statistics, it's hard to get a picture of the world -- but I'm lucky enough to have lived there and I know how much attention the decent graziers are giving to environmental impact, particularly to reversing the salination of the water table that resulted from the initial (ignorant) clearing of land. The biggest threat to Australia's environment is not agriculture, it's residential.

*I see you've included an article from "New Scientist" -- never the most credible source and quite well-known for printing highly speculative, non-peer-reviewed articles. By the way, why do these articles always mention hamburgers and not milk?

-- now we're way off topic, my apologies, it's 2:30am, I woke up and can't get back to sleep.

That's not what this thread is about -- I think it's important to draw a distinction that not all death is the result of violence, and not all physical contact is of a violent nature, no matter what some bleeding heart in the United Nations might try to dictate.

---

Choosing not to use physical punishment for your child does not make you a bad parent, you are perfectly right Phaedra. What worries me is that there is a certain "parent-type" who is all warm fuzzy on the outside but whose permissiveness can be detrimental to the child, particularly when it comes to that child having respect for authority figures. And of course it makes no difference what disciplinary techniques you use if you don't model appropriate behaviour yourself. Children mimic adults and behaviour patterns become ingrained from a very early age, whether it's violence, laziness, prejudices, whatever. Of course, they also mimic the positive.

As long as the child is aware that actions have consequences, and as long as those consequences are consistent and commensurate, I don't think it matters a damn what those consequences are.

The worrying thing about violence in society, in my opinion, is the disconnection from the real world. British films are not such a big culprit, but the sooner Hollywood stops making it seem as though you can break a chair over someone's head and the chair comes off second-best, or you can go through plate glass window and the worst that happens is a little scratch on your cheek (not deep enough to permanently damage your profile), the better.

Newscientest is just a place to see ideas, but they can't outright lie about data as it is pretty well reviewed and someone would catch them out. Some of it is very speculative, but so is a lot of science, we have to base our views on something or not have them at all, which probably isn't a great idea. It's a good idea to look at a lot of sources, though, not just website pages, I can give you book titles if you like, lots of my friends are conservationists and my own mother is an enviromental educator, so I have a lot of great reasources to look upon. Anyway, there are various links on the wikipedia page about it that are worth chasing up, and some more articles -

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Environment...production

http://eatdrinkbetter.com/2010/06/24/env...ting-meat/

http://www.fao.org/ag/magazine/0612sp1.htm

In all fairness Australia is probably one of the few places with enough space to have sizable farms without impacting too harshly on the environment. And you also have a lot of kangaroos, which are very environmentally friendly to farm because they cause minimal damage. It is definitely different in places like the UK and America where land is "created" by destroying forests. It would be different if we stuck to small local farming and also spent time rearing ourselves. Even in a small garden you can keep a pig or a couple of chickens. If people just ate less meat and tried either hunting high population animals (like rabbits) or rearing, or at going to smallholdings if they really can't, meat would not only be a more ethical venture, it would also be sustainable. As it is, meat isn't sustainable, as the human population grows the cattle population also does to meet demands, eventually the entire planet is just going to be humans and farms, and then when we start starving due to overpopulation we'll get rid of cattle and be forced into vegetarianism as all the land is needed for agriculture, and then eventually we'll all have to go cannibal and eat each other : P I am being dramatic but seriously, it can't go on like this. Things have to change, or we're buggered.

I think killing something is always violent. Maybe a different level of violence depending on how it is killed, but I don't think you can argue that killing, even for food, isn't violent. It's causing a death by force.

I don't think it is neccessairly a positive thing to have a child respect "authority" but maybe my view is sullied by all of the "authority" I have seen in my career choice. Generally the important thing is to respect people full stop. When I have children I'll ensure they know to keep themselves out of trouble, but I'll also teach them that everybody can be wrong and do wrong. I think children are often taught to just be quiet and listen when actually they should be questioning and thinking too. I remember as a child of eleven telling my class about my holiday in Lanzarote, which is an island off the coast of Africa, although Spanish owned. My teacher told the class I was being stupid, that it was off the coast of Spain. I tried arguing the point but he thoroughly embarassed me in front of my class and made me sit quietly for the whole lesson. Lanzarote is definitely part of Africa : P Geographically, anyway. Don't get me wrong, I have loved almost every teacher I have ever had, and was, despite being naughty and causing trouble, always treated beyond fairly - if anything, a large amount of favouritism was shown to me, including managing to almost never get detention (and if you had known of my capers in school that would shock you) - I had but one, and in that one, my history teacher came along and broke me out of it. But I respected them because they were good people, not because they were my teachers.

I do understand where you are coming from though, there are definitely parents who are too soft on their children and don't raise them with important values. A spoilt child is a spoilt teenager is a spoilt adult, unless something positive happens to intervene. But I still think neglectful/abusive parents are far worse and more deserving of attention. I used to be a residential care worker, which essentially is a carer who works with children who cannot be homed for various reasons (extremely violent, destructive, tendancies with running, suicidal, etc.) and you quickly learn, as you and Billy stated earlier, that the emotionally damaged and/or the neglected children are the worst, almost untouchable. Physical/sexual abuse doesn't seem to have such a big impact - unless they are accompanied by emotional abuse, then they tend to be far worse. After having done what I have done, I must admit, I would rather see a thousand spoilt children then one more abused one. I know that a really badly spoilt child can be just as destructive as an abused child, and not all abused children even do play up, but it's the process I can't handle.

I do think the consequences matter... If the consequence is a beating or starvation or being locked in a cupboard. The consequence should fit the action, always. If you're too soft, then the child isn't really learning anything. If you're too hard, the child is just learning that when you do something wrong, you deserve to be treated badly. Actually, what you should be teaching children, is that it is okay to make mistakes, because that is how you learn, but that you need to keep yurself safe, you need to respect other people (regardless of who they are) and you need to respect life. Everything else is pretty much debatable, I think.

Ugh, I totally hear you on hollywood violence... It's just so unrealistic. I am a disbeliever of the concept of kids copying films/games (except really young children) because I support the catharsis model, but I do think it does glorify violence and teach bad values and even miseducates kids.

i get my meat from a supermarket, if they sell it, i eat it. i have yet to ask for the name and address of a cow or pig, i have yet to ask how they were raised. ethics only apply when someone tells us about them. i said ooh and 'never' when i saw what was going on in Indonesia; probably over a nice piece of meat. (i can't see butchering ethics as being that good here in the philippines either but what can i say, i eat meat.) so my take is that violence with to or because of cows probably does work. killing a cow can't be anything but violent, even if we kill it in it's sleep. violence to vegetables...now that's another story, but it has been shown that plants can and do communicate to each other. (they scream when hurt) once the vegans realise they're hurting the carrots their ways will end. .
violence is often a means to end, and end which they usually don't want or didn't expect. look around the middle east. iraq could turn against the us at a minutes notice. while it does have a pay day, we have to remember that we're (whether we're armies, bullies, wife beaters, which i suppose is the same thing, molesters etc) never going to really be at the top of the food chain

children need a bit of violence in their lives if only to keep them occupied. have you ever seen them deconstruct pet animals, or at least try to we ar violent.. it's who we are.

Well, me and Leanne have both just touched upon the evils of factory farming, so surely now that you are aware of the ethics you now will get your meat from a good source : P

Also, there are actually people who don't eat vegetables because it hurts life... Fruitarians, only eat plant matter which wants to be eaten, like fruit and berries. And of course we have the jains, who don't eat plants which must die to feed them.

I don't think "we are violent" though, in the sense of it being ingrained in our being. I think we raised in a violent world. It doesn't have to be this way. It just is this way.