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Comment by austincheney | Hacker News Reader

> Politicians think that riots are the problem and if they stop the riots with force the problem goes away. But riots are just a symptom of a sick system.

No the system and other systemic or social problems are just a excuse.

Riots, at least those in recent events are an example of contagious social behavior. That is evidenced by the fact that the blamed issues have been known problems for longer than two weeks with people actively working for years to raise awareness of them. If other people are so passionate about these social problems that they are drawn to riot then where was this passion more than two weeks ago? Why suddenly congregate into emotional hysteria, especially since other people have been actively addressing these concerns for years, when the problems of complaint are preexisting and were clearly previously known to these congregants?

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It's quite clear that recent events, specifically the death of George Floyd, Ahmaud Arbery and Breonna Taylor are the exact reason why people have decided to "suddenly congregate into emotional hysteria". Yes, these issues have been present, but, undoubtedly, those deaths sparked something across the country. Are riots and violence the solution? That's debatable, but they do send a message in a society where money is a significant source of power.

As someone who is black and impacted by these recent events - think of them as a giant pouring of gasoline on an already present fire. People are grieving pain that has been present for years. People grieve in different ways. I don't agree with using violence, looting, rioting as a means of grieving, yet I can fully understand why others have taken that route. The riots are in fact a symptom...not an excuse. It's a fact. Slavery was a "well known problem", but it took the Civil War to see the Emancipation Proclamation come into fruition.

Getting rid of racism in America's systems and in individuals is going to take a lot of effort along with moments like this where everyone is reminded of exactly how much progress is left.

I think you misunderstand my comment by choosing to focus on the subjective importance of the problem. It is necessary to achieve active awareness for those things of personal importance which requires some degree of deliberate effort, otherwise all actions to the effect are reactive instead of proactive. Proactive is not waiting for a reminder from the sudden burst of energy that follows from a single event.

The reason why recognizing group dynamics is important is because it can serve as a means to deprive individual liberty.

> People are grieving pain that has been present for years. People grieve in different ways. I don't agree with using violence, looting, rioting

I stumbled on an interesting phrase for the looting: "looters are not protestors, and protestors are not looters." Some may even distinguish protesters from rioters. Indeed, there are black people still peacefully protesting, even against the use of uncontrolled destruction. It doesn't make sense for people (of different races) to destroy and at the same time rake the reputation of black people through the mud for a moment of... satisfaction (?) without care for the people - even black people - who will be suffer for it.

But I am certain that whoever, regardless of race, is stealing from some designer store does not give a flying fuck about the movement - at least when compared to their greed. BLM is not about the use of slave labor predominant in the clothing industry.

Trying to find a single explanation for the motivations of a large group of people will lead to overly simplistic explanations.

In the case of the protests I expect people are turning out for at least a few different reasons:

* this is an issue they are concerned about, and now there seems to be sufficient attention on it to actually cause change;

* this is an issue they are concerned about, and they have nothing else to do given the coronavirus lockdown;

* they're bored and it could be fun;

* it could be an opportunity to cause destruction (videos suggest a number of police see the protests in this light).

In terms of protests and riots being a symptom of a sick system, that is absolutely the case. History has many examples of change that was only brought about by the large scale demonstrations (e.g. women's suffrage, civil rights). In a better system this would not be required. Effecting change that is not in the interests of the ruling class is incredibly difficult in most of our democracies.

I hear what you are saying but it seems insufficient. You are suppling a carefully considered highly cognitive set of decisions as answers to qualify non-cognitive group convergence. For example anger/dissent and group convergence are completely orthogonal. This is probably a form of conservatism, which is logical considerations as evidence to qualify behaviors after the fact.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conservatism_(belief_revisio...

I'm using my own experience attending protests. As someone who is concerned about a number of issues, but not sufficiently concerned to base my life around those issues, I'm willing to show up when it seems my presence will contribute to an effort large enough to be noted. My observations of others at these events is that there are many different motivations. Some people base their identity and social life around protesting. Some people are there for related but distinct causes (e.g. when protesting the Iraq invasion we marched ahead of a group who carried signs calling for Palestine to be freed). Some show up to take selfies to show their friends.

Were you attending protests about systemic racism or police brutality before two weeks ago? They were certainly there to participate in.

I'm in the UK. I cannot recall any recent protests against racism or police brutality (apart from the current ones) that I might have joined. There probably have been some, because racism and police brutality are certainly issues in the UK, but they did not get enough coverage to register with me. The most recent protest, prior to the current ones, that I can recall is the Extinction Rebellion. The most recent protest I did attend was against leaving the EU, for which one of my motivations for attending was to take a stand against the xenophobia that I see as a core part of the Brexit platform.

It seems perfectly rational, or if not rational at least intuitive, that momentum of a movement would increase participation from people who already agreed with the movement, but weren't doing anything about it.

I guess I'm not totally sure what point you're trying to make, what's your theory exactly?

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23427232

People are coalescing into groups more so for non cognitive behaviors than for deliberate premeditated concerns but when confronted by that reasoning deflect. When confronted they don’t deny it or excuse it but instead argue defense of positions that were never in question.

"Why was this large open pool of gasoline not on fire last week? All that happened was someone lit a cigarette"

People have lit many cigarettes for quite a while but nobody seemed to care until a certain one.

Really? People didn't care when Eric Garner was murdered? When Michael Brown was murdered? There were riots then too.

The final spark was one that has no excuse and was essentially a public lynching in broad daylight while onlookers openly recorded and pleaded for it to stop.

There are few things more loaded with terrible, horrifying historical imagery in America than a white police officer lynching a black man.

And I promise you, the significance of this horrific imagery was not lost on a single black American.

