Wicked Problems: Gun Violence

Ken Wilber September 23, 2019 Cognitive, Defenses, Editor's Picks, Ethical, How should we relate to the social justice movement?, Life Conditions, Perspectives, Politics, The Ken Show, Video, World Affairs 106 Comments

Ken and Corey take an in-depth look at America’s ongoing struggle with gun violence, using the four quadrants to track many of the most critical and commonly-blamed factors, conditions, and causes that seem to be contributing to this terribly wicked problem.

Written and produced by Corey deVos

Why does America have such a deadly problem with gun violence? What can possibly be done to solve the issue? Why do there seem to be no easy answers?

rom the foundation of the American union through the War of Independence, to its near dissolution during the Civil War, to the open frontiers of the Wild West and the digital frontiers of video games and first-person shooters — America has always had a deeply complicated relationship with the gun.

Firearms are woven into the very fabric of American life, society, and history, enshrined in our founding documents. Which makes the question of how to reduce gun violence in America an exceptionally difficult one to answer.

America’s pathological relationship with gun violence is what is often called a “wicked problem” — a deeply complex, multifaceted problem that cannot be fully seen or understood from any single point of view, and therefore requires an integral multidisciplinary approach in order to solve. Unfortunately, when it comes to gun violence, there are very few discussions out there that are even trying to put all the pieces together, choosing instead to politicize the brutal deaths of innocent children and families, and allowing the narrative to become dominated by these narrow biases, ideologies, and objectives. In the meantime, nearly 100 Americans die from gun violence every single day.

Because few people can fully see all facets of this incredibly complicated problem, our relationship with the gun — as a deadly weapon, as a defensive tool, and as a deeply-embedded cultural archetype — has become shrouded by shadow. On the one hand it is the ultimate equalizer of power, allowing the most vulnerable among us to defend their lives and land from those who would take them away. On the other hand they are machines designed for only one purpose, to kill other living creatures — and we are seeing far too many senseless killings in America today. For some they are a symbol of independence, individual freedom, and personal sovereignty. For others they are objects of obsession and even fetishization, a substitute gratification for our felt lack of inner power and control over our lives.

In this discussion, Ken and Corey try to identify the root causes of gun violence in America, and suggest some innovative solutions that might help us turn the page on this terribly wicked problem. Ken and Corey begin by identifying some basic facts in order to frame the discussion:

America has a serious gun problem. In 2010, the U.S. homicide rate was 7 times higher than the average for populous developed countries in the OECD, and its firearm-related homicide rate was 25.2 times higher.
However, gun violence in general has fallen sharply over the last 25 years, by anywhere from 49 to 74 percent depending on which numbers you are looking at.
Suicide rates represent the majority of gun-related deaths. Suicides have risen by 25% in a 15 year period, and represent about 60% of all gun deaths.
While mass shootings are the most terrifying form of gun violence, they also represent a tiny fraction of total gun deaths per year. In 2018 there were 38,658 gun-related deaths. About 23,000 were suicides. About 14,000 were homicides. Only 71 were victims of mass shootings, or 0.18% of all gun deaths.
The majority of politically-motivated mass shootings since 2008 have come from the political right wing. Right-wing terrorism outnumbers Islamic terrorism by a 2:1 margin, and left-wing terrorism by a 5:1 margin.

Critical Factors

Ken and Corey then discuss some of the most important factors, conditions, and commonly-blamed causes of America’s affliction with gun violence, using the Four Quadrants to help illuminate and unpack the true-but-partial roles that each of these factors play.

Because this is such a complex and Integal problem, and because people tend to only identify one or two of these as the “root cause” of violence — typically the political left looks at exterior right-hand causes and solutions to gun violence, while the political right emphasizes interior left-hand causes and solutions — this conversation is one of the most comprehensive takes on the issue that you will hear.

Click on each factor below for fuller descriptions and video discussions with Ken and Corey.

