christinejung:

“That is what mortals misunderstand. They say of some temporal suffering, “No future bliss can make up for it,” not knowing that Heaven, once attained, will work backwards and turn even that agony into a glory. And of some sinful pleasure they say “Let me have but this and I’ll take the consequences”: little dreaming how damnation will spread back and back into their past and contaminate the pleasure of the sin.”

— C. S. Lewis, The Great Divorce

Reposting from myself a while ago. Good reminder.

Aggressive Objects as Cues

Or in other words, maybe we should stop throwing more guns at the problem.

Certain stimuli seem to impel us to action. Is it conceivable that the mere presence of an aggressive stimulus—an object that is associated with aggressive responses—might increase the probability of aggression?

In a classic experiment by Leonard Berkowitz and Anthony Le Page (1967), college students were made angry. Some of them were made angry in a room in which a gun was left lying around (ostensibly from a previous experiment), and others were made angry in a room in which a neutral object (a badminton racket) was substituted for the gun. Participants were then given the opportunity to administer what they believed were electric shocks to a fellow college student. Those individuals who had been made angry in the presence of the gun administered more intense electric shocks than those made angry in the presence of the racket. The basic findings have been replicated a great many times in the United States and Europe (Frodi, 1975; Turner & Leyens, 1992; Turner, Simons, Berkowitz & Frodi, 1977). These findings are provocative and point to a conclusion opposite to a familiar slogan often used by opponents of gun control that “guns don’t kill; people do.” Guns do kill. As Leonard Berkowitz (1981, p. 12) put it, “An angry person can pull the trigger of his gun if he wants to commit violence; but the trigger can also pull the finger or otherwise elicit aggressive reactions from him if he is ready to aggress and does not have strong inhibitions against such behavior.”

Consider Seattle, Washington, and Vancouver, British Columbia. They are twin cities in a lot of ways; they have similar climates, populations, economies, general crime rates, and rates of physical assault. They differ in two respects: (1) Vancouver severely restricts handgun ownership; Seattle does not, and (2) the murder rate in Seattle is more than twice as high as that in Vancouver (Sloan et al., 1988). Is one thing the cause of the other? We cannot be sure. But the laboratory experiments just described strongly suggest that the ubiquitous presence of aggressive stimuli such as guns in the United States could be a factor.

—Social Psychology, 7th Edition (Elliot Aronson)

Do people say they’ll do things

and then not do them?

Remember when we used to have Big Ideas about Big Things in the park?

We’d be the youngest kids in history to build the world’s greatest fort that day. One team was assigned the task of gathering the finest branches and sticks; another would find great big leaves that we’d sew together with the threads from our sleeves; a few of us would collect pebbles and smooth out the sand for the foundation. Only the choicest ingredients would do, and when we came together, flushed from our repeated runs back and forth from the site, we’d be proud of our supply.

With fresh vigor, each of us labored with our small hands around the knobs of branches. Occasionally shouting out vague instructions to each other, we shuffled around on our haunches, shifting to ease the increased throbbing in our tiny backs. As we straightened up and stepped back to admire our handiwork from time to time, the sun sank away and we shivered in our sweat-dampened clothes. Our mothers told us to put on jackets and sweaters, which we reluctantly pulled on over clammy arms. Inevitably, frustration mounted and cheery encouragement soon turned to irritated snaps, expressing doubt about each another’s craftsmanship.

One kid would always be the least handy of the group of young architects, and another would soon pronounce loudly that this was boring and they’d rather play something else.

Under twilight skies, our project began to just resemble a pile of blueish rubble, poorly constructed and not really feeling like the greatest anything in the world. There was some unspoken embarrassment, but after a bit of silence, one of us would suggest to go back to the swings or something, and that they were thirsty anyway. Five minutes later, a game of hide-and-seek distracted us and all disappointments and accusations would be forgotten.

At least, mostly.

For days after one of these unsuccessful endeavors, there was always a deep, sick lingering in the pit of my stomach. It seemed unnatural to be so upset about something that shouldn’t have been that big of a deal, and I think my mother would always puzzle over what it could be–particularly because I couldn’t figure out how to articulate myself. How a child could feel such desperate frustration, I’m not sure, but I still can recall the rush of shame I felt whenever I thought about whichever stupid Thing we failed to accomplish.

It was just a small Thing, I know..

–

And so the great wheel turns, revealing the same worn side that was upturned just a moment before. Here is the deep groove on the edge, and here again is the crooked spoke. As we gather speed, our mistakes increasing and our ambitions dwindling, we dare to wonder.. is there no resolution to this revolution?

Or is there the bright hope of a nail lying down the road, fallen at just the right angle in just the right place in the path of what we thought we were fated for?

Gracefully deterred from the cliff we were bound for, we gladly rebuild. Oh! How small our scope had been all along! How finite and purposeless was our goal!

In perfect plans we now trust
As we raise together kingdoms
Grander than any mind could ever conceive.