gosh, it’s heartening to know i’m not the only one who throws things and gets destructive when vexed! I loved the guy bashing his computer with a sledge hammer, whilst the girl in the background just kind of watched, unphased. (I think Bens may relate to her a little!!!!)
Oh, ouch, these guys were having BAD days! Notice that all were in offices with shared cubicles and security cameras - boiler rooms, maybe? Police stations? (didn’t look like it)
I think it would be an interesting correlational study to show this video to people, and then ask a few questions with lichert scales so as to measure to what extent they feel that the person who got super pissed off was “bad” or “normal” or some such, and also to what extent they thought the culpability for the destructive actions belonged to the individual person or to the system/environment in which they worked. We could do that with a bunch of people in Seattle, and a bunch of people in LA, and Chicago, and New Orleans, and Sydney, and Seoul, and Rio de Janeiro, and London. And compare the results. That would be fascinating. And actually not that hard to set up. One could set it up online, and then run ads on craiglist in the various cities. Maybe I’ll do it.
And of course a few demographic questions. Then we could compare answers between older/younger people, male/female people, and people from different places.
I would hypothesize that woman, for instance, would assign more of the blame to the system/environment than men would (because they’re just naturaly smarter than us, and more able to see the “objective truth”.) And older people would also assign more of the blame to the system/environment than younger people. And I bet people from America would assign way more blame to the individual than people from any other nation. and people from the west would assign more blame to the indidual than people from asia. and so forth.
Meg I think it’s reassuring to see that other people get really angry sometimes too…
Eliza, maybe the police station was the next place these people ended up?
Benjamin, yes, that would be interesting. I like to distinguish the emotions from the actions. I’m happy to say that the environment/system contributed to people being unhappy. But they choose how they handle being angry. I would say they’re responsible for any property they destroyed.
(Meg presumably if you get mad enough to break things then hopefully there are supportive people in your life who understand why you’re angry - but you have to deal with the consequences, I assume? Like if you break something that belongs to you or someone else you will end up paying for a new one?)
this isn’t always true. I mean … We, the U.S., broke an awful lot of shit in Laos 30 odd years ago, and, as I understand it, we haven’t had to pay much of anything to fix it. And that’s just one in a long series of such stories. It makes me frightened a bit, actually, to think that maybe there’s some kind of objective truth in the idea of karma, and maybe I get to have to be part of the generation of Americans that gets to get all the bad results of all the unbelievable crap we’ve been doing all over the world for decades.
Benjamin, I agree it’s not always the case. I guess I was talking about how I think it should be, which isn’t always how it is…
I avoid thoughts of mystical vengeance - it’s actually one reason I’m an almost-atheist. One thing Christians are right about is - karma is totally unfair because the only link between the person who suffers the effects bad karma and the person who did the bad things is a doctrine of reincarnation. It’s even more unfair than the doctrine of original sin because at least there is a means of being freed from inherited punishment in the Christian system. This is where I do agree with Christians - that karma is a cruel horrible system., worse than Christianity
In the Brian McLaren lecture I heard last month he helpfully explained how excluded marginalized people eventually get annoyed and desperate enough to retaliate against the rich powerful people who aren’t sharing their resources with them or are otherwise inappropriately taking advantage of them. This makes sense to me and demonstrably has happened throughout history. I could see that happening to the US to the extent the US is a rich powerful nation which doesn’t share enough and which takes advantage of other people.
Comment by: Meg
1gosh, it’s heartening to know i’m not the only one who throws things and gets destructive when vexed! I loved the guy bashing his computer with a sledge hammer, whilst the girl in the background just kind of watched, unphased. (I think Bens may relate to her a little!!!!)
Comment by: Eliza
2Oh, ouch, these guys were having BAD days! Notice that all were in offices with shared cubicles and security cameras - boiler rooms, maybe? Police stations? (didn’t look like it)
Comment by: Benjamin Ady
3I think it would be an interesting correlational study to show this video to people, and then ask a few questions with lichert scales so as to measure to what extent they feel that the person who got super pissed off was “bad” or “normal” or some such, and also to what extent they thought the culpability for the destructive actions belonged to the individual person or to the system/environment in which they worked. We could do that with a bunch of people in Seattle, and a bunch of people in LA, and Chicago, and New Orleans, and Sydney, and Seoul, and Rio de Janeiro, and London. And compare the results. That would be fascinating. And actually not that hard to set up. One could set it up online, and then run ads on craiglist in the various cities. Maybe I’ll do it.
Comment by: Benjamin Ady
4And of course a few demographic questions. Then we could compare answers between older/younger people, male/female people, and people from different places.
I would hypothesize that woman, for instance, would assign more of the blame to the system/environment than men would (because they’re just naturaly smarter than us, and more able to see the “objective truth”.) And older people would also assign more of the blame to the system/environment than younger people. And I bet people from America would assign way more blame to the individual than people from any other nation. and people from the west would assign more blame to the indidual than people from asia. and so forth.
Comment by: Helen
5Meg I think it’s reassuring to see that other people get really angry sometimes too…
Eliza, maybe the police station was the next place these people ended up?
Benjamin, yes, that would be interesting. I like to distinguish the emotions from the actions. I’m happy to say that the environment/system contributed to people being unhappy. But they choose how they handle being angry. I would say they’re responsible for any property they destroyed.
(Meg presumably if you get mad enough to break things then hopefully there are supportive people in your life who understand why you’re angry - but you have to deal with the consequences, I assume? Like if you break something that belongs to you or someone else you will end up paying for a new one?)
Comment by: Benjamin Ady
6Helen,
this isn’t always true. I mean … We, the U.S., broke an awful lot of shit in Laos 30 odd years ago, and, as I understand it, we haven’t had to pay much of anything to fix it. And that’s just one in a long series of such stories. It makes me frightened a bit, actually, to think that maybe there’s some kind of objective truth in the idea of karma, and maybe I get to have to be part of the generation of Americans that gets to get all the bad results of all the unbelievable crap we’ve been doing all over the world for decades.
Comment by: Helen
7Benjamin, I agree it’s not always the case. I guess I was talking about how I think it should be, which isn’t always how it is…
I avoid thoughts of mystical vengeance - it’s actually one reason I’m an almost-atheist. One thing Christians are right about is - karma is totally unfair because the only link between the person who suffers the effects bad karma and the person who did the bad things is a doctrine of reincarnation. It’s even more unfair than the doctrine of original sin because at least there is a means of being freed from inherited punishment in the Christian system. This is where I do agree with Christians - that karma is a cruel horrible system., worse than Christianity
In the Brian McLaren lecture I heard last month he helpfully explained how excluded marginalized people eventually get annoyed and desperate enough to retaliate against the rich powerful people who aren’t sharing their resources with them or are otherwise inappropriately taking advantage of them. This makes sense to me and demonstrably has happened throughout history. I could see that happening to the US to the extent the US is a rich powerful nation which doesn’t share enough and which takes advantage of other people.