CONSCIOUS
(INTERIOR-INDIVIDUAL)

What’s true: Obviously, anyone who pulls a trigger while aiming at random people are, by definition, mentally ill. But generally speaking, America is suffering from incredible mental health challenges. Roger Walsh has said that we are now living in the midst of the largest social experiment in the history of our species. So far, the results don’t seem to be looking so good, with record levels of anxiety and depression and social isolation. We are a nation that is struggling collectively with both our mental and physical health, not to mention our spiritual health.

What’s partial: While we need to give mental illness its proper place in the discussion, it’s important to remember a point that was made in a 2017 New York Times article:

“If mental health made the difference, then data would show that Americans have more mental health problems than do people in other countries with fewer mass shootings. But the mental health care spending rate in the United States, the number of mental health professionals per capita and the rate of severe mental disorders are all in line with those of other wealthy countries.”

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/11/07/world/americas/mass-shootings-us-international.html

What’s true: Studies show that college students today are displaying 40% less empathy than students since the year 2000. Which likely signifies an overall developmental deficit in young adults today, at least in their interpersonal and emotional intelligence lines, and which likely underlies so much of the regressive elements of the left that Ken and Corey have talked about so much in previous episodes.

What’s partial: While this statistic is certainly horrifying in just about every way, it's important to remember that this is largely describing a sort of selective empathy that results from tribalism — that is, extending your empathy only to those in your group, or to those your group decide are the most worthy.

https://www.npr.org/2019/04/15/712249664/the-end-of-empathy?utm_source=pocket-newtab

BEHAVIORAL
(EXTERIOR-INDIVIDUAL)

What’s true: It has been widely reported that a great number of these mass shooters were either on SSRI’s at the time of the shooting, or have a recent history with them.

What’s partial: We might need to hold this somewhat loosely, since it could just be correlation without causation — people who shoot random crowds have severe mental illness, and many people with mental illness have a history with SSRIs. But we also can’t neglect the possibility that these medications are somehow lowering inhibition and self-restraint and increasing sociopathic tendencies in certain people.

CULTURAL
(INTERIOR-COLLECTIVE)

What’s true: Understanding the centrality of the gun as deeply embedded symbol of the American narrative shows you that, whatever solutions we find around gun control, it will likely never be as easy as “we need to take all the guns off the street” because that will never be selected for in this country. For many the gun is a deeply-engrained symbol of independence and individualism, of exploration and expansion, of self-reliance and self-dignity. Firearms are woven into very fabric of American life, society, and history, enshrined in our very founding documents. The American nation was founded at the beginning and the end of a gun, American culture is a historically martial culture, and in many ways we have begun to dissociate ourselves from that legacy, for better and for worse.

What’s partial: While the gun is indeed an important and primary archetype in American culture and history, it’s also true that we tend to fetishize our guns and gun culture, often to a disturbing and even dangerous degree. The gun as an American symbol is one that is more often than not hidden in the shadow — different shadows for the left and for the right — and we need to bring more consciousness to the dual nature of the gun itself. On the one hand, it is a machine designed for only one purpose: to kill another living being. On the other hand, it is the great equalizer, and the ultimate tool for self-defense, a right that should never be denied to any sentient creature. We cannot have a meaningful discussion about guns unless everyone is able to acknowledge both of these intrinsic qualities.

What’s true: Everyone feels like their values are being threatened with extinction by everyone else, and we have very few leaders telling us otherwise.

What’s partial: Much of the rhetoric in the culture wars is, of course, completely overblown, and in many cases are products and propaganda generated by enormous media corporations who have built entire revenue streams out of creating fear, division, and mistrust of our fellow citizens. The majority of people on the right are not Nazis and white supremecists. The majority of people on the left are not SJW snowflakes pushing for open borders. Both of these extreme ideologies exist, of course, and need to be tamped down by their respective parties — but we need to do so without completely writing off the huge swaths of the American public who simply hold different political beliefs than our own.

