h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

OK, I confess. When I went to college the first time around, as a chemistry major, I said "why do I have to take English lit?". The college, in its wisdom, insisted that I did, and emphasized the insistence by failing me out when I bagged all my humanities classes. (This was CalTech, incidentally; the schools we think of as hardcore engineering are often the most insistent on well-rounded educations).

When I went back the second time around, I had the maturity to realize that well-roundedness was probably a good thing. Though, to be fair, I was still more interested in my mathematics and science classes.

For the most part, I think, the problem was that I went to college too young (right out of high school). I wasn't ready to appreciate it at that time. However, I was living out a life script that said college came just after high school and just before the office job.

Fortunately for me I have since thrown away the script.

I wonder if there have been any historical studies of the effect of nannying on society? It could be that nannies were themselves homogeneous enough that they acted as a brake to social change; being full-time parental substitutes, they could inculcate a set of values. But I'm just guessing. I know that nannies are back in fashion in places like Silicon Valley, where parents have much more money than time (but why, I wonder, does anyone have kids if they don't want to raise them?).

I graduated first in my high school class, didn't downplay my interests, and as a result had very few friends. None, really, in the "popular" kids. This was in 1977, so some things aren't changing all that much.

As for voting...but no, that's another discussion.

As to whether politeness follow from bearing arms, didn't a sudden increase in politeness follow shooting incidents on the L.A. Freeway?

I'm 51 and childless. Interestingly enough there are some children who really dig my company, and some who avoid me like the plague. The ones who like me are the ones who like being treated like adults.
I think this means they are prepared to observe the protocols of politeness.

Incourteous might be a new word, but maybe it maps a new shade of meaning: being without courtesy, as opposed to being downright rude/discourteous.
Lil

One quick word about guns: Criminals are, by definition, people who break laws. Therefore, any gun laws, (and there are hundreds on the books) only effect the law-abiding, by definition. And this coming from political "liberal" such as myself....

Another interesting note: if you are intending on murdering someone, you already know you are going to break a law. Is it really likely that one more law will stop you?

That being said, I agree that the amount of graphic violence on tv is alarming. What is most alarming, though, is the shoot-em-up movies that show violence with no emotional consequence. They should show the cop who has to go to therapy for years because he shot a 15 year old in the line of duty, or the wife or girlfriend of the victim sobbing into her pillow, or the dog of the murdered person waiting patiently by the door for a master who will never return...

Showing violence, in and of itself, is not a problem. And showing violence to people like me, who cry when I watch the news, is not desensitizing. But showing brutal acts in works of fiction where all involved walk away and life doesn't change...? That, to me, is where the damage comes from. (oops, ended a sentence with a preposition. There goes my writing career! )

Well, as a kid I certainly appreciated being treated like an adult. Maybe it stunted my growth or something, since it meant I didn't associate much with my supposed peer group. But then (see above), I was unpopular enough not to associate with my peer group anyhow.

I like your distinction between 'discourteous' and 'incourteous', Lil. Kind of like 'atheistic' vs 'agnostic'.

Not to be *too* argumentative, bp, but your argument falls down since it presumes that criminals break all possible laws. Some criminals are rather careful about which laws they break. For example, some burglars refuse to carry a firearm in some jurisdictions because they fear the harsher penalties for armed robbery as opposed to simple burglary.

Or so some of my less law-abiding friends assure me, anyhow.

Anyhow, I've said my first piece on gun laws elsewhere, see you over there if you want to discuss it in more depth.

(Which reminds me, billypilgrim...have we invited you to join us over on the unofficial H2G2 mailing list yet? My mind is such a sieve sometimes...)

To some extent, I think people learn how to behave from media portrayals of behavior. So if you show enough kids movies about killing without remorse, some of them will learn to kill without remorse. Then some of those end up as TV movies of the week, and the cycle perpetuates itself.

Look back two generations and you get to WWII vets, who certainly saw the real consequences of real violence. I wonder whether they were any more courteous afterwards? And if so, was the same thing the case of VietNam vets? There seem to be major differences between the two groups of vets. Perhaps we more successfully dehumanized the Vietnamese as opposed to the Germans?

