More sheep
Bookworm on Jun 18 2008 at 7:30 pm | Filed under: Uncategorized
I heard about the man who stomped his two year old to death (kicking him more than 100 times) before being killed by the police. What I hadn’t realized is that a flock of sheep witnessed the horror:
The town of Turlock and much of the rest of the nation was shocked when a 27-year-old man beat and stomped his 2-year-old son to death on a rural road. But what was nearly as stunning for many people was that none of the motorists and their passengers who stopped and saw the attack tried to tackle the man.
Police officers and psychologists familiar with violent emergencies, however, said they weren’t surprised at all.
A volunteer firefighter and at least five others saw Sergio Casian Aguiar assaulting his son Saturday night on the road west of Turlock (Stanislaus County), but it wasn’t until a police officer arrived in a helicopter that the attack finally ended. Aguiar refused to halt the attack and raised his middle finger at the officer, who shot him to death, authorities said.
Bystanders are justifiably scared and confused in such situations, the experts said Wednesday, and they lack the experience needed to respond with force. They can also be mesmerized by shock.
The rest of the article is about how people shouldn’t feel guilty about watching a two year old be stomped to death. The article also notes that people like me, people who weren’t there, believe that, had they been there, they would have done something different.
I don’t know about me, but I do know that there are people who, in fact, do show up and do something different. These are the people who save people from subway trains or run into burning buildings or do any of the other heroic acts that routinely appear in our nation’s papers.
I don’t know if I’m a sheep or a lion. I’ve never been tested. But I sure find these sheep stories upsetting.
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Hello Bookworm,
As the title of your post suggests, most people are, in fact, sheep. What is one of the most salient characteristic of sheep?
When I wolf stands on the rise and singles out a sheep for lunch, the other sheep knows who the victim will be and scatter out, leaving the singled out sheep alone.
After the wolf has his meal and is picking his teeth with sheep bones, he saunters away. And the rest of the herd of sheep? They wander back over to where they were, where the body of the newly eaten friend was, and munch on the grass around their friend’s dead carcass.
That, my friend, is what we are. Sheep.
It is not in our nature to run into a burning building. It is not in our nature to confront evil and to stand for what we know is right even if it’s unpopular.
It IS in our nature to go along to get along and not make a fuss.
I don’t know if I would react differently than those folks. I hope I would. I’m sure that a few of them also considered the legal ramifications of tackling that guy and pulverizing his face.
Would he get sued and be only left with the shirt on his back when all’s said and done? Would be thrown in jail for “taking the law in his own hands” as people love to argue?…
One would hope that others would have acted differently.
One would also imagine that people from other, “more moral” eras, like the so-called golden years of 1940-1950’s, would behave differently, though movies like “Bad day at Blackrock” shows us that it’s not necessarily the case.
Society is designed to create sheep: they’re a lot easier to control.
I imagine that you have a fair idea of how you’d react. You don’t think you’ve been tested but you probably have been offered a chance to display some “non-sheep” characteristics - you just didn’t recognize the test because it came in a different form.
For example: ever quit a job for a principle? Ever blow the whistle even though you knew it would come back to haunt you? Ever tell the shop steward that you’re not only not going along with the scam, you’re going to shut it down? Ever tell the client with the big bucks you’re not taking it because you aren’t going to even do a lawyerly wink and pretend you don’t know he’s a crook and if put on, will lie? Ever watch someone trying to cross 3rd Avenue in NY on two canes, and go over and tap on the window of the impatient Cadillac leaning on his horn to tell him if he didn’t knock it off you’d put the horn somewhere that for the rest of his life when he hiccuped he’d beep?
Any time you’ve been willing, even momentarily, to value the principle more than your own skin - and there are lots of ways to do it (including, yes, batting Sergio Aguiar in the mouth as necessary) - then you’ve been tested.
It makes things extremely simple if the other guy pulls out a knife or a pistol on you. That way, self-defense as an argument after killing him is so easy to make.