As neoliberalism has shifted from the media age into the Information Age, it has further eroded our shared communities — both because of the substitute gratifications that things like Amazon and social media give us, and because it offers green a platform to further dissolve necessary amber social structures. As a result, people are feeling far more isolated and disconnected from each other than ever before, our communities are more fragmented than ever before, and there are more opportunities for dissociative personality disorders than ever before.

What’s true: We have in fact been seeing a measurable return of white supremecist movements across the U.S., and in fact across much of the West. Moderate GOP representatives are retiring from office and will not seek reelection in 2020, many of whom have been critical of Trump’s xenophobic and arguably racist Twitter posts, particularly the “go back where you came from” tweets.

What’s partial: Although there has been a measurable increase of white supremacist motivations behind many of our recent politically-motivated massacres, and although these ideas and identities are directly to blame for those specific attacks, they are not the driving force behind most of the gun-related violence in America over the last several decades. It’s just the reason du jour to open fire on random citizens. It’s a problem of extremism itself, not a particular flavor of extremism. The question is not “how do we get white supremecists to stop shooting people”, it’s “how can we prevent people from getting so radicalized into such extreme views in the first place”.

What’s true:What’s true: One trait shared by many of these shooters is the lack of a strong father figure in their childhood. We see the same in the criminal system, as many convicted criminals also come from broken homes without father figures.

What’s partial: There are a lot of fatherless families out there, and the vast majority of fatherless children do not grow up to be domestic terrorists. It’s also largely a symptom of systemic dysfunction. For example, when disproportionate number of black men are incarcerated (particularly for nonviolent crimes like drug possession) — and when our for-profit prison system makes genuine rehabilitation nearly impossible for these individuals — this increases the number of fatherless families, and the problem only gets worse over time. The claim that 26 out of 27 shooters come from fatherless families appears to have been debunked.

https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/mass-shooters-fatherless-us/

SOCIAL
(EXTERIOR-COLLECTIVE)

What’s true: We do have a massive supply of guns circulating on the street, far more guns per capita than any other country — a staggering 120.7 guns per hundred people, which is more than two times as many as the next major country on the list, Yemen. We are the only nation in the world with more guns than people.

And surely we can enact some sensible gun-control measures that are supported by the majority of American population — close certain loopholes, create buyback programs, and deny purchase to high-risk individuals (mental heath history, terrorist watch list, etc.) In most cases these sorts of reforms have as much as 90% support among voters (particularly after Sandy Hook), and yet nothing has been done — due largely to conservative obstructionism, plutocratic bribery, and far-right conspiracy theories around mandatory disarmament, national registries, and sovereign citizenship.

It’s also important to note that these sorts of LR solutions are what governments tend to do best. There is very little they can do to change LL or UL realities, other than changing the LR social containers and conditions within which those realities emerge and exist. Governments cannot legislate morality, but they can legislate morally.

What’s partial: However, this is not as cut and dry as most liberal politicians in particular make it sound. Canada, which shares a border and much of our culture with us, also has a high number of guns per capita compared to other nations (34.7 per 100 people, still far fewer than America's 120.7), but far less gun-related violence per capita. It is likely that solutions that work for nations like the U.K. or New Zealand to keep guns out of circulation cannot and will not work in the U.S., because we are too many tipping points beyond those sorts of solutions.

What’s true: It is likely no accident that the number of mass shootings correlates so strongly with internet adoption rates from, say, 1999 to today. This gets to the inherent disembodiment and dehumanization of social media and its emphasis upon text-only communication, as well as the internet’s power to convene and radicalize people around dangerous and socially malignant ideas.

And of course, with the Information Age comes an overabundance of bad information, the delegitimization of journalistic institutions, and the spread of anti-intellectualism that Isaac Asimov characterized as "the false notion that democracy means that 'my ignorance is just as good as your knowledge.'” This gives rise to things like “fake news” and the balkanization of media into multiple echo-chambers that only confirm and reinforce our own pre-existing biases. Our sense of shared reality gets increasingly splintered by this aperspectival madness, and our shared cultural symbols and reference points become fewer and fewer.

