No, one person does not represent society - and certainly not me.

And I can’t speak for central/south America, because I have limited experience and knowledge on that region. Based on very anecdotal evidence, I would probably say that central/south American culture tends to be MORE macho than the U.S., and would likely have higher rates of homicide/violent crime. But that’s just an assumption…based on nothing remotely reliable.

The media study you quote about Japanese vs. American television is based on a 1981 study - 30 years old. Not really relevant.

I will say that there is violence on Japanese TV - including the cartoons. The cartoon violence tends to be monsters, aliens, and other weird animal/things (I’m never sure what they are). And I think you could say it’s equal to American cartoons - even classics - with anvils dropped on heads, etc.

Regular adult programming on Japanese television - if it includes violence - is usually historical (romantic throwbacks to the samurai era, with honorable sword fights, that kind of thing). I never saw a modern gun-fight on Japanese television (not to say movies didn’t have that).

Anyway, I’ve listed below a few stats comparing some cities and countries.

Homicides per 100,000 in cities (rounded off)

Oakland 36.7
New York City 13.6
San Francisco 11.1
Salt Lake City 10.6
Sacramento 10.2
Minneapolis 8.3
Albuquerque 9.2
Honolulu 6.0
Phoenix 5.8
Mumbai 0.8

Homicides per 100,000 in countries

Honduras 58.0 (#1 in the world)
Brazil 25.7
Iraq 21.0 (at war, and stats only since 2006)
Russia 16.5
Mexico 10.0
Uganda 7.4
Pakistan 6.8
Kenya 5.7
United States 5.4
Iran 2.9
India 2.8
United Kingdom 2.0
Canada 1.8
Bosnia 1.8
France 1.6
Serbia 1.4
Australia 1.2
UAE 0.9
Germany 0.8
Japan 0.4

Only Singapore is safer than Japan.

In fact, the only so-called “developed” country with a higher rate than the US is Russia.

Is my statement that the U.S. has a problem with violence and is more violent than other countries true? Not entirely - I’ll grant you that.

But the evidence clearly points to an American society that is more violent than it should be.

I still do not get it. If you are basing your claims on American society on homicide numbers, then you do not have any claims to make. Or at least, UNODC doesn’t think so — the U.S. simply does not have the highest homicide rate. (For the numbers themselves, see <a href=”http://www.unodc.org/documents/data-and-analysis/IHS-rates-05012009.pdf”this document. Interesting to note that the WHO gives India and the U.S. similar crime rates.)

Likewise, you are on shaky ground if you speak of media portrayals of violence. There is scarce evidence that America is much worse than most countries; to pick the example we have been using all along, studies suggest that the rate of violence found on Japanese and American television programs is the same.

This leaves you with the same type of evidence I have: anecdotes. You are correct, of course, in criticizing this type of proof; one person does not serve as a simple random sample of statistical repute. On top of this, the stories I told were just that — stories, anecdotes of that include no data. I like them though, as they provide a human face on things. When I hear that American culture is more violent than then rest, it helps put things into perspective. When someone tells me the American experience is the most violent, I can point to testimonials quite to the contrary, to people who have experienced realities far more violent than mine. That is the funny thing about this, of course– our perceptions of violence seemed to be rather colored by our personal experiences, don’t they? I remember reading the post where you sketched the argument
between two Indian men in the convenience store, the one where you looked for cover when the rest of the shop drew closer in to see what the men were arguing about. When I read it, I found the way in which you attributed your behavior to your time in America most amusing. See, I was a year removed from Albuquerque at the time - a place where I have genuinely feared for my safety - and could not remember ever looking for cover when I overheard an argument in a Gas station. I never feared that someone would pull a gun on me in a convenience store. I did not feel that fear then, nor did I when I lived in Minnesota, Arizona, or Utah. Nor do I feel it now living in Hawaii. I was tempted to ask, after I read your post — did we even live in the same country?

But then again, one person doesn’t represent society, right?

When you look at violent homicides - the U.S. beats out every other country, far and away (proportionately speaking).

Yes, Samoans and Bosnians maybe don’t have as much violence on their TV - but we kill each other more here in America than they do there (factoring in a long-term trend, rather than years where there were wars in the former Yugoslavia).

As for the Japanese - I can make a long list of things to accuse the Japanese of - but violence would be dead last on the list.

I watched plenty of TV - and violence was almost non-existent. Animae included.

The reason you think there is so much violence in Japanese cartoons is because those violent ones are the only shows that make it to the US - so the perspective is skewed.

One person does not represent a sufficient sample size. One Samoan or one Bosnian do not represent a society.