Most self-protection laws in the South do include killing people in defense of loved ones and family, but that’s usually where the protections stop at. After that, you really have to depend on being able to convince the jury that the prosecutor is out to get you because the prosecutor likes to take on citizens that defend themselves rather than criminals that kill defenseless citizens.
But usually the prosecutor will try to get you on illegal firearms carrying, like say in Detroit where a guy moved from Florida and had a carry permit but didn’t have one for Detroit, when his home in Detroit was invaded and he shot the burglar. All those technicalities concerning guns are very easy to exploit. In point of fact, one might say that they were created precisely to be exploited in such a manner.
As for small rural towns, it depends much on whether you know the sheriff and the political views of the sheriff. The police will find something on you to charge you with, if they want to. But mostly they don’t want to and see the destruction and death of a violent person as being a load off their shoulders. Less paper work. I assume small towns don’t want a big media sensation over things, but would rather want to keep violence and criminals down to a real low.
Kill a guy in a bar room brawl over an argument over a girl or some spilled drink? They’re going to throw the book at you.
Kill a guy that’s pulled out a knife in a bar room brawl? Depends on which guy said the fighting words first and eyewitness accounts of who started the fight in the first place. They could argue that you had specifically went to that bar to pick a fight and kill somebody or that it was accidental. Of course, once you are armed with the knowledge of how to kill, it will never be “accidental”, and thus the prosecution will find it extremely hard to prove an involuntary manslaughter charge. They have to prove a murder charge, which takes much more evidence and much less doubt.
Kill a guy that pulled out a firearms in a bar room brawl? Far less uncertain there. That’s a lot easier of a case to convince the jury that you killed him in self-defense with your bare hands.
Once you comprehend the exact amount of trauma that a human body can withstand before it gets crippled and non-functional, then you can decide whether ending a target’s life is worth the legal hassle after wards.
If he has a knife, upgrade his threat status and increase the damage factor. Gun? Increase it more. More than one guy with a knife? Bring out the lethal targeting techniques. More than one guy with firearms? Time to go all out and exterminate those mofos.
You’re usually never going to see who has what though, in the beginning. Meaning, the first objective should be penetrate into the other guy’s space so his ability to use knives, blunt force instruments, and firearms is degraded. Afterwards, knock him down by taking away his center of gravity. Once knocked down, you have more time than you may think to figure out whether you want this guy dead or not.
Trying to figure out if a guy has a gun so you can “modify” your initial response is completely reactive and totally gives the enemy the initiative. Since he has chosen the place of the attack, the tools to attack you with, and perhaps even brought some buddies with him, you really don’t want to give him any more initiative than he already has.
Another thing that’s useful to do concerning how much the human body can tolerate trauma of a specific or general kind is that it allows you to know whether some guy kicking a 2 year old is really in danger of killing or crippling the two year old. Just by looking at how much power he is putting in his strikes, you should be able to estimate the attacker’s intention and progress.
For most people, they don’t comprehend violence and so they treat it like a mythology. Something unknowable, strange, and a thing to be afraid of. Blame it on the gods or on the government or on the police, but don’t ask me to become a mythological hero: is perhaps what they are thinking.
Once you know how to inflict trauma and injury on a human body, you will be able to easily recognize what the heck people are doing in the chaos people normally associate with “violence”. You’ll know whether it is a bar room brawl, something like a social fight to get better social status, or you can know it to be a fight to the death depending on the targets the fighters have chosen.
Course, if you see a knife or gun being pulled out, that pretty much clarifies people’s intentions right then and there. Most people when they see a gun or knife assume that now all of a sudden things have gotten serious. That this other guy really intends to hurt me. As opposed to what, when he didn’t have a gun pointed at you?
