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Cave art or rave art? A cautionary tale.

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Dave B
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Re: Cave art or rave art? A cautionary tale.

#21 Post by Dave B » April 16th, 2014, 5:27 pm

Latest post of the previous page:

But is your stance that the kids of today are at risk from the world and should be protected or are not allowed to experience risk and so develop suitable skills?
"Look forward; yesterday was a lesson, if you did not learn from it you wasted it."
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pantodragon
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Re: Cave art or rave art? A cautionary tale.

#22 Post by pantodragon » April 23rd, 2014, 3:27 pm

Dave B wrote:But is your stance that the kids of today are at risk from the world and should be protected or are not allowed to experience risk and so develop suitable skills?
Well, my stance is actually quite complicated. On the one hand, I do think that children are over-protected today and that the result is that they are losing the ability to identify danger and to assess it and deal with it. On the other hand, as I've said often enough elsewhere, humanity is degenerating and one aspect of this is that children, indeed people in general, are less aware of their environment and less able to interact with it. So they are starting from a position of needing to be more protected than their predecessors, including their parents. Therefore I find myself taking the attitude that although the levels of protection given to children (and increasingly to adults) is way more than SHOULD be necessary, under the circumstances, it actually IS necessary and more will be needed with every passing generation.

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Dave B
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Re: Cave art or rave art? A cautionary tale.

#23 Post by Dave B » April 23rd, 2014, 5:17 pm

humanity is degenerating
Pants, do an historical review of the average quality of life, the incidence of crime, especially violent crime etc. etc. We currently (ignoring the dangerous posturing of our political so-called leaders) live in a period of great personal safety. Crime, including violent crime, is decreasing almost daily according to all survey data - and I understand the problems with both the British Crime Survey and the police figures - covered that in sociology. So a little scepticism is healthy.

We think that there is a lot more crime because more crime is being detected and more covered by the media, if this were 200 years ago the whole of the news would be stories of robbery, murder, rape, child abuse and so forth, and wife beating was considered the right of the husband. There were not the numbers of police, social workers, NSPCC workers etc. available then to investigate every crime, only the worst could be dealt with. There was only the few broadsheets, read by the middle and upper classes, who were probably more interested in the goings on at the palace than in the back streets of Brixton or Liverpool or in a tied farm cottage - the sort of places the likes of you and I would have lived then.

We still have the poor, the under-privileged, the unemployed and the drug dealers and addicts but they almost certainly form a smaller proportion of society than they once did.
"Look forward; yesterday was a lesson, if you did not learn from it you wasted it."
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pantodragon
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Re: Cave art or rave art? A cautionary tale.

#24 Post by pantodragon » April 25th, 2014, 4:21 pm

Dave B wrote:
humanity is degenerating
Pants, do an historical review of the average quality of life, the incidence of crime, especially violent crime etc. etc. We currently (ignoring the dangerous posturing of our political so-called leaders) live in a period of great personal safety. Crime, including violent crime, is decreasing almost daily according to all survey data - and I understand the problems with both the British Crime Survey and the police figures - covered that in sociology. So a little scepticism is healthy.

We think that there is a lot more crime because more crime is being detected and more covered by the media, if this were 200 years ago the whole of the news would be stories of robbery, murder, rape, child abuse and so forth, and wife beating was considered the right of the husband. There were not the numbers of police, social workers, NSPCC workers etc. available then to investigate every crime, only the worst could be dealt with. There was only the few broadsheets, read by the middle and upper classes, who were probably more interested in the goings on at the palace than in the back streets of Brixton or Liverpool or in a tied farm cottage - the sort of places the likes of you and I would have lived then.

We still have the poor, the under-privileged, the unemployed and the drug dealers and addicts but they almost certainly form a smaller proportion of society than they once did.
You have to understand that violence can take 2 forms: physical and psychological. The former is easy to detect, the latter is not. In our society you can be damned sure that if somebody is holding his fists in check, then his mind is hard at work and somebody is suffering. Take my old granny for example: boy did she like to cause trouble. She liked to set one person against another, either by showing favouritism or by lying, by, say, telling one person that another had said something nasty about them. I won't go into all the ways my old granny had of causing trouble. Fortunately she did not get away with it, or not as much as she would have liked, because communication amongst the family found out her lies. I instance my old granny because, as you might expect, physical violence was quite beyond her but that in no way hampered her from tormenting and abusing other people. She is in no way exceptional. Our society is just riddled with people abusing one another for fun --- and not a mark showing. Of course, there is no point in doing an historical review for psychological abuse.