With regards to WWII v Vietnam vets. I think that the time between front line duty and getting back home might have helped.

In WWII you had to take a long trip back home, usually via ship. This allowed a lot of time to talk things over with the other vets shipping back, and maybe adjust to the differences between military and civilian life.

In Vietnam, you could be in the jungle one night and in the States the next day. The differences between military and civilian, as far as place in the world, compressed.

Not sure if that's it, but maybe a starting point.

Courtesy

I think there were some other differences between WWII and Nam as well. In World War II, we were fighting with an obvious enemy: Hitler (and also the Japanese). The Japanese bombed US first, and Hitler was murdering Jews, Slovaks, Gypsies, etc, etc, by the thousands (or millions, actually.) In Nam, the enemy wasn't so obvious, it was hard to tell the "good guys" from the "bad guys", women and children (Vietnamese) wandered into villages and camps wearing bombs, and so on.

We also supported our "boys" in the second Great War. Those in Nam were not exactly high on our list of popular people....

Finally, there was a proliferation of recreational drugs in Vietnam, and many of our soldiers came back with addiction problems as well.

War is horrific enough when you are fighting for what you see as a just cause and you come back to the love and support of your countrymen. When it is hard to find the cause, and your own country doesn't support you, war becomes unbearable.

Oh, and Mike...? I checked your "armed politeness" link, and found it blank. I mean, I got to a link, but nothing was written.

There are times that I distrust this software. I would *swear* that I cut and pasted that link, yet it doesn't go to the thread I started for armed politeness, and indeed, it isn't correct. Try this one: http://www.h2g2.com/forumframe.cgi?thread=33064&forum=22253 , with my apologies.

Just a note to reinforce the idea of reading Stephenson. The Aldous Huxley of the internet age. His notion, what will come to be the saving grace of the impersonal computer age, is just as you say, a kind of courtesy, seasoned with subversion to keep us honest. The best stuff I've read in ages.

Hello, John Pritchett. It's always interesting to have a dormant thread wake up and charge to the top of one's forum list.

Courtesy and subversion have recently become even more salient as this comsite has grown. This place actually has whole tribes settled in various places -- impossible to describe without geographic metaphor -- and I have been watching the birth (and occasional failure) of rules, laws of conduct with immense interest. On most fora, for example, topic drift is perfectly OK, but some kind of Law of Continuity has also emerged. Once a thing/entity/concept has been reified by description, then it exists and must be dealt with logically.

The corollary is that it is antisocial to visit a forum and change the environment without permission or due acquaintance. Although he wasn't angry, Irving, proprietor of the Aroma Cafe, didn't really want the space needle I spontaneously added. It was a faux pas on my part. The Aroma Cafe now has a space needle, but I don't think anybody goes there, despite the matter transporter.

This must sound rather giddy, but it's because we're discussing rules of order and courtesy for imagination. Also, it's past midnoght and I have run out of Maltesers...

Lil

Hey great to have this discussion come back to life

I hope everyone is having a great time, and just show me where the discourteous or uncourteous or any other type of no courtesy people are hanging out and I will show them some courtesy

Courtesy

Interesting points, Lil. And hello again.

I myself have been in somewhat playful forums where the, erm, younger generation have come in and started sword fights and odd Pokemon references. People of all ages and interests are welcome in any forum, but the general rule seems to have been that the person who began the forum (or one of his/her close cohorts) is the only one who can make major shifts in focus...

Sometimes, the forum can be brought back to its original intent, but I have seen forums abandoned when they took a turn never intended by their designers.

Here in H2G2, we create our own little worlds. It seems to be common consensus that if one is to change the plot, one tends to hint at it first and see if someone else runs with the idea. The one downside to this is that forums can sometimes ramble a bit, with no one willing to take the lead.

It also seems that we all tend to stick with our own. Occasionally, people will branch out. But I can honestly say that I end up in forums with the same 20-odd or so characters all the time. Some people, though, have taken on the role of leaders; if they venture off to strange new lands, half their cohorts will generally follow.

Interesting, and I must say I quite enjoy it.

bp