Might be interesting to compare and contrast how we in the US have handled our laundry list of "bad things we've done in the past" compared to, say, Germany.

I know that the Nazi flag and other imagery are outright banned / censored in Germany. From what I understand, WW2 history taught in schools in Germany is handled very carefully, if not largely glossed over.

In the US, the only bit of history that gets treatment similar to that (in my experience/opinion) is the Vietnam war. I know my High School history classes definitely glossed over it and didn't want to get into any details about why, how, or whether or not we should have been in the war at all.

Compare that to WW2, which was covered in pretty great detail. Very much including actively encouraging students to consider their own thoughts on controversial things like dropping not just one but two atomic bombs on Japan.

The Civil War is also covered much more openly and honestly. I don't think I can recall anyone ever seriously suggesting that the single, most important root cause of the Civil War wasn't slavery. Other umbrella labels like "states rights" might be referred to as the impetus, but yes, any and all of those things really boil down to slavery.



One thing that scares me about the German approach (sweep under the rug and don't talk about it) is that it sort of all too conveniently ignores the reality that these terrible things were done by people who were (disturbingly) not very different from us. OK, Hitler himself might have been a 1 in a million or 1 in a billion combination of evil, crazy, and powerful. But Joe Average from today ... not so different from Hans Average from 1930s Germany.

Celebrating one's heritage and past is OK, sometimes even good. Especially when one can honestly own and try to understand the bad along with the good. I think it is OK to appreciate the Confederate flag, along with historical figures like Robert E. Lee and Stonewall Jackson. It is possible to accept that their core motivations were done in support of a very bad and evil institution (slavery), but to still respect or even admire their accomplishments as human beings. Thomas Jefferson owned slaves too, but we are willing to look beyond that when considering his legacy.

Maybe the Confederate flag is tied too closely to the institution of slavery for it ever to be uncoupled from that. Maybe a government that prides itself on being democratic should consider that that connection creates a conflict with many of its constituents. But I hope we never sweep it under the rug and pretend it never happened.

Not just 'tough on crime' policy, it's 'incarcerate' policies lobbied for by the private prison guard union, the biggest lobbying group in the US. Privatization of prisons is the root cause, as I see it. When putting people in prison is for profit, you can only increase profits by putting more people in prison. I'm glad they finally got to that...but just barely.

Who bailed out the banks - Obama

To make things worse Obama increased the debt 10 Trillion more than ALL fucking presidents combined. Talk about ruining the economy Its a noose on the necks of Americans for generations

The root cause was Democrats wanting home ownership for more people, which happen to be those who could not afford a house. Dodd/Frank led the way . Republicans tried a few time to curb/ change it but failed. Banks complied and wrote bad loans and sold them to larger banks and they packaged these bad loans to look attractive and the house of cards tumbled.

Katrina -- You seriously want to go there--- New Orleans and the storm that hit Jersey shore and Long Island ... Fucking disaster years later --- Yep your boy really hit it out of the park with the help didn't he?

9/11 waning completely ignored. Bullshit.. Clinton had Bin Laden had full intelligence to get him and did nothing.

I don't know if you have you head in the sand or up your ass.

Interesting, but surely, a part of the brain "lighting" up, having been given certain stimuli, does not necessarily explain root cause. eg;- Why does the light work when it is switched on? A neurological answer would simply attribute it to the necessary connections being made. But we know it is WAY more complicated. The correct bulb must be used, the correct voltage, the connection cannot be broken, the switch must be operable, etc. Any one of these not in place = no light. Similarly with neurology. The light is on, but myriad reasons could account for it. Nature, nurture, peer pressure, obligation, and much more dictate what/who we are. A sadists pleasure neurons light up witnessing pain, but may also light up when helping someone. So which is the true reaction, or are they both, though contradictory, true? I respect science immensely, but trying to map the brain as if it were totally predictable in any given circumstance seems - unless we are all identically cloned have identical experiences, identical parents, and identical hopes and dreams - futile.

Her videos don't make the argument that games cause violence against women or anyone else. She analyzed the roles of women in games and found trends in how they were portrayed. These were not flattering portrayals (for example the "Damsel in Distress" portrayal) and male characters were not often treated in the same way in games. She's pointing out how off-putting that can be to potential and actual female gamers and recommending women be portrayed in a more realistic manner. She's also pointing out how games are reinforcing the sexist and misogynistic messages that already exist in society. I don't think she is claiming media is the root cause of either sexism or misogyny.

