I think I saw the video you are talking about, the video of the Russian Neo Nazi's who beheaded those two jewish guys.
No, that definitely wasn't it. I think it may have been Daniel Pearl, but the video I'm thinking of wasn't the highly-edited version with all the Arabic subtitles and what not. The one I saw was a full length unedited version with full audio, that started with the victim on his knees pleading for his life, and ended with his head being cut completely off and held in front of the camera. The camera never panned away, and there were no edits. It showed every scream, every tear, every cut and slice, etc. They guy was in complete and utter terror from the time they made the first cut, and the only thing that made the poor guy stop screaming was when they sliced through his trachea and he started making these horrific gurgling sounds. And quite unlike the guillotine executions you might have seen in old black & white movies, this was no quick and clean beheading - it took several minutes before he was finally dead.
If you can watch that and be completely unaffected, well then congratulations - you're an asshole!
I thought the video was brutal, cruel, but it has no serious affect because I knew people were brutal and cruel before I saw the video.
People who are so sensitive that they cannot watch a person get beheaded, have psychological issues of their own to deal with because they have been sheltered from the real world.
This moronic drivel doesn't deserve a response.
And this is the problem. Telling people they either have to respond exactly as you did or they are an asshole. Why should people like us respect how you respond to a situation if you don't respect how we respond? Everyone responds in their own way and one way isn't necessarily better than another, it depends on the context.
If you cannot watch these sorts of videos, congratulations. You shouldn't be doing this kind of work.
I doubt many people have delusions that bad people only exist in movies- most people do, however, have sympathy for victims. They are dead whether you watch the video or not, but once you give your mind something to relate to, it hits you a lot harder. Understandably, people can end up with psychological problems seeing a loved one brutally murdered, so it makes sense seeing strangers have similar happen to them would have a lesser, but similar, effect.
You don't focus on the victim at all, so you may be the odd one out (not a bad thing, but you might not be in a position to say people have psychological issues).
I'm saying it's a matter of training, not a matter of someone like me being born one way or another. It's something you can train your mind to do. And it's necessary for some people to have this ability for obvious reasons.
There are people who are better at it than I am. I'm sure doctors, or people working in morgues are far better at dealing with dead bodies than I am. Does it mean that in their personal life they don't experience empathy? Of course not. All it means is that they keep their emotions separate from their workplace.
Sometimes this is necessary. Individuals working in certain fields out to be trained, and if they cannot handle the training they should be filtered out.
I think he was talking about Daniel Pearl, a journalist kidnapped and killed in Pakistan in 2002.
And sorry, but the "real world" does not involve frequent beheadings. Being unable to see another human being brutally murdered without being disturbed isn't a result of living "sheltered".
That's the vast majority of the world. Going by the numbers, lack of brutal decapitations is the norm. You talk down to people who can't stand such a sight, and think you somehow value life more?
Yours was the most bizzare high-horse post I've ever read.
It does not change the fact that the real world is cold, brutal, vicious and cruel. Whether you see beheadings, shootings, stabbings, it's happening everywhere and only the methods of brutality are different. People are being brutally murdered all around the world in all environments, in all methods and by all means. Once you understand this then you will understand that it's the nature of man to kill with a weapon.
Once you understand that mankind if a violent species, then you don't have to emotionally react to it because it's not a shocking revelation. The correct response is to treat it as a problem to be solved and how do we protect people from becoming victims? At the same time we have to protect psychologically sensitive individuals from being exposed to the brutal reality, and the problem we face is that the individuals who want to do something about it cannot communicate in the same language with individuals who don't believe the world is as dangerous, cold, or cruel as it is.
So how do we accept the true nature of mankind and deal with it in a way that does not harm the most sensitive among us?
It's not a matter of talking down to people. Not everybody should choose to be in a job which deals with the brutal aspects of human nature. These individuals can work with children, or take jobs which don't deal with violent crime, death, and the like.
But it does not change the fact that in order for these people to live under the illusion of safety, good people have to face the brutality of the world directly and deal with it. Safety is not free, you need people who are willing to hunt down people who hurt innocent people. Part of hunting them down requires analysis of images, analysis of psychology, and many other roles which exist for individuals who can fill them. So it's not about one role being better than another, it's about accepting a role you are fit for and if you cannot psychologically handle a job you shouldn't naively go into it.
Nice try. You disagree with someone so you accuse them of something heinous. The world is not black and white, it's grey. The point is anyone who has a job right now should be lucky enough to have a job at all, especially if its a well paid office job where they sift through images all day.
So you are saying there are risks associated with their job? You have people working in mines risking their lives breathing in toxins. You have people who work in nuclear power plants. You have people who work as police officers who actually want to capture these sickos who create these images. You have people who work in hospitals and morgues who actually physically handle dying and dead bodies associated with these images.
I'm sorry but I don't think just looking at images is a tough job. Sure it's more difficult than what you probably do, but if you knew what millions of other people were doing you wouldn't think about this article differently. You have people who risk their lives to make the world safe, and you have people who screen images and who get PTSD doing that.
I'm not denying that their PTSD is real. I'm not denying that their reaction is real. I'm saying they aren't fit for that kind of work and if we can figure out why, and steer them away from that kind of work, it would spare individuals like them from having to deal with the side effects in the future.
Complaining about the work is not a step in the right direction. A step in the right direction would be to conduct a study to find out why some people react more severely to images than others and find a way to diagnose them with a test early on in the hiring process.
BTW I think you owe me an apology for accusing me of being one of the bad guys. That was inappropriate.
There is a larger difference between intellectual knowledge that a few people in the world are cruel, brutal, and sadistic and then the visceral experience of seeing the fruits of their evilness. There is a world of a difference between seeing violence in a movie, where we know it's fake, and seeing video of an actual murder. We know the person is really suffering, and we are quite distraught by this. It's our normal human reaction of empathy. It's wrenching.
