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I guess the question is why are people feeling the need to shoot at each other every weekend? Like how did they get to where they are in life that they think it's ok to shoot someone else because they're mad or because it gives them a thrill? Boston has a lot to offer in terms of health and education that it does make you wonder how anyone living IN Boston could think this way.
Boston has a lot to offer in terms of health and education for those who can afford it.
There's an entire group of residents in Boston who are effectively prisoners in their own home. Housing and food has subsidy options for low-income families, but beyond that they're poor people in a rich man's city. Those who make too much to qualify for those subsides were ejected to the suburbs due to cost of living -- there's already been threads here about the disappearing middle class here. This disparity is a breeding ground for gangs, disaffection, and anger. We both have privileges many don't, and probably never will have, even if they don't feel apparent or obvious.
It's easy to reduce their actions to simple anger or thrill-seeking, but it's more complicated than that, and more complicated than you or I will ever understand. If I had to guess, though, I'd say it's many reasons: some have nothing left to lose but their pride so they defend it to the death, some operate in a system that ignores or has discarded them, some are in gangs because it's the only coherent family they have, some are not of sound mind (drugs, alcohol, untreated mental health issues), and half a million other reasons.
Shootings versus murders: The only difference between a shooting and a murder by gun is poor marksmanship.
Quote:
Originally Posted by GeePee
and speedy access to good hospitals
Yeah but the underlying intent of my earlier comment is that when urban youth point a gun at someone their intention is most always likely to be to kill that person not to wound them. From that perspective there is no practical difference between a shooting and a murder.
Boston has a lot to offer in terms of health and education for those who can afford it.
There's an entire group of residents in Boston who are effectively prisoners in their own home. Housing and food has subsidy options for low-income families, but beyond that they're poor people in a rich man's city. Those who make too much to qualify for those subsides were ejected to the suburbs due to cost of living -- there's already been threads here about the disappearing middle class here. This disparity is a breeding ground for gangs, disaffection, and anger. We both have privileges many don't, and probably never will have, even if they don't feel apparent or obvious.
It's easy to reduce their actions to simple anger or thrill-seeking, but it's more complicated than that, and more complicated than you or I will ever understand. If I had to guess, though, I'd say it's many reasons: some have nothing left to lose but their pride so they defend it to the death, some operate in a system that ignores or has discarded them, some are in gangs because it's the only coherent family they have, some are not of sound mind (drugs, alcohol, untreated mental health issues), and half a million other reasons.
Accurate. Boston made very little progress in tamping down gang membership and gang shooting in general over the past 20 years. I looked it up we bottomed out at 163 shootings in 2000. We regularly log 230 despite a decline in the youth population. The modern peak was 362 in 2006 (2005/2006 were gun violence spikes in the USA and Canda).
The decline in random crime is likely mostly due to improved technology, better lighting, fewer vacant buildings, 311..
Anger, anomie, dysfunctional families, mental health, need for money, family ties to gangs, poor education all lead to gang membership and eventually shootings. It's hard to understand if you don't have a foot in it.
However rich Boston is doesn't mean much to the permanent underclass- it just add instability to their living situations at most. Boston's a “wealthy educated city” yet the blacks people here in the city aren't any more educated than those in Atlanta or Charlotte or Los Angeles, and they're less wealthy. (Granted they fate better than most major cities on most metrics, but not nearly as well as Boeton does overall compared to other cities). The latinos in Boston perform worse than virtually every other major city in the United State on a wide variety of things. The poor education in BPS is increasingly inadequate each passing year-realistically BPS is inappropriate because it doesn't enable you to even sorta kinda compete for a job paying a living wage for this city. Some charters too.
None of Bostons prosperity has any effect on these people, realistically.
It's easy to reduce their actions to simple anger or thrill-seeking, but it's more complicated than that, and more complicated than you or I will ever understand. If I had to guess, though, I'd say it's many reasons: some have nothing left to lose but their pride so they defend it to the death, some operate in a system that ignores or has discarded them, some are in gangs because it's the only coherent family they have, some are not of sound mind (drugs, alcohol, untreated mental health issues), and half a million other reasons.
This part seems weird to me. Is it really correct or productive to say you could never understand them, even if you never went through them yourself? Even though it sounds like it's coming from a place of nonjudgement it kind of seems like a cop out and saying it's just someone else's problem that outsiders shouldn't even bother to think about because we could never even get it to begin with.
I don't really buy that. I agree that it's more complicated than simple anger or thrill seeking, but not too complicated for people to understand if they care to understand.Let me try a couple analogies:
My computer is also very complicated, perhaps moreso than I could ever understand, but I can understand it enough to use it. I can understand it enough to fix certain problems it has even though I didn't build it myself. Even the people who built it, or who lived that life, might not completely understand it, but they can understand some and work with that understanding to make progress.