What’s partial:

The internet is a global phenomenon, and while other nations also have issues with fomenting violence on social media — an entire genocide in Burma was planned and executed using Facebook as a platform of hatred — we generally don’t see the same levels of violence in other online societies as we do in the U.S.

What’s true: Our culture is permeated by violent video games, which goes a step beyond other forms of violent media such as film or music, in that gamers have an interactive and participatory role in that violence. This has caused many to be concerned that our video games are desensitizing us to violence, creating more opportunities for violent wish fulfillment and various sociopathic tendencies.

What’s partial: Ever since Columbine there has been study after study trying to link violent video games to real-world gun violence. And time and time again, the studies tell us that there is no link. While many studies have demonstrated that violent video games do temporarily raise interior arousal and aggression levels in individual gamers, and that there may be a correlation between aggressive behaviors and actions in players of video games, there is no evidence of a causal link between these games and actual violent behavior in the exterior world. If it did, we would expect to see similar trends of gun violence in other nations who spend more money on video games per capita than we do — and that is not what we see at all.

What’s true: Most day-to-day gun violence is committed by poor people, while most high profile mass-shootings are committed by middle class people, predominantly young white men. Much of our gun violence (including suicide rates) is animated by economic anxiety, including loss of employment (typically due to automation, but commonly blamed upon immigration). And of course this is not to say that we want to eliminate wealth inequality altogether — some degree of inequality is inevitable, and even desired for the optimal health of any capitalist society. But when we go so far beyond Gilded Age-levels of wealth inequality, when so few people wield so much power over so many different segments of our society, and when an extreme minority of individuals can use dollars to amplify their “freedom of speech” and completely drown out the voices of ordinary American citizens, then our society begins to rot. This would also help dismantle the plutocratic control that our transnational corporations have over our nation’s politicians and political systems, helping to reduce the influence of things like lobbying, campaign donations, and other forms of plain-sight bribery that turn our governing systems against the very people they are created to govern.

Add to this the additional pressures that workplace automation is creating, which is the primary reason people are losing their jobs throughout the country. However, the blame is typically shifted to things like illegal immigration, which only fuels things like racism, xenophobia, and the culture wars in general. But immigrants are not taking our jobs — robots are. This problem will likely continue to escalate as more jobs are automated, and as things like climate change drive more and more migrant displacement.

What’s partial: Even the poorest among American citizens tend to enjoy a quality of life that is significantly better than other impoverished nations across the planet. Which is not to say that the struggles of poor Americans is not legitimate, or that violent crime is not strongly correlated with poverty. But the rates of per-capita gun violence in America nonetheless greatly outweighs the gun violence found in nations that are more impoverished and with a lower average quality of life than the U.S.

Integral solutions

Finally, Ken and Corey explore some possible Integral solutions to gun violence — the simplest possible interventions that can have the greatest impact across multiple conflicting perspectives and political paradigms.

Audio version

About Ken Wilber

Ken Wilber is a preeminent scholar of the Integral stage of human development. He is an internationally acknowledged leader, founder of Integral Institute, and co-founder of Integral Life. Ken is the originator of arguably the first truly comprehensive or integrative world philosophy, aptly named “Integral Theory”.

About Corey deVos

Corey W. deVos is Editor-in-Chief of Integral Life, as well as Managing Editor of KenWilber.com. He has worked for Integral Institute/Integal Life since Spring of 2003, and has been a student of integral theory and practice since 1996. Corey is also a professional woodworker, and many of his artworks can be found in his VisionLogix art gallery.

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Notable Replies

MKeller4033 says:

August 22, 2019

Well, this discussion is lightyears more integrally analytical than most that appear in other media. Kudos to Ken and Corey for being willing to take on the sacred shibboleths of the Boomeritis green left. Corey, in other media I’ve heard you own your left political orientation, an element I believe essential to any integral discussion, and you do a decent job keeping those in check.