It depends on how you look at it. It's a matter of perspective as I've said before. There have been videos of beheadings on the internet. The one in particular that I'm talking about was the Russian video of Neo Nazi's beheading two ethnic minorities.
I did not look at the video from an emotional perspective. I looked at it without any emotional response at all now that I think about it, although I was surprised that the video was an actual beheading and not fake. I see these sorts of videos as
1. Evidence of a crime 2. An example of human brutality 3. An example of human psychology 4. An example of human anatomy
But in general I saw the video from a detached scientific perspective rather than from a personal emotional perspective. The fact that it was in Russia might have had to do with it. The fact that I didn't know any of the guys in the video probably had something to do with it. But I don't see cruel behavior in the same way that most people see it, I see it as the individuals who are being cruel are both sick in the head and brainwashed individuals. And I see the victims as victims, and I think about how to prevent this behavior from happening in the future.
I don't emotionally connect to any of the individuals in the scene. I don't think it's necessary because it doesn't help the situation. Feeling the situation is not going to prevent the next person from being brutally murdered by Neo Nazi's whether or not they are beheaded. Feelings don't get the job done.
Talk is cheap dude. It's not a matter of thinking I'm better than someone else based on having thick skin or high pain tolerance. It's more a matter of it's necessary for some people in the world to be able to view all the disgusting brutality and face it. Somebody has to look at the ugly world, and censorship is not going to make anything better because you can't learn anything from censorship.
The point is if people aren't able to do a job then it makes room for people who are able to do the job. It's really as simple as that and it would be better if we screen or filter those people out who cannot handle violent images, at least for this kind of work.
There are other kinds of work that they'd be better at that I'd probably be filtered out for. It's just how it goes.
I'm as hardened as any anon - no shock site will faze me anymore - but I would probably be seriously disturbed if I saw someone die in real life, or saw a lot of blood or something. It's the difference between real pain and suffering and pictures on the internet that are probably fake anyway.
Also, cue moar pooper comic
Life is long. It's very likely that before you die you will see many people die. Some will be your friends, some will be family members, and some of them will die right in front of you.
This does not change the fact that death is a part of life. It's an exceptionally gross/disgusting part of life, but it's an experience we all share and will all have to face. We will all have to watch loved ones die, but most people try to imagine a world where nobody they know will ever die and everything is perfect.
The truth is, seeing images of dead strangers is absolutely nothing once you've seen a few dead family members and or friends. If you live long enough eventually these sorts of things happen. It might not happen for people in their 20s in most cases but by their 30s they'll have lost some people, by their 40s significantly more people, by their 50s even more, and by the time they are 60 or 70 most of the people they've ever known will be dead.
If you ever work in a hospital you see people die every day. The first time you see someone die it's shocking, but just like with anything it's most painful the first time you experience it and you do get stronger. Just like if your first bf or gf breaks up with you it feels horrible, but after you've been through that experience before it's not as bad anymore. Dealing with death is a part of growing up.
Except those farm workers really are sociopaths. The animal liberation movement horror videos make it pretty clear that there are a lot of people who have no qualms at all with kicking or viciously jabbing a screaming, dying animal, and do it all day long.
Not every farm worker works in a large factory farm.
I'm not denying that some of these farms are run by sociopaths, but family run farms are not run by sociopaths and don't operate like killing factories.
Just like not all hunters or meat eaters are sociopaths. And if you think they are then it's obvious you've never eaten meat.
Obviously you don't have children yourself. As a parent, one of my worst fears is: "that could happen to my child."
So you're childless when you get the job, then a bit down the road you have one and then it starts hitting you. Or the nature of the job changes and you're now exposed to something that you weren't before (A site being used to evade child porn investigations would absolutly qualify if it wasn't when you started)
Sometimes you don't know what you're going to be exposed to until you already are, you think you can handle anything until you don't. It's why people say, "you wish you could unsee something". Or you think you're cool with it, but then it comes back a a horrifying flash at random moments or in a dream, the mind is weird that way.
If it's bad enough and fast enough, they call it Post Traumatic Stress.
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I don't see every child on planet earth as my child. I don't see every dead person as one of the dead people I care about. People die every day, dead bodies are being buried every day, carved up in morgues every day. Children are starving to death right now and I don't see you crying over that, why is this?
The reason is unless it's your child, or someone you know, you don't have to feel anything. You can train yourself not to feel your work if you are strong willed and understand how your subconscious works. I can shut that side of me off, but not everyone can do it. Not everyone can be trained to do it but most people can be.
No I wont experience PTSD from watching complete strangers. I've long disconnected emotionally from the masses. If I know a person then they aren't a stranger and thats when I can emotionally bond. It's logical to bond only with people you know, if you feel empathy for people you don't know you'll be depressed, upset, angry, and very disappointed with the world.
I used to be like that as a teenager. I would feel the worlds pain. The problem is you cannot live your life if you feel everyone elses pain. So at some point you have to learn to either shut that side of you off, or risk being driven insane in the long term because the world is filled with pain, filled with misery, filled with bad images and I'm talking the real world not stuff you see on a screen. When you experience real world situations, these images on the screen aren't a big deal.
Once again not everyone can do that. It has nothing to do with having kids and being able to relate. It has nothing to do with emotions. It has to do with self control and ability to shut emotions off to do your job just like a doctor.
I think the point here is that yes, it's just an image... but in the case of the child abuse, it was a real child being abused. For many people that image would fester and they would start to empathize with the child and would be upset about the act that was done in order to produce that image.
I doubt you would feel that it was 'just' an image if it was your younger sibling or your child who was in the picture.
But yes, people should be aware of the job they are taking on and whether they can handle it. Though sometimes you don't know if you can handle it until it's too late.