Things have gotten serious cause you’ve met a predator, not because you’ve met somebody with a gun in his hand. For example, you can reliably assume that the police would rather take you in alive, when they are pointing a gun at you. That’s what criminals do, unless they think they can get one up on the cop with some dirty violence in their sleeves.
Ever wonder why a cop won’t just stand very still, take a deep breath and let it out, and then shoot that hood running down the street in the back? Cause the cop isn’t the predator. He’s not out here to kill the sheep, but to protect them by arresting the wolves and putting them in a pen. Course they might get out and ravage the sheep again, but hey, the police can’t be everywhere.
Phileosophos blogged about the same topic and this was my comment there.
They can also be mesmerized by shock.
Which is the natural state the government wants their cogs in. Less chance of revolt that way.
Bystanders are justifiably scared and confused in such situations, the experts said Wednesday, and they lack the experience needed to respond with force.
That’s like saying the government justifiably loots the country for personal benefit and involves itself in corruption scandals because they lack the character needed to respond with virtue rather than vice and decadence.
Maybe it is justified in the view of the state because the state caused this to occur in the first place by indoctrinating people into believing that violence and being armed to conduct violence is evil, bad, and wrong.
“the common thing you hear is, ‘I was frozen in fear. I just couldn’t take action.’ “
Funny, that’s how deer react to headlights. I had thought humanity was superior to animals, but guess not in this case.
Conaty questioned whether the witnesses had even been capable of stopping Aguiar.
If they weighed more than a hundred pounds, they could have easily used TFT principles to strike an available like and neutralize the enemy. If they weighed less than a hundred pounds, then it might take awhile to do the amount of damage necessary to destroy a man’s knee, wind pipe, and various other joints. Won’t take that much weight for the groin or eye area though. But destroying the groin or eyes won’t actually stop somebody intent on violence, since unless something pierces the eye into the brain case, it’s not going to seriously disable someone’s ability to conduct violence. Same for groin area if we are dealing with berserker level endorphines.
Ordinary people aren’t going to tackle a psychotic.
What’s going to happen when the country is run by a psychotic, like Saddam, then? People just going to go into shell shock and be passive? Right.
Great re-education system America has cooked up that turns out sheep for “citizens”. It used to be that citizens had the duty and responsibility of protecting the public peace as well as taking up arms to defend their nation and family. Guess that went out the window along with African American middle class prosperity in Johnson’s “Great Society”. Great for evil criminals maybe.
What we have here,” Darley said, “is a group of family and friends who are not pre-organized to deal with this stuff. They don’t know who should do what. …
Given the example of Flight 93, don’t give me that excuse about “not being prepared”. If you have the will and time, you can make yourself prepared. Or you can drive on by and waste the time left in a little body on the road to fantasies and denials.
“It’s an aspiration,” he said. “They hope they would have done differently.”
There was something David Grossman wrote about concerning why war is glorified to the masses even though war is gory, cruel, and extremely uncomfortable let alone destructive. The reason why war is glorified and why victories should be made of glory is so that the younger generation will prepare themselves mentally for war in some fashion or virtue that will give them the will and eagerness to tolerate the fundamental realities of death and killing once exposed to such. It is not apparent whether a nihilist and someone already disillusioned with war will engage in more battle and thus become more “optimistic”. That doesn’t seem very likely.
Darley said he was also not surprised that people who weren’t at the scene of the killing believe they would have been heroic Good Samaritans.
People who think about violence, contemplate it, and visualize possible scenarios in which violence may be enacted, will seek to prepare themselves physically, mentally, and training wise.
Because the main sewer media and the power plentiful police and government have made knives and firearms out to be the weapons, it is natural for the sheep to think that it is the fangs that make you a predator. If you file a sheep’s teeth into fangs, it’ll become a wolf, right Phil? I don’t think so.
It is not the fangs that make you the predator. It’s the mind set and the will. The instinct to kill and the instinct to win. [People that say "I can't kill or incapacitate that man without a rock in my hand" don't understand violence. Why do they not understand violence? Because the state prefers their sheep to be docile and pacific.]