As I’ve written about extensively in my AQALBlog, I believe the most critical meta-challenge is, as Ken has said elsewhere, the maturing of orange. All evolution pivots to and from orange, for only the self-actualized free individual can make the authentic choice to create and participate in enlightened community. The American founders were particularly sensitive to the inhibiting role of tyranny and coercion, and strove to promote not just political self-government but more importantly character self-government as the sine qua non of their bold experiment.

But as we can see in our struggles with own individual spiritual growth (addictions, shadow, self-violence, etc.), the earlier stages will not surrender to the higher orders easily. The “retribalization” that Ken so accurately observes is part of what I call the “amber counterrevolution,” in which Boomeritis green is a willing if unwitting participant. Amber and Boomeritis green are ganging up to strangle orange.

Are they succeeding? Let us keep this meta-narrative in mind as we examine how this titanic evolutionary struggle plays out in daily affairs.
corey-devos says:

September 24, 2019

Hello @BobandAnne, thank you for the discussion. But I can’t help but to feel like this comment is sort of missing the point. To me it sounds like you are saying, “this isn’t a problem, because there are other problems over there.” (But thank you for pointing out that health care is also a terribly wicked problem, as indicated by the statistics you shared. Another topic that is probably deserving of an 8-hour integral analysis as American society begins to transition to more universal solutions.)

The fact of the matter is, gun violence in America far eclipses gun violence in the vast majority of other modern nations. And it is a “wicked problem” in that there is no single factor or cause behind this violence. The word “wicked” here means “deeply complicated” more than it means “heinous”. That said, I think our gun violence rates can indeed be characterized as “heinous”, especially when comparing to other nations.

Gun violence is, in fact, a deep complicated problem, and one that absolutely requires an integral accounting in order to make any sense of whatsoever. Which is what we try to do in this very long and comprehensive discussion.

“it is Gangs that are a much larger problem when it comes to gun deaths and not Far Right Extremism.”

Yes, and we cover that. We also cover the fact that gun violence as a whole has been trending downward for the last several decades, despite a mild uptick in recent years. But this does not change the fact that, when it comes to domestic terrorism that results in fatalities, far-right extremism is the number one motivation. Because multiple things can be true at the same time.

“There are no White Supremacists in public, and in fact do you know any personally? How about you Corey?”

Yup, sure do. Extended family members. I mean, they probably wouldn’t call themselves “white supremacists” as some group identity they belong to, but they certainly believe that other races/cultures/people are inferior to their own, and often blame other people and cultures for whatever resentment or frustrations they feel in their own lives, whether it’s fellow American citizens or immigrants.

Not to mention the fact that we have had several self-described white supremacists run for political office in recent years. They have not been able to establish a legitimate political foothold, as Ken mentions, but that doesn’t mean they ain’t trying.

And as Ken points out, this type of thinking tends to come naturally to people who hold amber-level views. And that, unfortunately, describes most people. So yeah, some portion of white people at the amber stage probably have some degree of “white supremacy” somewhere in their system, whether conscious or unconscious. The thing is, as Ken and I point out, we used to have a lid on that sort of amber ethnocentrism — a lid called “modern universal values” — which is now being dismantled from both ends, and which makes people who hold racist, sexist, homophobic, etc. views that much more emboldened to express their views publicly.

But yes, you are right. Guns don’t kill people by themselves. People kill people. And when they do, they usually use guns. Because it’s super effective at getting the job done. I’m just not sure how much this distinction helps move the conversation forward. It certainly doesn’t make the problem any less “wicked”.

Thanks again for the conversation!
firefly says:

September 29, 2019

corey-devos:

Yup, sure do. Extended family members. I mean, they probably wouldn’t call themselves “white supremacists” as some group identity they belong to, but they certainly believe that other races/cultures/people are inferior to their own, and often blame other people and cultures for whatever resentment or frustrations they feel in their own lives, whether it’s fellow American citizens or immigrants.