The mind can be trained to shut that off. Haven't you watched a movie from multiple perspectives? Yes you can watch the movie from the typical main character perspective and empathize with the main character, or you can watch the movie in a clinical or scholarly perspective and not feel anything for any of the characters. It's about how you train your mind to interpret data, either with the logical portion of your brain or the emotional. What I'm saying is it's easy to shut empathy off when it's a complete stranger in the image.
If it were my younger sibling thats a different story, I would want to murder the person who did it. But lets be realistic here, there is a huge difference between doing a job dealing with complete strangers, and having to do a job on people you know. It's just like you can work in a morgue on random people and feel nothing, but if you had to work on your younger sibling you'd feel horrible about it because this is a person you know.
When it's people I don't know, it's just images. Death is death, even when it's people I know I don't always get upset about it, it depends. But I know I can handle any images or videos of people I don't know and thats all the job requires.
What you are saying is anyone who isn't an emo type person has a "syndrome"? That is ridiculous. It's really simple, experience creates the syndrome you speak of. Some people see nasty images and death, and they grow tougher and stronger from their experiences. Other people see these things and they cry, have nightmares, and want to unsee it.
The point is there are some jobs which require a strong determined mind. Where you'll do your job no matter how gross or disgusting it is.
I'll prove my point, you claim that people with this syndrome, which I guess includes me, are able to think logical and make mission critical decisions. If it's a syndrome to be logical then something is wrong with the psychiatrists, not the individuals who can make sane rational decisions.
That being said people who have aspergers syndrome or the logical people you speak of, actually do feel personal guilt. Nobody feels good about hurting other people, but in order to help people you have to hurt people, and in order to win you have to sacrifice, and everyone knows that you cannot accomplish anything great without some pain and hurt. Being able to put your emotions aside for the good of the business means you aren't a selfish leader, but a selfless leader who will do what is right regardless of how it feels to you personally.
This means you'll resign if it's right. This means you'll fire your best friend if its right. This means you'll do exactly what you are supposed to do to make the business successful, even if it hurts you personally.
I used to think I was one of those people, until I saw a full length, uncut video of some terrorists beheading a captured American.
I would advise anybody who thinks they're not one of those "overly sensitive" people to give it some serious thought before they decide to watch something like that, much less get a job doing it all day long. Some things you just cannot un-see - although you'll certainly wish you could.
I think I saw the video you are talking about, the video of the Russian Neo Nazi's who beheaded those two jewish guys. I thought the video was brutal, cruel, but it has no serious affect because I knew people were brutal and cruel before I saw the video.
People who are so sensitive that they cannot watch a person get beheaded, have psychological issues of their own to deal with because they have been sheltered from the real world. The real world is cold, brutal and cruel, and if someone knows the world is like this then they can actually learn to value the people in their lives who aren't cold, brutal and cruel.
It can help a person to see the true nature of mankind or it can hurt a person, depending on how they interpret what they see. Videos like that allow people to see that yes there really are people in this world who are dangerous, who want to kill them, who hate them, and nobody, not aliens, not Jesus, is going to protect them from these people. The only ones who can protect them from these sick people are good people who dedicate their lives to protecting them.
Usually a thorough backround check can determine if the individual is a sociopath or not. Just being able to see disgusting images and not react doesn't make one a sociopath. It depends on whether or not it was their first time seeing it, and it depends on how they look at it.
You can look at images of dead bodies, you've seen them before so you have no reaction. This doesn't make someone a psychopath or sociopath, as a sociopath would react like that in all situations no matter whos dead body it is, while most people who are just jaded or mature will only react when it happens to someone they care about, and even then, you cannot really judge reaction by whether or not they cry or get sick, you have to look at brainwaves and actually see if their brain can connect or is wired in a way so that it registers specific emotions involved with seeing brutality.
Most people can train themselves to shut that part of their brain off as part of their job. So they can function as a sociopath would function as part of their job, but they don't function like that in private. A sociopath or psychopath functions like that in all situations, all the time, in private, whether they have a job or not.
This is very much like the difference between a doctor or morgue technician, who deals with the human body in a clinical fashion, and the sociopath who might consider it play and not do it for money.
In reality, if you see enough disturbing images you become less sensitive to it. Also some people just don't get any major reaction from disgusting images, yeah it's gross but it's not going to make a person vomit, or start crying, or have nightmares.
There are plenty of jobs where people have to do gross things they dont want to do. Just looking at gross images is nothing compared to working in a morgue or working on a farm.
I don't understand why you all took these jobs if you couldn't handle it. It's just images, no matter how sick it is or how disgusting, if you are a mature adult you should be able to handle any image of anything.
They should screen people to see who can actually do the job rather than hiring people who get depressed easily.
These guys sit in an office doing a simple job and are complaining in an economy where millions of people would take their job. Is this the best article Slashdot could find? Whining office employees who don't like their jobs screening internet content? Perhaps they'd rather join the unemployed instead?
Yes, because they puncture nerves that proceed to yell "invasion! our outer barrier has been breached! potentially fatal wound! need help here, right now!" and the only reason we only feel a prick and not excruciating pain is that it is only a few nerves screaming.
Your point being? Anything that could potentially be abused should be outlawed? I guess we as a species decided to leave that road when we choose to use fire instead of abandoning the concept as potentially dangerous.
When did I say it should be outlawed?
What I said is we need to be realistic and stop pretending like we are safe, or pretending like some authority can keep us safe. Nobody is safe and nothing can keep anybody safe.
Now people will be able to inject others with toxins and it will be impossible to detect it. What you have is a stealth needle, this idea in my opinion is incredibly dangerous, but I guess it will be good for mercenaries because it will reduce the costs.
A. You admit that you already are middle class and have the American dream. This means you aren't in the same box as me to begin with.
B. You assume it's still possible to reach the American dream because it was possible for you.
On schooling that depends on the school you went to. The schools I went to didn't give me any kind of break. Maybe it's different now but my generation didn't have all these standardized tests. I can say that it seems that school is changing for the better but I haven't been in highschool for a long time now and neither have you.