More to the point, paddling (or beating) a child is not “glorifying violence” - and unless the father Samoans were beating each other up, I would say the lesson was more about growing up as a man (something we have in America just as much) and not “solving problems with your fists.”

No country places such value on violence like America. It saturates our society so much that we don’t realize it.

I dunno about this Wil. Let me share a story my employer, a Samoan man just under 50, told me a few weeks ago over lunch. He talked of how Americans were nonsensical: no one in this country thought it proper to paddle their children. Sometimes it just needed to be done. It was the example of ’sometimes’ that caught my attention — he told me that if he saw his kid had a bloody nose or black eye, his first response was to get have his child tell him what other child had beat his son up. He then went and talked to the other child’s father, and arranged for all four of them (the two children and their fathers) to meet. Then the kids would fight. Again. The two dads would watch the kids fighting, and both kids fought as hard as they could, for they knew that if they lost, their father would beat them with a paddle.

That is right. Their fathers would beat them up for losing a fight.

The remarkable thing about this story was that my boss never did seem ashamed, or sad that he had beaten his son so, or anything of the sort. This was how things were supposed to be. If you could not solve things with fists, you did not deserve to be called a man.

I cannot recall violence so prevalent or glorified violence anywhere in America*. Mainstream American society is not a place that looks kindly on true displays of aggression. As Mr. Stankus has noted, the teenager with a rifle scares most Americans silly. This is not true everywhere — I am reminded of a friend of mine from emigrated from Bosnia a few years before I met him. He had perhaps the most macabre sense of humor I have ever seen. Most of his jokes ended with people dieing - but perhaps this makes sense, given that he lost a best friend to a minefield and every man in his town owned an AK-47.

The big difference, I think, between America and these places is that America’s violence does not reflect reality. In Samoa, they did not just beat people up on TV, they do so in real life. In Bosnia, death was not something reserved to the media — it was a facet of reality that touched the entire society. It is not like this in America. We watch TV shows filled with blood and gore, but that blood and gore is not present in the vast majority of American lives. We glorify what we do not truly value.

Not that America is alone in this. Whenever I hear the old joke, “Europeans have sex on TV and Americans have blood”, I cannot help but quip, “and the Japanese have both!” But you should know this: you lived in Japan. Did you never turn on your TV during your time there? Japanese anime is chock full of blood, gore, bullets, and close ups up people cocking, loading, and firing guns. Why don’t they get the same condemnation as you offer America?

*For what it is worth, I have lived in 5 states & 7 cities, including COPS favorite location, Albuquerque, NM.

U.S. culture does changes … often quickly and generally rather slowly. Pick any person at random, ask them about how things were when they were young and ask for a comparison to how things are today. Rarely are things the same.

Some people can easily surf on rapid change and others get bogged down with be nostalgia for how things once were.

The conflict of guns has escalated, in my opinion, simply because of population density and applicable continuity. That is, the population has grown in size so quickly we simply haven’t had the time to plan or adapt to the almost hive-like nature of life as we now know it. And in rural locales, older and slower ways of life are getting buffeted by the over-flow of urban density.

What I mean by “applicable continuity” is this. Once upon a time guns had purpose, whether it was for war or hunting or recreation, guns were a natural by-product. There was implied and reasonable processes in place. Parents repeated their own experiences and taught their children gun safety and gave pointers on shooting all the while gun traditions passed quietly from one generation to the next.

In general, all of that is gone. There is little continuity anymore. Movies, TV and the news have created new reasons for gun ownership. Today, few people use guns for hunting or for target shooting (unless it’s for learning to use a gun). Today, gun sales seem connected to paranoia and rationalization over personal safety.

Here’s an easy example. In the 1950s if you were driving through a typical low density area of scattered homes and open fields and you saw a teenager walking along with a rifle you probably wouldn’t have given this moment any consideration. Today, in the same scenario, you would probably call the police and a SWAT team would respond within minutes.

Another factor of cultural significance is immigration. Once upon a time immigrants to the U.S were somewhat invisible. People moved here, maybe lived near their relatives but they generally attempted blending in to the perception of what American life was about. Yes, there were ghettos, bigotry and a raft of other issues but the white person’s culture still was a majority and the standard for what American life was all about. Rarely did a Lithuanian, an African or a Bolivian wear the garb of their ancestors when going about daily life.

That simplistic version is gone. Old ways and old ideals are constantly in flux due to the mix of hundreds of cultures. When we lived in Los Angeles and when stuck in traffic I had a mental image of the drivers surrounding me. I riffed on the idea that just about everyone I could see was from somewhere else and they all grew up driving cars in foreign countries or rural America, all with different driving skills and techniques and now we were all mixed together wondering how to get from A to B.

On a larger scale, I think we are all still wondering about the trip from A to B.