What hope is there really that it's ever gonna end?

@moondrake

@simssj yes, he made a stupid decision to drink the bottle, but if hazing didn’t exist, it probably wouldn’t of happened. The mentality of everyone watching, is worrisome. You have people that watch tragedies happen, and don’t react… and then you have the opposite with the mob mentality that is going on.

Just an example. Watched a video the other day where somebody’s puppy was choking. The owner ran into a police station for help. Someone in the comments complained it was a waste of police resources because she didn’t take it to a pet store instead. That person ended up deleting their comment, but there was a bunch of replies to her that weren’t deleted. Now the newer commenters that never even saw the original comment were starting a witch hunt, asking people to link her profile so they could yell at her. Scary stuff.

Different example. Car drives off the road into a body of water. Two people film the person trapped in their car instead of calling 911 or attempting to save the person.

What I’ve learned on this earth, people can be shitty.

@RiotDemon I tend to feel that the human default setting is “shitty”. Some people make a conscious decision to toggle that fucker to “decent”.

@moondrake @RiotDemon
I was a social worker. I tried to solve everyone’s problems.
I flamed out.
The End.

@simssj I am in no way disagreeing with what you said because I firmly believe in the importance of personal responsibility and common sense, but that being said, I think you may be underestimating the power of peer pressure, especially on young folks that aren’t yet fully grounded. Back when I went off to college (shortly after the ice receded to the north) there were firm rules set by the school covering everything from where to live, what to wear and how to behave, and they had upperclassmen to watch and enforce the rules. The school felt they had a contract with your parents to maintain your safety and your advancement to maturity in addition to your education. Today, I’m not sure the schools even care if you learn anything as long as you keep paying. That much lack of supervision can’t possibly be good for an 18 year old away from parents for the first time.

Another thing that may contribute to this particular problem is our societal attitude toward alcohol. Instead of kids being exposed to beer or wine at a young age under parental supervision like most of the world, we have created a cultural taboo that results in opportunistic binge drinking, then we act surprised that teens that learn this behavior continue it in college.

In a perfect world, parents teach their children common sense and personal responsibility, but if you know teens, you know it doesn’t sink in by age 18. Kids that leave home generally need a continuation of some kind of socialization, be it college or military or some other parental surrogate. Teens can think on their own, but if they’re lucky, they can begin to think clearly by their mid 20’s.

I’m not saying we need to go back to a time when you had to wear a shirt and tie to dinner in the school cafeteria, but maybe, just maybe, the colleges should step up and be more active in bringing up the kids entrusted to them. At least before the state and federal governments decide they need to take charge; certainly no good will come of that, but it will cost a lot of tax $'s. If the kids graduate with an education and common sense, that would be just extra peachy-keen.

@2many2no, @RiotDemon Having raised four teens (and actually having been a teen myself, back when there was only one continent) I know all about peer pressure, and I know all about common sense and rational thought not sinking in until the mid-20’s. (Our daughter, 25, is just beginning to show signs of awareness that actions have consequences; some good, some not.)

And don’t get me started on the sorry-ass state of “higher” “education”. It seems to me it would be impossible for the colleges to impose any sort of norm or more on the student body, because that would run counter to the “snowflake, identity, everyone’s uniquely special in their own way” paradigm that’s in vogue.

So, yeah… Peer pressure. Always been a thing. Maybe even more now that we live in an age where pridefully posting passed-out-drunk photos on Snapgram or Instachat is a thing.
And, yeah, the world is filled with shitty people.
And, yeah, teenagers’ job description includes “stupid.”
And, yeah, this is a tragedy, and my prayers are with the family that’s suffered this loss.

I’m just saying, taking away individual’s freedom at the expense of avoiding individual’s responsibility seems like a bad trade to me. That was my only point.

PS: I think we all have an individual responsibility to not be one of the shitty people. I try hard, every day, to live up to this responsibility. Sometimes I fail.

@RiotDemon I have to say that there’s a huge difference between watching two people drown to death in a car while doing nothing and thinking a person is passed out because they drank the whole bottle.

Hazing is already met with strict consequences, usually expulsion. I’m no stranger, I was in the Marines. Hazing was a big part of Marine culture, even though it’s not allowed and I know for a fact that everyone that participated in my hazing would have been put through the ringer. I didn’t like it and didn’t feel it built comrade, and never hazed any of my Marines as a result, and ensured it didn’t happen to them.

My point is that issues like this are going to come down to personal discussions and intervention at a lower level, not from some mandate.

@RiotDemon @simssj Well said.

@simssj Aye, individual responsibility is where change can actually happen.

Otherwise, these problems are all about how bad other people are, and everyone’s going to go on being unprepared to do the right things themselves, and go on failing to recognize when they’re in situations that give them opportunities to behave badly (or heroically).

Nobody naturally believes that they’re capable of being a villain or a bystanding failure in any situation until after the fact (if then), when the truth is that that’s the natural course of human behavior.

The problem with always asking what someone else could do and never asking what you could do is that you trend toward demanding that you live in a padded room, while also not accounting for everyone else, born of the same culture, having the same lack of impulse to seek out things that they could do (unless they’re the institution officially in charge of the padding, if you follow).

At a certain point, chasing safety, you arrive at fascism.