Jun 20, 2011 -- 8:40PM, TemplarS wrote:

How society chooses to deal with these people is important.  People who gleefully smash windows, burn cars,  and  loot stores are the same sort who,  if suitably manipulated and directed by those in power, will mindlessly herd people into gas chambers.

Not as much as you'd think. The savages tend to fall into either "low dominance" (the followers) or "high dominance" (the leaders) groups. Now, low and medium dominance will do as they're told by a perceived authority but the high dominance group won't. They will either try to achieve positions of power in such a regime or revolt against it.

Jun 23, 2011 -- 8:03PM, Roodog wrote:

I might come a consesus if I believe that people are basicly good, which I do not.

That's because you keep painting all of society with the actions of a few. That's because that's what you choose to see, it's what you want to see, it's what you need to see. There is nothing I could say to change that.

Perhaps we need to define "Barbarism" then we can maybe resolve this issue.

Originally "Barbarism" meant not being a Greek. It was then refine to the hunting gathering lifestyle of the ancient Germans or the pre literate  and largely rural Celts.

Barbarism has taken on a more perjorative connotation of human behavior which is considered uncivilized such as the Conduct of the Nazis during WW2. Ironically in the late 19th Century and the period leading up to WW1 Germany was considered the apogee of Civilization.

I would rather take my chances with the Cherusci and Teutons than with the Nazis.

Jun 25, 2011 -- 8:52PM, TemplarS wrote:

Nonetheless- I'm no psychologist, but it seems to me that there is an insidious side to such activities, and something about such people that can easily end up somewheres a lot more dangerous.  In the early stages of the Nazi regime, after all, there was Kristallnacht.  I submit that people who vandalize for no good reason, like people who harm animals for "fun",  are going to have a greater tendency to end up engaging in more sociopathic things down the road.  Not all of them- I presume many if not most just went along with the crowd, or maybe had a bit too much Molson- but the instigators, I would think, are worth worrying about.  Of such are the Brownshirts and the Tonton Macoutes constituted.

I am a psychologist (well, studying psychology anyway) and you're mostly right. It's the instigators you need to worry about, not the followers. The followers are mainly frustrated idiots but the instigators, they're usually part of the dominant 15-20% or even one of the sociopathic 1%. There are three big warning signs that constitute what's known as the "homicidal triad": Bed wetting (beyond the age where that's common), animal cruelty (beyond the formation of externalised empathy at around eight) and arson in the teens. Now, none of those are reasons to worry on their own and, individually, they might well have innocent explanations (for example, the kid who wets the bed at age six might well have bladder problems) but when the three occur in the same person, look out.