'm not trying to make 30 million a year. I'm trying for the American dream. The problem is the American dream may be out of reach for my generation. Why shouldn't I be doom and gloom if I know no matter how hard I work, or for how long, that I'll still accomplish less than my parents did with less work and less time?
That's not true either, except as a self-fulfilling prophesy. Perhaps your measuring against your neighbors instead of what people actually had in the 50s and 60s? Pollution is vastly lower today (at least, if you need to breathe in a big city), we have computers, the internet, an plenty of cheap entertainment as a result. Just about everyone has a refridgerator, a color TV, and the use of a washing machine. You can't buy a car in America with the safety and performance of your typical 50s car, but you can buy one in India for about $2500. In the 50s most children shared a bedroom; today most families have more rooms than family members. Available health care is vastly better.
You desperately need a sense of perspective - you have such an easy life full of so many luxuries, by the standard of most people who have ever lived.
Why do you assume you know about my life? You don't know. In fact I could be homeless right now, living from place to place, with only a laptop, and you wouldn't know any different.
Pollution is lower today? Explain why more people have asthma today than they did in the 1950s? A washing machine and TV in the 60s so that isn't saying much. But who cares about TV anyway? Saying houses are bigger with more rooms, thats not even important. You assume everynoe lives in a house. You assume everyone lives the middle class life. What you are saying is that the people lucky enough to make it to middle class in 2010 have more junk, a bigger house, and a better car. Okay I can believe that, but I was never talking about material objects.
Yes we have more stuff. But we are more miserable. We have less time. We have lower quality of life. We are less happy. We are sicker, more stressed, working harder and with less purpose.
Saying I have an easy life based on standards of luxury assumes my goal in life is to have luxury. The American Dream was never about luxury. The American Dream was about home ownership, financial security, safety for your family, and being able to work 40 hours a week or less at your job. Almost nobody lives like that anymore.
Yes we have a lot of junk. Marriages don't work anymore because husband and wife don't have time for each other. Children suffer because parents are always working. Children suffer because they have to spend more time in school than previous generations. In my opinion the world isn't any better than it was in the 1980s. In fact the world is worse. I ask my parents and they tell me that the world I grew up in was far worse than the world they grew up in. Yeah we have more junk, but we lost our soul to get it, we don't have human relationships anymore, we don't have strong families anymore, and if all you can say is that "at least we have technology", well yeah we do have better technology, we do have the internet, and honestly thats all I can say my generation has to be proud of.
And thats the problem. The only thing my generation can be proud of is technology and the internet. We literally have no other accomplishment. And no I don't expect to live the American dream, because it's truly much harde
Is there such a thing as an opt-in government? I don't think China and the US have a lock on enforcing governmental supremacy within said government's borders.
No you can't opt-in. You are born in the USA or China and you are a subject of the USA or China.
You can however opt-out once you are an adult, that is you can legally renounce your US citizenship. Although doing so before you leave the US territory would make you both stateless and a de facto illegal alien, so it probably isn't a good idea to do it unless you are already in the process of emigrating elsewhere. Finally, renouncing US citizenship is usually an irrevocable action, so make damn sure you thought it through properly.
Do you know anyone who has done this? Did they live to tell about it?
Is there such a thing as an opt-in government? I don't think China and the US have a lock on enforcing governmental supremacy within said government's borders.
No you can't opt-in. You are born in the USA or China and you are a subject of the USA or China.
So where do you think jobs come from? Do you believe the jobs fairy creates them at an arbitrary rate, and we should adjust the population to meet that?
Maybe the goal of the elite isn't to increase jobs? Maybe thats why theres no jobs? Whoever controls the flow of money controls the job flow. Since money isn't distributed merely by supply and demand, but along other lines, it's a lot more complicated than it seems. The first assumption we have to lose is the assumption that the market is free. The free market is an illusion, a myth created by the richest 1% who actually control the market.
Do you have a solution for the "excess population"? The idea that "the future is not our problem because we're not the rich elite" is the worst sort of aristocracy. Sorry, but I'm just not willing to accet the population being divided into nobles and peons again.
I don't have offspring. Why should I care if the elite destroy the future? It's their future. That being said if you care about saving the future there are some things you can do, develop alternative energy sources so the environment is protected. Tough regulations on pesticides, there should be life in prison punishment for pesticides in consumer products if you want to really send the message. And from there more radical measures like moving to a 20 hour workday, and a focus on robotics to do most of the service jobs like McDonalds and Bank Tellers. Finally if we are going to have robots we'd need better public transportation because robots cannot currently drive cars.
I don't know where your doom and gloom comes from - I'm an inteligent person who was certainly poor in my youth (at least, by American standards), and found myself limited only by my ambition and ability.
In your youth this country was vastly different. There weren't global competitors. You didn't have to pay for an education because a free highschool diploma was usually enough. You also could get by with one person working 40 hours a week to make a middle class salary, now for my generation it requires at least 80 hours a week and sometimes even 100 hours a week. Why wouldn't I be doom and gloom when we have to work twice or three times as hard to get the same quality of life previous generations had?
I guess if I wanted to make $30 million/year I'd be pissed that only people born into certain families have a real shot at that, but I just don't care about becoming wealthy beyond personal luxury.
I'm not trying to make 30 million a year. I'm trying for the American dream. The problem is the American dream may be out of reach for my generation. Why shouldn't I be doom and gloom if I know no matter how hard I work, or for how long, that I'll still accomplish less than my parents did with less work and less time?
It's not debatable, life really is harder and it really isn't going to get better. So why not accept that and try and beat the odds? To live in denial doesn't change anything, and if you are older this would explain the naive outlook. Older generations didn't face the same odds, didn't face the same risks, didn't have to work as hard to accomplish the same things, and most importantly their money was worth more. So to put it simply, to be happy in previous generations was a lot easier than to be happy in the current generation.