Interesting definition of “white supremacy”. In a broad brushstroke it covers from killers like Dylan Roof and people going around giving the Nazi salute… to people that are upset that they can’t speak their own language at the corner store anymore, their job was given to someone who doesn’t pay taxes and therefore can do it for 1/4th the wage and they are penalized for not having insurance while some politicians want to give FREE insurance to people from OTHER nations that come here illegally.

Until recently the latter would have been called being human, not ‘white supremacist’ but such are the times.

Ironically as I’m reading a book about Union soldiers in the Civil War I realize, that by the definition proposed above, these people that went and died on the side of freeing the slaves would most certainly be “white supremacists”.

But let’s step back for a second. For the sake of argument let play devil’s advocate say the above qualifies as a definition of “supremacy”.

This proposes an interesting conundrum: Black and Hispanic supremacy have experienced a far larger growth. It is currently promoted both in Congress and on TV. The current mindset says that being white is inherently flawed, while being anything BUT white is somehow ‘saintly’. White points of view are dismissed not based on logic, facts or arguments, but based on skin color of the messenger. White people are asked to leave campuses and not show up for certain events purely based on their skin color. Being proud of your ethnicity is encouraged for everyone, except white people.

corey-devos:

often blame other people and cultures for whatever resentment or frustrations they feel in their own lives, whether it’s fellow American citizens or immigrants.

Former TV CEO Says U.S. Should Ban ‘Straight White Males from Voting’

Election – 30 Oct 18

Former TV CEO Says U.S. Should Ban ‘Straight White Males from Voting’

"I think that will save our democracy,” says Steven Clifford, author of "CEO Pay Machine: How it Trashes America and How to Stop it."

If you want to stop mass shootings in America, consider banning white men

nydailynews.com

KING: If you want to stop mass shootings in America, consider banning white men

Whether we like it or not, we're are all here together and we're going to have to figure out a smarter way to peacefully co-exist.

Do white men really deserve to vote?

Affinity Magazine – 1 Aug 17

Do White Men Really Deserve To Vote?

Last time a journalist dared to use their platform and freedom of speech to discuss this question on the Huffington Post, she was silenced and the article was taken down. However, I saw it and thought that the benefits of reversing white men’s...

vote.JPG761×140 40.7 KB

I mean, just pop open the TV on Msnbc and you’ll see the white people being guilty of everything under the sun. It’s almost hilarious. Did you know that even white robots are ‘racist’? Well, they are according to CNN.

As a member of a multi-racial family who immigrated (legally) to the US, I have to say that I have seen this “supremacy”, as defined above, from all races in forms at least as virulent. I have witnessed an Indian client being discriminated by Hispanic board when trying to create a Hispanic restaurant in their area (just because he’s not Hispanic himself). I’ve also personally seen black people discriminating against other black people based on shade of blackness skin color. Hispanic kids being beat up daily in a predominately black high school.

Recently, we’ve witnessed black people who are called “white supremacists” simply because they do not share certain points of view.

On the issue of guns I have a bit of a tainted view, I must admit, since my family comes from a socialist country where they were tortured.

The 2nd Amendment is there to allow defense from people, but also from government, by making somewhat untenable the idea of government unconstitutional control of people. It is there to provide a safety and counterbalance to a government becoming a tyrannical dictatorship. Venezuela’s gun control didn’t play out that well for them. The idea that you can trust the government without real balances in place is deeply naive from a historical perspective.

Socialism and collectivism SHOULD be demonized. And they are by 99% of anybody that has seen them 1st hand.

It’s rather ironic, because in a socialist state (not the one from books, the ones that play out in reality) you’d be taken out and they’d forcibly take out your earring and beat up a little. At least that’s what happened to my cousin who, being a metal head, was take out, his hair cut, his earrings pulled out, and I don’t mean pulled out as in taken out, but literally ripped from the ears (good thing his jewelry was cheap and it broke off before doing a lot of damage). He was then beat up with an iron bar over the soles of his feet and and hands. Just one example incident. Apparently metal music was deemed not good for the ‘collective’.