The bystanders were numerous and the enemy few, meaning one. They were perfect Good Samaritans in that they wanted to do something and had the curiosity to stop the car when they saw something weird going on on the street. (For most people on a rural road alone driving, they will just keep on driving especially if it is dark.) Being perfect Good Samaritans doesn’t mean you will be prepared, but it does mean you will be far more interested in correct training than some other people. But since the state has skewed people’s perceptions of violence, “correct training” is far and away.
There are so many different ways of knocking somebody out with your bare hands, that doesn’t require arm strength, that it is rather ridiculous that the greatest nation in the history of the Earth still can’t produce citizens armed with that knowledge and training.
McKain said she wondered whether Aguiar was on hallucinogenic drugs and whether fighting with him might lead him to hurt several of the witnesses.
I don’t know about you Phil, but even if I entered into a berserk state, I would still need the use of my wind pipe in my throat. Once that is crushed, I’m not going to be able to fight for much longer, regardless of what I’m on.
[I'm also uncertain what a rock or board will do to a person on drugs, either. One wolf on drugs is more of a danger to an entire family unit complete with young males than the family unit is of a danger to the wolf. Funny]
“We would have loved to knock his head off, too, but we had nothing to knock it off with.”
The price of banning handguns and firearms is more than just the absence of a projectile weapon in a citizen’s hands. It is the disarming of a citizen’s mind. It is the preparation of a person for cog and sheephood.
There are no dangerous weapons, there are only dangerous people. That is what the Declaration of Independence and the US Constitution was all supposed to be about. Have people forgotten that it was not weapons that sparked the fight for independence but an exercise of free will and choice? It was only after the choice had been made that people thought about the tools and means.
Deputy Royjindar Singh, a spokesman for the Stanislaus County Sheriff’s Department, acknowledged there was some “Monday morning quarterbacking” taking place, but said his agency had no problem with the actions of the witnesses.
Police departments are for taking care of the corpses after the fact, but they sure as heck won’t arm the civilians with the tools and skills to fight back. They’ll even try to arrest you and prosecute you if they feel that you are doing their job better than they can.
Reminds me of the Coalition’s policy on militias in Iraq, until the success of Petraeus’ COIN strategy and the Al Anbar Awakening told people where power truly lied
(including, yes, batting Sergio Aguiar in the mouth as necessary)
That’s not really going to do anything. For one thing, humans don’t need a working jaw to fight. And they sure as heck don’t need all their teeth in tact, either, to present a danger to society and life.
But I sure find these sheep stories upsetting.
probably because you know it is a symptom and a precursor to total societal trust collapse. Where nobody trusts their neighbors since it is everyone out for themselves. A tribal existence may seem glamorous in adventure stories and the Middle East, but in reality it is rather crude, harsh, and extremely insecure.
Without trust, there can be no greater civilization.
And you can only trust individuals, not governments since governments change and also filled with unaccountable and vice worthy bureaucrats.
Btw Book, be sure to look up “cape buffalo” for an example of why you don’t need fangs to be a predator. Sheep may not be able to become dangerous on purpose, but the same cannot be applied to all vegetarians. Hitler included. Humans are never consistent all the way. We are very mercurial and we change on the slightest of whims.
For example, you’ve seen the old man fight off three thugs armed with knives in somewhere in Britain, because the old man refused to give up his daughter’s life to the thugs even though he had given them access to the safe and valuables.
Old man went beserk and started fighting back, and was able to push the three thugs out by attack and initiative.
PS.
That’s an example that every human being has a certain limit to which you can’t push them past without them becoming violent. True pacifists are very rare since they usually get killed very fast.
But for most people, they just ape pacifism or civilization. Civilization is just a “veneer” they put on because nothing else is any better.
Strip off the veneer and what you have is a beast, an animal, something interested in food and killing.