Slashdot Mirror
No, that definitely wasn't it. I think it may have been Daniel Pearl, but the video I'm thinking of wasn't the highly-edited version with all the Arabic subtitles and what not. The one I saw was a full length unedited version with full audio, that started with the victim on his knees pleading for his life, and ended with his head being cut completely off and held in front of the camera. The camera never panned away, and there were no edits. It showed every scream, every tear, every cut and slice, etc. They guy was in complete and utter terror from the time they made the first cut, and the only thing that made the poor guy stop screaming was when they sliced through his trachea and he started making these horrific gurgling sounds. And quite unlike the guillotine executions you might have seen in old black & white movies, this was no quick and clean beheading - it took several minutes before he was finally dead.
If you can watch that and be completely unaffected, well then congratulations - you're an asshole!
This moronic drivel doesn't deserve a response.
And this is the problem. Telling people they either have to respond exactly as you did or they are an asshole. Why should people like us respect how you respond to a situation if you don't respect how we respond? Everyone responds in their own way and one way isn't necessarily better than another, it depends on the context.
If you cannot watch these sorts of videos, congratulations. You shouldn't be doing this kind of work.
I doubt many people have delusions that bad people only exist in movies- most people do, however, have sympathy for victims. They are dead whether you watch the video or not, but once you give your mind something to relate to, it hits you a lot harder. Understandably, people can end up with psychological problems seeing a loved one brutally murdered, so it makes sense seeing strangers have similar happen to them would have a lesser, but similar, effect.
You don't focus on the victim at all, so you may be the odd one out (not a bad thing, but you might not be in a position to say people have psychological issues).
I'm saying it's a matter of training, not a matter of someone like me being born one way or another. It's something you can train your mind to do. And it's necessary for some people to have this ability for obvious reasons.
There are people who are better at it than I am. I'm sure doctors, or people working in morgues are far better at dealing with dead bodies than I am. Does it mean that in their personal life they don't experience empathy? Of course not. All it means is that they keep their emotions separate from their workplace.
Sometimes this is necessary. Individuals working in certain fields out to be trained, and if they cannot handle the training they should be filtered out.
I think he was talking about Daniel Pearl, a journalist kidnapped and killed in Pakistan in 2002.
And sorry, but the "real world" does not involve frequent beheadings. Being unable to see another human being brutally murdered without being disturbed isn't a result of living "sheltered".
That's the vast majority of the world. Going by the numbers, lack of brutal decapitations is the norm. You talk down to people who can't stand such a sight, and think you somehow value life more?
Yours was the most bizzare high-horse post I've ever read.
It does not change the fact that the real world is cold, brutal, vicious and cruel. Whether you see beheadings, shootings, stabbings, it's happening everywhere and only the methods of brutality are different. People are being brutally murdered all around the world in all environments, in all methods and by all means. Once you understand this then you will understand that it's the nature of man to kill with a weapon.
Once you understand that mankind if a violent species, then you don't have to emotionally react to it because it's not a shocking revelation. The correct response is to treat it as a problem to be solved and how do we protect people from becoming victims? At the same time we have to protect psychologically sensitive individuals from being exposed to the brutal reality, and the problem we face is that the individuals who want to do something about it cannot communicate in the same language with individuals who don't believe the world is as dangerous, cold, or cruel as it is.
So how do we accept the true nature of mankind and deal with it in a way that does not harm the most sensitive among us?
It's not a matter of talking down to people. Not everybody should choose to be in a job which deals with the brutal aspects of human nature. These individuals can work with children, or take jobs which don't deal with violent crime, death, and the like.
But it does not change the fact that in order for these people to live under the illusion of safety, good people have to face the brutality of the world directly and deal with it. Safety is not free, you need people who are willing to hunt down people who hurt innocent people. Part of hunting them down requires analysis of images, analysis of psychology, and many other roles which exist for individuals who can fill them. So it's not about one role being better than another, it's about accepting a role you are fit for and if you cannot psychologically handle a job you shouldn't naively go into it.
Nice try. You disagree with someone so you accuse them of something heinous. The world is not black and white, it's grey. The point is anyone who has a job right now should be lucky enough to have a job at all, especially if its a well paid office job where they sift through images all day.
So you are saying there are risks associated with their job? You have people working in mines risking their lives breathing in toxins. You have people who work in nuclear power plants. You have people who work as police officers who actually want to capture these sickos who create these images. You have people who work in hospitals and morgues who actually physically handle dying and dead bodies associated with these images.
I'm sorry but I don't think just looking at images is a tough job. Sure it's more difficult than what you probably do, but if you knew what millions of other people were doing you wouldn't think about this article differently. You have people who risk their lives to make the world safe, and you have people who screen images and who get PTSD doing that.
I'm not denying that their PTSD is real. I'm not denying that their reaction is real. I'm saying they aren't fit for that kind of work and if we can figure out why, and steer them away from that kind of work, it would spare individuals like them from having to deal with the side effects in the future.
Complaining about the work is not a step in the right direction. A step in the right direction would be to conduct a study to find out why some people react more severely to images than others and find a way to diagnose them with a test early on in the hiring process.
BTW I think you owe me an apology for accusing me of being one of the bad guys. That was inappropriate.
There is a larger difference between intellectual knowledge that a few people in the world are cruel, brutal, and sadistic and then the visceral experience of seeing the fruits of their evilness. There is a world of a difference between seeing violence in a movie, where we know it's fake, and seeing video of an actual murder. We know the person is really suffering, and we are quite distraught by this. It's our normal human reaction of empathy. It's wrenching.
It depends on how you look at it. It's a matter of perspective as I've said before. There have been videos of beheadings on the internet. The one in particular that I'm talking about was the Russian video of Neo Nazi's beheading two ethnic minorities.