You don’t want to be in socialism or collectivism. It never plays out like in the books. Socialism is cancer.

Thank you and Ken for the talk.
firefly says:

September 30, 2019

So “white supremacy” = person who doesn’t like things like having to be penalized for insurance while government wants to provide same insurance free to illegals. Also, soldiers that fought in the civil war on against slavery. Got it.

So it’s not a stretch to say these guys got it spot on:

The Root

Charles Barkley Is a Great Example of a Black White Supremacist

There are three questions for which black America has never received a satisfactory answer:

Even black people are white supremacists. Who knew.

Moving on.

corey-devos:

And quickly, when it comes to “socialism”, i think that is one of those words that needs to be defined every time it’s used, because it means very different things to different people.

Interesting. So using this logic, we can redefine Fascism or Nazims and have the bad Nazism and Fascism ala Hitler or Mussolini and the good one ala today’s Hitler youth, aka Antifa.

I mean… Top hit on Google:

I guess one could make the point that the Nazis killed literally millions of people… were it not for the pesky fact that Marxist Socialism killed hundreds of millions of people, some members of my family included.

This leads to rather embarrassing things such as “anti-fascists” applauding Hitler speech because ideas resonate so closely with them.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qNMAp8kXWrc
All tragico-comedy aside, it’s amazing how the left has mind-wiped the population here of the horrors of socialism. This rebranding is as hillarious as saying that it’s not the old Nazism, it’s a “a new caring Nazism”.

Socialism is cancer. What you see in Venezuela is its full metastisized version. The argument then becomes how much cancer is good to have. I say none.

Let us lastly tackle the great unicorn: Ahhh, but all that socialism was wrong, it’s not ‘real’ socialism. Look at the nordic countries.

Gatestone Institute – 14 Feb 15

Sweden: Rape Capital of the West

Forty years after the Swedish parliament unanimously decided to change the formerly homogenous Sweden into a multicultural country, violent crime has increased by 300% and rapes by 1,472%. Sweden is now number two on the list of rape countries,...

https://www.politico.eu/article/sweden-bombings-grenade-attacks-violent-reality-undoing-peaceful-self-image-law-and-order/

They can’t protect themselves. They can’t (don’t?) want to pay US for protection. They have not contributed anything that significant to the world.

I mean even medically they are inconsequential. Most of the great discoveries and breakthroughs were created in the US.

It is NOT an exaggeration to say that a good chunk of their population would literally be DEAD without the breakthroughs in the capitalist US. What would it matter that the health care was free IF you don’t have the discoveries made by a capitalist USA?

Forbes

The Most Innovative Countries In Biology And Medicine

Is the U.S. really losing its edge in biology and medicine.

My family came from a socialist country with a ‘robust’ health care system. It was so “great” that everybody wanted to leave the country… and the secret police would beat you up if they caught you trying to leave.

At the end of the day I am a person that likes freedom.

I have nothing against ‘collectivism’. I know it from first hand experience - not book written by people with special interests. But far be it for me to tell someone how to live their life.

My main issue is that these systems do not allow you to opt-out. Just like the Obamacare, which made me lose my doctor and have insurance that only fresh-off the benches of med school (can’t tell humerus apart from humorous) “doctors” would take.

** I guess I should put in here that I don’t believe anyone should be left to die on the streets or be driven to financial ruin because of the “cost” of an illness… I also think that drug companies and lobbyists should be cut down as they drive up prices to unfair and ludicrous amounts. I just don’t think that “socialism” is the answer. Just like you don’t cut off your foot to deal with that pebble in your shoe that bothers you **

Anyway, I appreciate the civil tone.

God bless you and Ken.
firefly says:

September 30, 2019

corey-devos:

Eliminate survival needs across an entire society, and watch that society thrive and its economy explode.

corey-devos:

Freedom from plutocratic control over her health and livelihood.