Games ARE changing and including less "Trope-y" content and more well-rounded characters. And that's partly BECAUSE of her critiques (the creative director on The Last of Us has publicly stated her work heavily influenced the character designs and story of the game).

But I don't see that as a reason to not call out certain games for falling back on tired and occasionally demeaning representations of women.

What I find fascinating about the Dunning-Kruger Effect is that it implies that the root cause of an individual's stupidity (their lack of talent in a particular field) is due primarily to their refusal to acknowledge their own incompetence, rather than any particular lack of ability itself.

Which is to say: If one can not hear that they are singing out of tune, they do not see the need to correct their pitch in order to improve their singing. As far as they are concerned, they sound wonderful!

It's actually a pretty horrifying conclusion. ><

A more reasonable path to a semblance of sanity with regard to the abject state of political and representative corruption at the state and federal level is to stop listening to the incessant rhetoric coming from the television during these predictable and mind-numbing campaign propaganda attacks on an individual's innate common-senses during these election cycles, especially since the trend is for growing numbers of peeps who more and more by the second, get their information from sources who are not simply soldiers and propaganda arms of the very machines screwing the world over by usurping rights, making laws to enslave people daily, and further entrench their own powers to control every aspect of human life.

I would hope personally, that during election cycles both state and national, that the underlying emphasis of speeches and campaign education would firstly be the complete insanity and insult to consciousness of there being only republicans and democrats to choose from, because these arcane delineations of part are the root cause of the reason nations (Especially the United States) are heading down the path of crony-screw-everyone-but-the-people syndrome. Start by discarding the two major parties, who have done absolutely nothing but bankrupt the nation as well as your minds.

Then comes the blood in the streets, the blood of these charlatans and liars who are attempting and succeeding in becoming the omnipresent omnigarchy of the 21st Century.

Remember in Mars Attacks when the leader of the martians vaporized the entire senate during that televised news conference?
Loved that movie....

This is where my thoughts immediately went -- maybe $15/hr sounds so high because we're so far behind the inflation curve -- but I wasn't sure, so I pulled up this list of historic minimum wages and this inflation calculator and started doing some conversions.

1950: $0.75 = $7.30 today
1960: $1.00 = $7.81 today
1970: $1.60 = $9.74 today
> 1978: $2.65 = $9.80 today -- @enoch: How are you getting $22?
1980: $3.10 = $9.28 today
1990: $3.80 = $6.92 today
2000: $5.15 = $7.03 today
2010: $7.25 - $7.71 today

@Yogi is probably right; These people are probably asking for $15 and hoping for $10 (and $10 seems reasonable based on historic rates above).

Cranking up minimum wage much higher than that might be treating the symptoms rather than the sickness. Entry level jobs not paying enough is not the root cause; the root cause is that people are trapped in entry level careers. By all means, bump minimum wage up to $10, maybe $12 an hour, but then start taking action so that, when inflation catches up to those rates, there's more job mobility.

It's hearing stuff like this that makes me ok with the recent determination that obesity is a disease.

There's a definite line between obesity like this and simply being overweight. Lots of people are overweight, but this guy is insanely obese and apparently has no self control..his wife apparently has no self control either.

I have to admit, part of me shares Yogi's sentiment. Part of me wants to simply let people like this die. But they're going to be a massive burden on the health care system no matter which way you look at it so we might as well try to learn something from the guy. sociologically and medically, then maybe we can prevent this shit in the long term.

Obesity is our next national concern. As much as I want to blame people like the guy in the video. They don't deserve 100 percent of the blame.

Shitty food keeps getting cheaper and cheaper and healthy food keeps getting more and more expensive. We have a health care system that is designed around covering up symptoms instead of solving the root causes.

It's not impossible to live a healthy lifestyle in spite of these factors, but it certainly isn't getting easier.

There is clearly some psychological issues at play here, not just purely eating too much and not exercising.

He did hit the root cause of the start of the war, population pressure.

I see your point - I think having a gun in that sense is treating the symptom instead of the cause, but yeah, some times treating the symptom is so much easier than the root cause.