I did not look at the video from an emotional perspective. I looked at it without any emotional response at all now that I think about it, although I was surprised that the video was an actual beheading and not fake. I see these sorts of videos as
1. Evidence of a crime
2. An example of human brutality
3. An example of human psychology
4. An example of human anatomy
But in general I saw the video from a detached scientific perspective rather than from a personal emotional perspective. The fact that it was in Russia might have had to do with it. The fact that I didn't know any of the guys in the video probably had something to do with it. But I don't see cruel behavior in the same way that most people see it, I see it as the individuals who are being cruel are both sick in the head and brainwashed individuals. And I see the victims as victims, and I think about how to prevent this behavior from happening in the future.
I don't emotionally connect to any of the individuals in the scene. I don't think it's necessary because it doesn't help the situation. Feeling the situation is not going to prevent the next person from being brutally murdered by Neo Nazi's whether or not they are beheaded. Feelings don't get the job done.
Talk is cheap dude. It's not a matter of thinking I'm better than someone else based on having thick skin or high pain tolerance. It's more a matter of it's necessary for some people in the world to be able to view all the disgusting brutality and face it. Somebody has to look at the ugly world, and censorship is not going to make anything better because you can't learn anything from censorship.
The point is if people aren't able to do a job then it makes room for people who are able to do the job. It's really as simple as that and it would be better if we screen or filter those people out who cannot handle violent images, at least for this kind of work.
There are other kinds of work that they'd be better at that I'd probably be filtered out for. It's just how it goes.
I'm as hardened as any anon - no shock site will faze me anymore - but I would probably be seriously disturbed if I saw someone die in real life, or saw a lot of blood or something. It's the difference between real pain and suffering and pictures on the internet that are probably fake anyway.
Also, cue moar pooper comic
Life is long. It's very likely that before you die you will see many people die. Some will be your friends, some will be family members, and some of them will die right in front of you.
This does not change the fact that death is a part of life. It's an exceptionally gross/disgusting part of life, but it's an experience we all share and will all have to face. We will all have to watch loved ones die, but most people try to imagine a world where nobody they know will ever die and everything is perfect.
The truth is, seeing images of dead strangers is absolutely nothing once you've seen a few dead family members and or friends. If you live long enough eventually these sorts of things happen. It might not happen for people in their 20s in most cases but by their 30s they'll have lost some people, by their 40s significantly more people, by their 50s even more, and by the time they are 60 or 70 most of the people they've ever known will be dead.
If you ever work in a hospital you see people die every day. The first time you see someone die it's shocking, but just like with anything it's most painful the first time you experience it and you do get stronger. Just like if your first bf or gf breaks up with you it feels horrible, but after you've been through that experience before it's not as bad anymore. Dealing with death is a part of growing up.
Except those farm workers really are sociopaths. The animal liberation movement horror videos make it pretty clear that there are a lot of people who have no qualms at all with kicking or viciously jabbing a screaming, dying animal, and do it all day long.
Not every farm worker works in a large factory farm.
I'm not denying that some of these farms are run by sociopaths, but family run farms are not run by sociopaths and don't operate like killing factories.
Just like not all hunters or meat eaters are sociopaths. And if you think they are then it's obvious you've never eaten meat.
Obviously you don't have children yourself. As a parent, one of my worst fears is: "that could happen to my child."
So you're childless when you get the job, then a bit down the road you have one and then it starts hitting you. Or the nature of the job changes and you're now exposed to something that you weren't before (A site being used to evade child porn investigations would absolutly qualify if it wasn't when you started)
Sometimes you don't know what you're going to be exposed to until you already are, you think you can handle anything until you don't. It's why people say, "you wish you could unsee something".
Or you think you're cool with it, but then it comes back a a horrifying flash at random moments or in a dream, the mind is weird that way.
If it's bad enough and fast enough, they call it Post Traumatic Stress.
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I don't see every child on planet earth as my child. I don't see every dead person as one of the dead people I care about. People die every day, dead bodies are being buried every day, carved up in morgues every day. Children are starving to death right now and I don't see you crying over that, why is this?
The reason is unless it's your child, or someone you know, you don't have to feel anything. You can train yourself not to feel your work if you are strong willed and understand how your subconscious works. I can shut that side of me off, but not everyone can do it. Not everyone can be trained to do it but most people can be.
No I wont experience PTSD from watching complete strangers. I've long disconnected emotionally from the masses. If I know a person then they aren't a stranger and thats when I can emotionally bond. It's logical to bond only with people you know, if you feel empathy for people you don't know you'll be depressed, upset, angry, and very disappointed with the world.
I used to be like that as a teenager. I would feel the worlds pain. The problem is you cannot live your life if you feel everyone elses pain. So at some point you have to learn to either shut that side of you off, or risk being driven insane in the long term because the world is filled with pain, filled with misery, filled with bad images and I'm talking the real world not stuff you see on a screen. When you experience real world situations, these images on the screen aren't a big deal.
Once again not everyone can do that. It has nothing to do with having kids and being able to relate. It has nothing to do with emotions. It has to do with self control and ability to shut emotions off to do your job just like a doctor.
I think the point here is that yes, it's just an image... but in the case of the child abuse, it was a real child being abused. For many people that image would fester and they would start to empathize with the child and would be upset about the act that was done in order to produce that image.
I doubt you would feel that it was 'just' an image if it was your younger sibling or your child who was in the picture.
But yes, people should be aware of the job they are taking on and whether they can handle it. Though sometimes you don't know if you can handle it until it's too late.
The mind can be trained to shut that off. Haven't you watched a movie from multiple perspectives? Yes you can watch the movie from the typical main character perspective and empathize with the main character, or you can watch the movie in a clinical or scholarly perspective and not feel anything for any of the characters. It's about how you train your mind to interpret data, either with the logical portion of your brain or the emotional. What I'm saying is it's easy to shut empathy off when it's a complete stranger in the image.