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Dave B
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Re: Cave art or rave art? A cautionary tale.

#25 Post by Dave B » April 25th, 2014, 4:50 pm

You have to understand that violence can take 2 forms: physical and psychological.
This I know from personal experience. There have been control freaks, dominant personalities, sadists and all kinds of nasty people for as long as there have been people - not a lot one can do about it, chances are some of it is genetic, some of it due to some traumatic experience suffered by the "nasty" person.

But most crimes of physical violence seem to be decreasing (so far as one can rely on the surveys and data collecting/analysis methods!) I remember when almost every day had at least one reported incidence of mugging, happy slapping etc. It almost certainly goes on but even the local papers, who normally rely on such incidents to have a rant, can't find enough to use as ammunition these days.

This is not to say we have a perfect world, nor does it mean that the picture may deteriorate in the future, but compared to even the world of my childhood life is a whole lot more gentle than it was then. The pundits are coming round to the idea that the increasing price of alcohol and the decreasing number of pennies in peoples' pocket might have something to do with it.
"Look forward; yesterday was a lesson, if you did not learn from it you wasted it."
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Re: Cave art or rave art? A cautionary tale.

#26 Post by pantodragon » April 28th, 2014, 4:40 pm

Dave B wrote:
You have to understand that violence can take 2 forms: physical and psychological.
This I know from personal experience. There have been control freaks, dominant personalities, sadists and all kinds of nasty people for as long as there have been people - not a lot one can do about it, chances are some of it is genetic, some of it due to some traumatic experience suffered by the "nasty" person.

But most crimes of physical violence seem to be decreasing (so far as one can rely on the surveys and data collecting/analysis methods!) I remember when almost every day had at least one reported incidence of mugging, happy slapping etc. It almost certainly goes on but even the local papers, who normally rely on such incidents to have a rant, can't find enough to use as ammunition these days.

This is not to say we have a perfect world, nor does it mean that the picture may deteriorate in the future, but compared to even the world of my childhood life is a whole lot more gentle than it was then. The pundits are coming round to the idea that the increasing price of alcohol and the decreasing number of pennies in peoples' pocket might have something to do with it.
You may be correct, that there is less physical violence around nowadays. However, the cause is debatable. You point to the possibility of the price of alcohol. I would point to people's fears. I suspect that people today stay away from trouble spots. For example: when I was in New Orleans some years ago, attending a conference, while most people were put up in the conference hotel, some of us had had to be located in nearby hotels. One woman I talked to was located directly over the road from the conference hotel. She told me she would not attend anything in the conference hotel after dark for fear of muggers etc. I mean, all she had to do was cross a busy road. This seems to me to be a feature of the modern world. Women like her are going to experience less violence simply because they don't go out at night --- or at least not unless accompanied by suitable protectors. Another woman recently told me she would not go into the woods, a popular local amenity, without her dog and this is during the day.

Then there is monstrous regiment of cctv cameras. I am sure they must account for some of the decrease.

If my offered cause for the decrease in violence is correct, then one has to ask: is it really worht it? Is it worth living in a cage in order to reduce one's risks? Or being spied upon, living in a Big Brother world --- is it really worth it?

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Dave B
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Re: Cave art or rave art? A cautionary tale.

#27 Post by Dave B » April 28th, 2014, 5:22 pm

I would suggest people have always stayed away from known trouble spots as much as possible. Unless they are stupid or there is no possible alternative.
"Look forward; yesterday was a lesson, if you did not learn from it you wasted it."
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pantodragon
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Re: Cave art or rave art? A cautionary tale.