Well, I agree with that statement 100%.

I just think you’re going about it totally wrong.

Do you think any kid suffering would have fared better under socialism? Millions of dead kids of the socialist health care system would suggest the answer is “no”… by far.

Washington Post

Venezuela’s health system in ‘utter collapse’ as infectious diseases spread,...

Health-care professionals, refugees and aid groups describe the deteriorating conditions.

On a related note, the actual procedure of liver transplant was not pioneered in Finland, Sweden or any other nordic socialist country. It was pioneered in the US by a US doctor supported by US medicine.

We don’t have to solve a heart attack with cancer. It makes no sense.

Truth be told I don’t think I’m qualified to discuss holons or Ken’s theories. I’m still trying to wrap my head around them.

Socialism though is different. I’ve seen and experienced it first hand. It like I’ve been skiing for a good part of my life. My family has been skiing for almost all their life. To debate skiing with someone that has never hit the slopes and points to works by other people, who themselves never set foot on the slopes doesn’t seem productive.

Mind you, I’m not saying Maslow’s theory is wrong. Just that achieving it through socialism is.

corey-devos:

Saying the Nazis were socialist because it has the word in the name is like saying the Democratic People’s Republic of North Korea is a democracy because it says so in the name.

A few lines later…

corey-devos:

The policies of democratic socialism are VERY different from the policies of Stalin, and jumping straight into gulags is not an honest way to have this discussion.

So it doesn’t work if we put Democratic Republic of North Korea, but IT DOES WORK if we say “democratic” socialism?

Moving on…

In the 1970’s and 80’s a certain area of NYC, “Greenwich village” to be precise gave rise to numerous bands from the post punk scene. These bands had a certain sound that could easily be identifiable. It was a pop punk type of sound. If you wanted to be part of that particular sound and music scene this was the place to be.

If you were a hard rock or metal band then you probably wanted to be in LA, on the strip, or maybe San Fran.

In the 1910’s a neighborhood in Vienna gave rise to a very specific current that would take over the world. It was based on Marx’s socialist theories. Some of the future leaders that frequented this neighborhood were Lenin, Trotsky, Freud, Tito and Hitler.

So my argument about Hitler being a socialist was not disingenuous in the least. Just because leftist academicians try to rewrite history doesn’t mean we have to swallow it whole. Why is it that today’s anti-fascist left resembles the Hitler youth so much?

BBC News

1913: When Hitler, Trotsky, Tito, Freud and Stalin all lived in the same place

A century ago, a single square mile in the capital of the then Austro-Hungarian Empire was home to some of the most remarkable men of the 20th Century.

On a rather ironic sidenote: most of these “academicians” and now waging war against spirituality and religion trying to erase and suppress both. * well unless it’s Islam, then we know there can be no wrong and everything is cool *

Let me leave you with this thought:

What kind of system designed for the “progress” of society does so at the barrel of a gun both figuratively or literally?

You don’t have to go far (to venezuela) to see the damage socialism has done. Here is an example closer to home and how ‘socialized’ things really work.

British court orders life support removed from 21-month-old Alfie Evans, who has rare brain disorder

Crux – 20 Feb 18

British court orders life support removed from 21-month-old Alfie Evans, who...

A British judge has ordered that the ventilation from a 21-month-old baby with a rare brain disorder be removed, despite the requests from the parents the child be allowed to leave the country for further treatment.

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Wicked Problems: Gun Violence

Why does America have such a deadly problem with gun violence? What can possibly be done to solve the issue? Why do there seem to be no easy answers?

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Wicked Problems: Gun Violence

Why does America have such a deadly problem with gun violence? What can possibly be done to solve the issue? Why do there seem to be no easy answers?

Critical Factors

Click on each factor below for fuller descriptions and video discussions with Ken and Corey.

Integral solutions

Audio version

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About Corey deVos

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