If it were my younger sibling thats a different story, I would want to murder the person who did it. But lets be realistic here, there is a huge difference between doing a job dealing with complete strangers, and having to do a job on people you know. It's just like you can work in a morgue on random people and feel nothing, but if you had to work on your younger sibling you'd feel horrible about it because this is a person you know.
When it's people I don't know, it's just images. Death is death, even when it's people I know I don't always get upset about it, it depends. But I know I can handle any images or videos of people I don't know and thats all the job requires.
What you are saying is anyone who isn't an emo type person has a "syndrome"? That is ridiculous. It's really simple, experience creates the syndrome you speak of. Some people see nasty images and death, and they grow tougher and stronger from their experiences. Other people see these things and they cry, have nightmares, and want to unsee it.
The point is there are some jobs which require a strong determined mind. Where you'll do your job no matter how gross or disgusting it is.
I'll prove my point, you claim that people with this syndrome, which I guess includes me, are able to think logical and make mission critical decisions. If it's a syndrome to be logical then something is wrong with the psychiatrists, not the individuals who can make sane rational decisions.
That being said people who have aspergers syndrome or the logical people you speak of, actually do feel personal guilt. Nobody feels good about hurting other people, but in order to help people you have to hurt people, and in order to win you have to sacrifice, and everyone knows that you cannot accomplish anything great without some pain and hurt. Being able to put your emotions aside for the good of the business means you aren't a selfish leader, but a selfless leader who will do what is right regardless of how it feels to you personally.
This means you'll resign if it's right. This means you'll fire your best friend if its right. This means you'll do exactly what you are supposed to do to make the business successful, even if it hurts you personally.
How is that a syndrome?
I used to think I was one of those people, until I saw a full length, uncut video of some terrorists beheading a captured American.
I would advise anybody who thinks they're not one of those "overly sensitive" people to give it some serious thought before they decide to watch something like that, much less get a job doing it all day long. Some things you just cannot un-see - although you'll certainly wish you could.
I think I saw the video you are talking about, the video of the Russian Neo Nazi's who beheaded those two jewish guys. I thought the video was brutal, cruel, but it has no serious affect because I knew people were brutal and cruel before I saw the video.
People who are so sensitive that they cannot watch a person get beheaded, have psychological issues of their own to deal with because they have been sheltered from the real world. The real world is cold, brutal and cruel, and if someone knows the world is like this then they can actually learn to value the people in their lives who aren't cold, brutal and cruel.
It can help a person to see the true nature of mankind or it can hurt a person, depending on how they interpret what they see. Videos like that allow people to see that yes there really are people in this world who are dangerous, who want to kill them, who hate them, and nobody, not aliens, not Jesus, is going to protect them from these people. The only ones who can protect them from these sick people are good people who dedicate their lives to protecting them.
It's about perspective.
Usually a thorough backround check can determine if the individual is a sociopath or not. Just being able to see disgusting images and not react doesn't make one a sociopath. It depends on whether or not it was their first time seeing it, and it depends on how they look at it.
You can look at images of dead bodies, you've seen them before so you have no reaction. This doesn't make someone a psychopath or sociopath, as a sociopath would react like that in all situations no matter whos dead body it is, while most people who are just jaded or mature will only react when it happens to someone they care about, and even then, you cannot really judge reaction by whether or not they cry or get sick, you have to look at brainwaves and actually see if their brain can connect or is wired in a way so that it registers specific emotions involved with seeing brutality.
Most people can train themselves to shut that part of their brain off as part of their job. So they can function as a sociopath would function as part of their job, but they don't function like that in private. A sociopath or psychopath functions like that in all situations, all the time, in private, whether they have a job or not.
This is very much like the difference between a doctor or morgue technician, who deals with the human body in a clinical fashion, and the sociopath who might consider it play and not do it for money.
In reality, if you see enough disturbing images you become less sensitive to it. Also some people just don't get any major reaction from disgusting images, yeah it's gross but it's not going to make a person vomit, or start crying, or have nightmares.
There are plenty of jobs where people have to do gross things they dont want to do. Just looking at gross images is nothing compared to working in a morgue or working on a farm.
I don't understand why you all took these jobs if you couldn't handle it.
It's just images, no matter how sick it is or how disgusting, if you are a mature adult you should be able to handle any image of anything.
They should screen people to see who can actually do the job rather than hiring people who get depressed easily.
If you can't handle the job, why did you take it?
These guys sit in an office doing a simple job and are complaining in an economy where millions of people would take their job. Is this the best article Slashdot could find? Whining office employees who don't like their jobs screening internet content? Perhaps they'd rather join the unemployed instead?
There is a reason why we can feel needles.
Yes, because they puncture nerves that proceed to yell "invasion! our outer barrier has been breached! potentially fatal wound! need help here, right now!" and the only reason we only feel a prick and not excruciating pain is that it is only a few nerves screaming.
Your point being? Anything that could potentially be abused should be outlawed? I guess we as a species decided to leave that road when we choose to use fire instead of abandoning the concept as potentially dangerous.
When did I say it should be outlawed?
What I said is we need to be realistic and stop pretending like we are safe, or pretending like some authority can keep us safe. Nobody is safe and nothing can keep anybody safe.
Now people will be able to inject others with toxins and it will be impossible to detect it.
What you have is a stealth needle, this idea in my opinion is incredibly dangerous, but I guess it will be good for mercenaries because it will reduce the costs.
There is a reason why we can feel needles.
A. You admit that you already are middle class and have the American dream. This means you aren't in the same box as me to begin with.
B. You assume it's still possible to reach the American dream because it was possible for you.
On schooling that depends on the school you went to. The schools I went to didn't give me any kind of break. Maybe it's different now but my generation didn't have all these standardized tests. I can say that it seems that school is changing for the better but I haven't been in highschool for a long time now and neither have you.
'm not trying to make 30 million a year. I'm trying for the American dream. The problem is the American dream may be out of reach for my generation. Why shouldn't I be doom and gloom if I know no matter how hard I work, or for how long, that I'll still accomplish less than my parents did with less work and less time?