#28 Post by pantodragon » April 30th, 2014, 3:39 pm

Dave B wrote:I would suggest people have always stayed away from known trouble spots as much as possible. Unless they are stupid or there is no possible alternative.
As an instance I can think of hitch-hiking. I've experienced this from both ends as a hiker and as a driver. As a driver I used always to pick up anyone I saw hitching. Then there was a huge fuss made and lots of warnings sent out, particularly to women, about picking up hitch-hikers. I cannot pretend this did not have an effect on me. I became more fearful and more cautious. But other people I know, men as well as women, are very nervous about picking up hitchers nowadays. My experience as a hitcher mirrors the above: I was much less fearful, people were much less fearful when I was younger --- and come to think of it, the same sort of thing applies to stopping to help people whose cars have broken down. When I was younger one could drive about without any fear confident that if one broke down the next car coming along would stop to help --- a very different situation from today.

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Re: Cave art or rave art? A cautionary tale.

#29 Post by Dave B » April 30th, 2014, 5:08 pm

I only ever picked up obvious climbers (I used to climb myself) (well, actually climbed the rock - climbing oneself is quite a difficult feat.) Or I would pick up students.
"Look forward; yesterday was a lesson, if you did not learn from it you wasted it."
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Re: Cave art or rave art? A cautionary tale.

#30 Post by pantodragon » May 2nd, 2014, 2:31 pm

Dave B wrote:I only ever picked up obvious climbers (I used to climb myself) (well, actually climbed the rock - climbing oneself is quite a difficult feat.) Or I would pick up students.

Where did you climb? Any named peaks? I would really like to do a bit of climbing myself, but I'm so afraid of heights I get nervous standing on a chair!

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Re: Cave art or rave art? A cautionary tale.

#31 Post by Dave B » May 2nd, 2014, 3:13 pm

pantodragon wrote:
Dave B wrote:I only ever picked up obvious climbers (I used to climb myself) (well, actually climbed the rock - climbing oneself is quite a difficult feat.) Or I would pick up students.

Where did you climb? Any named peaks? I would really like to do a bit of climbing myself, but I'm so afraid of heights I get nervous standing on a chair!
I was mainly a rock climber rather than a mountaineer. And I was a "rabbit" at that - which meant I climbed mainly for the enjoyment rather than for extending my abilities to the max. I did have a go at a few "severe" climbs though, but stuck mainly to "very difficult".

I did most of the roots on Tryfan in N. Wales, plus some in the Llanberis Valley and Walked up Snowdon
(in ice & snow so it was no stroll!) Did some in the Peak District and the Lakes. Did some caving in the Mendips as well.

Always worth looking round your local area for a climbing wall to try it out on, Pants, you might find that climbing up a face takes a lot of the fear of heights out - you need to concentrate too much on what your hands and feet are doing. I never could stand anywhere near the edge of a cliff without a rope on me! Starting at the bottom was OK.
"Look forward; yesterday was a lesson, if you did not learn from it you wasted it."
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Re: Cave art or rave art? A cautionary tale.

#32 Post by pantodragon » May 7th, 2014, 3:57 pm

Dave B wrote:
I was mainly a rock climber rather than a mountaineer. And I was a "rabbit" at that - which meant I climbed mainly for the enjoyment rather than for extending my abilities to the max. I did have a go at a few "severe" climbs though, but stuck mainly to "very difficult".

I did most of the roots on Tryfan in N. Wales, plus some in the Llanberis Valley and Walked up Snowdon
(in ice & snow so it was no stroll!) Did some in the Peak District and the Lakes. Did some caving in the Mendips as well.

Always worth looking round your local area for a climbing wall to try it out on, Pants, you might find that climbing up a face takes a lot of the fear of heights out - you need to concentrate too much on what your hands and feet are doing. I never could stand anywhere near the edge of a cliff without a rope on me! Starting at the bottom was OK.
Caving. Yes, I like caving. I have explored a few easily accessible caves. Crawling through very narrow, dark passages is, however, a no-go. Really, it's the big spectacular stalagmites and other formations that I like. Watery caves, cave pools, are specially good.

I did try a climbing wall once and did get right to the top --- there must have been something wrong with me that day, I've never been able to repeat that success.

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