Based on limited knowledged. One thing that might be a common misconception is about relationship of gangs and violence. People see gang violence and think of gangs as a violence-perpetuation machine. They wonder why anyone would join a gang when it's so obvious the most likely outcomes are death and jail. I don't think that view is correct. A gang is more like a money-making machine that creates violence as a byproduct. The violence is like the pollution from a factory. It's not the goal. It's not something that the factory owner really wants to happen, and they might even actively try to minimize it. But the bottom line is the bottom line and like the factory owner, greed tends to get in the way. If everything's going fine then your competitor goes and opens a factory in Malaysia with less environmental restrictions, now he's got the market locked down and you're about to go out of business. So you start to cut corners and it goes downhill from there.
I don't think the thrill-seeking aspect is entirely out of play either. I know some people like this, who certainly didn't need to get involved with anything like that to eat or even to live a perfectly good life, but they seemed just unable to avoid it for the adrenaline. I think of it starts out almost like a video game with your buddies. Adventure game co-op mode with your boys. Except in this game if you're good at it you make a crapload of money but if you screw up you don't get to respawn at the base camp. Anything with that high risk high reward componant will hook a certain type of person. Just look at the Ochoa brothers as an example of this. They were filthy rich from day one and one of the most well established families in Colombia before they ever got involved with drugs and gangs. About as far as you can get from doing it to put food on the table.
Last edited by Space_League; 07-30-2021 at 06:40 PM..
This part seems weird to me. Is it really correct or productive to say you could never understand them, even if you never went through them yourself? Even though it sounds like it's coming from a place of nonjudgement it kind of seems like a cop out and saying it's just someone else's problem that outsiders shouldn't even bother to think about because we could never even get it to begin with.
I don't really buy that. I agree that it's more complicated than simple anger or thrill seeking, but not too complicated for people to understand if they care to understand.Let me try a couple analogies:
My computer is also very complicated, perhaps moreso than I could ever understand, but I can understand it enough to use it. I can understand it enough to fix certain problems it has even though I didn't build it myself. Even the people who built it, or who lived that life, might not completely understand it, but they can understand some and work with that understanding to make progress.
Based on limited knowledged. One thing that might be a common misconception is about relationship of gangs and violence. People see gang violence and think of gangs as a violence-perpetuation machine. They wonder why anyone would join a gang when it's so obvious the most likely outcomes are death and jail. I don't think that view is correct. A gang is more like a money-making machine that creates violence as a byproduct. The violence is like the pollution from a factory. It's not the goal. It's not something that the factory owner really wants to happen, and they might even actively try to minimize it. But the bottom line is the bottom line and like the factory owner, greed tends to get in the way. If everything's going fine then your competitor goes and opens a factory in Malaysia with less environmental restrictions, now he's got the market locked down and you're about to go out of business. So you start to cut corners and it goes downhill from there.
I don't think the thrill-seeking aspect is entirely out of play either. I know some people like this, who certainly didn't need to get involved with anything like that to eat or even to live a perfectly good life, but they seemed just unable to avoid it for the adrenaline. I think of it starts out almost like a video game with your buddies. Adventure game co-op mode with your boys. Except in this game if you're good at it you make a crapload of money but if you screw up you don't get to respawn at the base camp. Anything with that high risk high reward componant will hook a certain type of person. Just look at the Ochoa brothers as an example of this. They were filthy rich from day one and one of the most well established families in Colombia before they ever got involved with drugs and gangs. About as far as you can get from doing it to put food on the table.
We don’t have to get it to be a part of the solution. It’s not abdication to say that we don’t and won’t ever understand, but we can listen and try to do better. Sometimes it’s just not about us.
The path that leads to the violence that some deal with daily is not one I’ve traveled, and I’d argue it’s condescending for me to pretend like I do get it. Sometimes we’re most helpful when we listen instead of trying to mansplain.
We don’t have to get it to be a part of the solution. It’s not abdication to say that we don’t and won’t ever understand, but we can listen and try to do better. Sometimes it’s just not about us.
The path that leads to the violence that some deal with daily is not one I’ve traveled, and I’d argue it’s condescending for me to pretend like I do get it. Sometimes we’re most helpful when we listen instead of trying to mansplain.
One one level everyone is their own person. Can we even completely understand the choices and behavior of people who did grow up in similar circumstances to ours? I would say no, of course there are are some shared cultural understandings(shortcuts to understanding) but everyone is their own person with their own pressures, reactions, motivations etc.
I think in any case you can listen with the goal ofreaching an understanding, even if you might never fully understand. Communication is two way thing between people, even with very different backgrounds and experiences. You can listen to others, giving your full attention and focus and there can still time in the conversation to speak. It doesn't have to be just one or the other.
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