I've looked at the numbers. Here's a better correlation: http://www.motherjones.com/environment/2013/01/lead-crime-link-gasoline

The studies have been done ad nauseum. They don't show any reliable (i.e. replicable) impact. IMO the data suggests it's better to attack the root causes of violence and criminal activity (e.g. poverty, parenting, education, mental health) than it is to wage a campaign of prohibition.

I've been called worse than capitalist. I do have choice, and that's where I'm privileged. Many people don't though. There are still many areas where Unions monopolize the work force such that people have no choice but to join, if they want to work in a particular manufacturing sector, or similar. I think it's pretty much a moot point anyhow. Half the States have right to work laws and others will follow. The root causes of lack of competitiveness of US manufacturing globally; escalating costs of healthcare, liability, regulatory compliance, etc. aren't being addressed. With fixed labor costs in the US, companies have 2 choices, lower labor costs (common) or raise consumer prices (uncommon). It's a conundrum, Unions or no Unions. The anti-competitive nature of Unions will make them less relevant. The model doesn't work as well when workers have a choice whether they join or not.

What your analysis is missing is any kind of cultural context. These things don't just happen in a vacuum, and nor are all ideas created equal. In many cases you are just trading one type of chain for another. Yes, mass media certainly has the ability to create and shape the prevailing social norms, and this can inspire counter cultural movements within a society. That's what happened in the 1960s with the sexual revolution, which is a root cause for the sexual immorality we see in society today. But it didn't just happen because people 'gained more knowledge', it happened because there was already a fundamental shift in the cultural ethos. An idea does not begin to grow unless its seed lands on fertile ground. The social mores of this nation were always decidedly Christian, but were steadily eroding by the beginning of the 20th century (for various reasons). The deeper truth is that people rejected traditional morality because they wanted to be free to indulge their carnal desires without restriction. Transcendent moral values were being replaced with moral relativism, fueled by the notion that man was a higher primate and had no moral responsibilities to a creator, leaving people free to invent whatever style of living pleased them. It was only the world wars that temporarily reversed this trend and brought the nation back together under the banner of an American moral imperative. But the foundation, weakened as it was by radical liberal ideology, was thoroughly rotten. America snapped back like a rubber band, bursting open the flood gates during the 60's, and changing the cultural landscape forever. Now traditional values are viewed as archaic, a throwback to a bygone era, and it is the "new" thing which is touted as "enlightenment".

Yet, this new thing is simply what is old in different packaging. The behavior of human beings today isn't noticeably different from anything that hasn't been tried in countless failed civilizations in the past. The song remains the same, despite the shiny new backdrops. Bible prophecy predicts that knowledge will increase in the last times, but it mentions nothing about wisdom. The human condition hasn't changed; men are ruled by their passions, and no matter how much knowledge they gain, the same mistakes are repeated endlessly. Look at the world today and tell me that isn't true. If humans are learning anything it is something they've always known and loved; rebellion. This is certainly the age of self-glorification, but history will tell you that is nothing new either. You're right in that "the church", ie, the catholic religion, tried to impose (a caricature of) Christian morality on the masses, with horrific results. That is a nightmare any decent person should be awoken from. However, as it pertains to describing the essential human condition, it was entirely correct. Sin is increasing in the world, not decreasing. Human nature is inherently sinful.

Everyone has a different way of describing the problem. Most look to place the blame and hand wave everything on to a particular condition. They say it's because of overpopulation. They say it's because of religion (an atheist favorite). They say it's because of ignorance. They say it's because (insert your favorite reason here). The reality is, it's because human beings are corrupt sinners, and always will be corrupt sinners until the end of time; that's why Jesus Christ came. He came to restore us to right relationship with our Creator. Don't place your faith and trust in man, because man cannot save himself, and all men are headed for a day of judgment. As scripture predicts, there will be a one world government headed by the antichrist, a seven year tribulation where all the world will become deluded and follow after the beast. Those who refuse to love the truth will believe the lie that the antichrist will be selling. At the end of the tribulation, Jesus Christ will return as the Lord and judge of all the earth. No amount of knowledge will prepare for you that day; only a saving faith in Jesus Christ.

>> ^Sagemind:

In the past era, we hit a communications Boom.