That's not true either, except as a self-fulfilling prophesy. Perhaps your measuring against your neighbors instead of what people actually had in the 50s and 60s? Pollution is vastly lower today (at least, if you need to breathe in a big city), we have computers, the internet, an plenty of cheap entertainment as a result. Just about everyone has a refridgerator, a color TV, and the use of a washing machine. You can't buy a car in America with the safety and performance of your typical 50s car, but you can buy one in India for about $2500. In the 50s most children shared a bedroom; today most families have more rooms than family members. Available health care is vastly better.
You desperately need a sense of perspective - you have such an easy life full of so many luxuries, by the standard of most people who have ever lived.
Why do you assume you know about my life? You don't know. In fact I could be homeless right now, living from place to place, with only a laptop, and you wouldn't know any different.
Pollution is lower today? Explain why more people have asthma today than they did in the 1950s? A washing machine and TV in the 60s so that isn't saying much. But who cares about TV anyway? Saying houses are bigger with more rooms, thats not even important. You assume everynoe lives in a house. You assume everyone lives the middle class life. What you are saying is that the people lucky enough to make it to middle class in 2010 have more junk, a bigger house, and a better car. Okay I can believe that, but I was never talking about material objects.
Yes we have more stuff. But we are more miserable. We have less time. We have lower quality of life. We are less happy. We are sicker, more stressed, working harder and with less purpose.
Saying I have an easy life based on standards of luxury assumes my goal in life is to have luxury. The American Dream was never about luxury. The American Dream was about home ownership, financial security, safety for your family, and being able to work 40 hours a week or less at your job. Almost nobody lives like that anymore.
Yes we have a lot of junk. Marriages don't work anymore because husband and wife don't have time for each other. Children suffer because parents are always working. Children suffer because they have to spend more time in school than previous generations. In my opinion the world isn't any better than it was in the 1980s. In fact the world is worse. I ask my parents and they tell me that the world I grew up in was far worse than the world they grew up in. Yeah we have more junk, but we lost our soul to get it, we don't have human relationships anymore, we don't have strong families anymore, and if all you can say is that "at least we have technology", well yeah we do have better technology, we do have the internet, and honestly thats all I can say my generation has to be proud of.
And thats the problem. The only thing my generation can be proud of is technology and the internet. We literally have no other accomplishment. And no I don't expect to live the American dream, because it's truly much harde
In the case of Deep Throat, the stuff the unnamed source wasn't only not 'bullshit' but it brought down a president.
That was then, this is now.
Is there such a thing as an opt-in government? I don't think China and the US have a lock on enforcing governmental supremacy within said government's borders.
No you can't opt-in. You are born in the USA or China and you are a subject of the USA or China.
You can however opt-out once you are an adult, that is you can legally renounce your US citizenship. Although doing so before you leave the US territory would make you both stateless and a de facto illegal alien, so it probably isn't a good idea to do it unless you are already in the process of emigrating elsewhere. Finally, renouncing US citizenship is usually an irrevocable action, so make damn sure you thought it through properly.
Do you know anyone who has done this? Did they live to tell about it?
Go educate yourself in some fairly recent history, then come back...
Where are the documents? Without documents theres nothing to report.
Is there such a thing as an opt-in government? I don't think China and the US have a lock on enforcing governmental supremacy within said government's borders.
No you can't opt-in. You are born in the USA or China and you are a subject of the USA or China.
So where do you think jobs come from? Do you believe the jobs fairy creates them at an arbitrary rate, and we should adjust the population to meet that?
Maybe the goal of the elite isn't to increase jobs? Maybe thats why theres no jobs? Whoever controls the flow of money controls the job flow. Since money isn't distributed merely by supply and demand, but along other lines, it's a lot more complicated than it seems. The first assumption we have to lose is the assumption that the market is free. The free market is an illusion, a myth created by the richest 1% who actually control the market.
Do you have a solution for the "excess population"? The idea that "the future is not our problem because we're not the rich elite" is the worst sort of aristocracy. Sorry, but I'm just not willing to accet the population being divided into nobles and peons again.
I don't have offspring. Why should I care if the elite destroy the future? It's their future. That being said if you care about saving the future there are some things you can do, develop alternative energy sources so the environment is protected. Tough regulations on pesticides, there should be life in prison punishment for pesticides in consumer products if you want to really send the message. And from there more radical measures like moving to a 20 hour workday, and a focus on robotics to do most of the service jobs like McDonalds and Bank Tellers. Finally if we are going to have robots we'd need better public transportation because robots cannot currently drive cars.
I don't know where your doom and gloom comes from - I'm an inteligent person who was certainly poor in my youth (at least, by American standards), and found myself limited only by my ambition and ability.
In your youth this country was vastly different. There weren't global competitors. You didn't have to pay for an education because a free highschool diploma was usually enough. You also could get by with one person working 40 hours a week to make a middle class salary, now for my generation it requires at least 80 hours a week and sometimes even 100 hours a week. Why wouldn't I be doom and gloom when we have to work twice or three times as hard to get the same quality of life previous generations had?
I guess if I wanted to make $30 million/year I'd be pissed that only people born into certain families have a real shot at that, but I just don't care about becoming wealthy beyond personal luxury.
I'm not trying to make 30 million a year. I'm trying for the American dream. The problem is the American dream may be out of reach for my generation. Why shouldn't I be doom and gloom if I know no matter how hard I work, or for how long, that I'll still accomplish less than my parents did with less work and less time?
It's not debatable, life really is harder and it really isn't going to get better. So why not accept that and try and beat the odds? To live in denial doesn't change anything, and if you are older this would explain the naive outlook. Older generations didn't face the same odds, didn't face the same risks, didn't have to work as hard to accomplish the same things, and most importantly their money was worth more. So to put it simply, to be happy in previous generations was a lot easier than to be happy in the current generation.