Old Content:

“Tough Guise” – A Reflection, Attempt #2

February 26, 2009 by Kyle Brady
Tags: "Tough Guise", Gender, Violence
As required by the FTC, a Full Disclosure is available - this piece adheres to the Code of Ethics

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My professor handed back my previous attempt at her homework assignment, and told me to do it again.  Why?  Because I "didn't do the assignment", which was to give possible solutions to the "problem" stated in the media piece.  Since I disagree with most of the tenets of the piece itself, I thought a longer response to its material would be appropriate, but apparently not.

So here's the second attempt.  This was to be a "give solutions" type short response, and I did it.

No matter how dumb I think it is to have lowly college students ponder the epic traits of humanity.

When reflecting on the principles and issues introduced in the “Tough Guise” media piece, a question of solutions, or at least possible actions against such rampant and overblown violence, arises. Regardless of gender, violence, and those perpetrating it, seems to be on the rise in certain segments of the American, and needs to be addressed in one form or another. However, stereotyping genders, cultures, or races is not a way to begin this process, and so the population must be viewed as a whole.

Over the last few decades, perhaps even half a century, most critics would agree that certain values have, for a variety of reasons, been allowed to fade from society. Perhaps this is a foundation that, once rebuilt, could begin a series of changes, resulting in an overall, and sweeping, alteration of cultural behavior. This group of diminished values is difficult to define, given their inherently abstract nature, but is made compactly more so due to the large changes in overall culture at each end of the comparison spectrum, resulting in a rather unique inability to appropriately contrast the eras.

It is with some certainty that a portion of these values can be named, based on easily visible cultural flags: respect for both oneself and others, an emphasis on intelligence over bravado, a solidified form of morality (not necessarily religious in nature), an inner dignity, strength of character, and more of similar kind. These very values are those which many are brought up in by their parents, but which also seem to have been stronger in ages past, which, coincidentally, saw significantly less crime and overall violence. As a corollary, some of the most successful and unincarcerated individuals of modern society espouse many of these same characteristics as part of what allowed them to achieve their goals, their hopes and dreams, and it follows that the idea of centrality of these issues is not entirely suspect.

After defining such parameters, a larger, and perhaps more important issue, is: why have such characteristic instillations been devalued over time? This is a difficult, and potentially impossible, question to answer, but is still important. In a society that devalues core characteristics of strong and civilized individuals, it could be said that those characteristics may be the very medicine needed to produce a greater ethical output overall.

Old Content posts are leftovers from a less structured, less civilzed era that are kept for posterity.
Kyle can be found on Twitter and MySpace, or reached via email.