> If other people are so passionate about these social problems that they are drawn to riot then where was this passion more than two weeks ago?

Might be that they were busy working/worrying about corona? Busy making a living? Being under circumstances that were already straining the limits, but not straining enough to actually riot?

Have you ever, individually, faced a crisis? Reached a point at which - something you've been slowly working on for years - the progress just isn't quick enough, it feels hopeless, and then you lash out?

Via anger, sadness, depression - whatever?

> and then you lash out?

As an Army guy with a family embarking on his fifth overseas deployment spontaneous bursts of rage are frowned upon. I don’t do that. I have gotten comfortable to sparse, tiny, lonely living conditions and learned to regulate my mental health according to the expectations at hand.

> the progress just isn't quick enough

I suspect the majority of people engaging in riots, and possibly the protests as well, have provided little to no participation of any kind towards these social concerns before two weeks ago, and if that is true the speed of progress is irrelevant.

Of course the riots are just a symptom. And of course a lot of people of in those riots are not there for the cause.

Would there be riots right now had Floyd not been killed? Have you even seen a riot started out of nothing? Just for fun?

I doesn't change the original point that if a politician's first goal is to stop the riots, it's only to cover a symptom while the real problem is not fixed. And it's a matter of time before everything starts over again.

> Have you even seen a riot started out of nothing? Just for fun?

It's a pretty well-known phenomenon. You hold a sports riot when your team wins, not when it loses.

I don't think that's a safe statement to make. See Vancouver in 2011 (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2011_Vancouver_Stanley_Cup_rio...).

It's pretty clear that the instigators planned to try to start a riot either way.

Then the team losing is what started the riot. I never said the reason had to be worth rioting for. I only said that riots start from somewhere.

Did you read my comment as if it said the opposite of what it actually says?

In Northern Ireland it's known as "recreational rioting!"

Your mental framing is different than the average person.

When I read about your overseas deployment, something goes off in my chest - about which country you're going to be deployed to and what horrors await the people there. It is not about you, but about the historical imperialism America has been perpetrating over rest of the world, starting in 1899 with the Philippines.

And I've read enough history to wonder why and how the black population has suffered so much injustice for so long. You ask "why now" and you question their motives. But the only explanation I could come up with - for why they suffered in silence for the last few decades - was that the enemy was too formidable. Yet there is a breaking point, and George Floyd probably was it. I'm not hopeful that there will be any change though. On the contrary the American system will make black people pay, in a long, insidious, and institutional manner.

I never questioned anyone’s motives.

> It is not about you, but about the historical imperialism America

This host nation invited American presence as a partner.

> As an Army guy with a family embarking on his fifth overseas deployment

Seen any riots in Iraq? What did you think the Arab Spring was?

(Conversely I suspect the people in the protests are almost certainly all politically engaged and at least vote. The previous political engagement of BLM has not achieved anywhere near the same results as the protests have. The protests appear to be the only way to get police charged for murder even when there is clear video evidence.)

Having been there I can honestly tell you it isn’t the same. The conditions are very different. No matter how bad things get in the US there is still a very large gap between US conditions and those that would drive people to self-immolation.

Relative deprivation will do the trick. Double the prices of essential goods in the US overnight, and watch how fast a revolt forms, and what violence it will resort to if it meets resistance. Nevermind that everyone here'd still be very well-off by global standards—they'll hang the politician who doesn't give in to their demands, anyway.

Sure, and if a meteor crushes the capitol while Yellowstone violently explodes in apocalyptic volcanic doom all while running out of toilet paper again due to Covid I suspect people will be upset. I don’t envision the hanging of any politicians though.

I think one difference might be that, before now, self-immolation wouldn't have earned any positive attention in the US, while it might have more cultural significance as protest elsewhere. There might have been people in the US who would have self-immolated if they thought it would make a difference.

No, I'm going to have to lean harder on this question: you're a military man, in the US Army, who's been deployed overseas, and you can't recognise insurgency/counterinsurgency when you see it? I mean, I'm just following along at home and that's clearly what the situation is and also why the police are losing for exactly the same reasons as Vietnam, Afghanistan and Iraq. Because they're making the same mistakes.

The thing about counterinsurgency is that shooting insurgents makes more insurgents. Especially the indiscriminate use of "non lethal" rounds to cause severe and permanent injuries: shooting people, including reporters and medics, in the face with rubber bullets. Every act of filmed violence (e.g. https://twitter.com/Reuters/status/1268759072876224514 ) makes the situation worse.

And the two feed off each other. The overseas wars return to domestic strife. A historical example: https://twitter.com/BeijingPalmer/status/1267539424549769219

From a military perspective I would be hard pressed to recognize my fellow citizen peaceful protesters as enemy combatants. Those that are not peaceful (actively destructive) are petty criminals and still not enemy combatants.

According to the definitions though it is not an insurgency. An insurgency is violent opposed to a non-violent rebellion. Most peaceful protesters appear to disavow violent rioters.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Insurgency

So you missed the entire point of their reply.

> Because they're making the same mistakes.

I suspect their point was that quoted line. I didn’t miss it so much as I just didn’t comment on it when the rest of the comment is just such nonsense.

Your argument is basically since you were not aware of what others in society were doing, they must not have been doing it?

Do you see how superficial this appears?

In case you didn't know, BLM has been around for a long time and NAACP has been around even longer. The issue of systemic violence against minorities has also been an issue in the American social scene for at least the last 100 years.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23427232

> Do you see how superficial this appears?

Good. That is my point. If you find the subjects that people are protesting about concerning and important you should very much care whether outside observers see something sincere or superficial.

The rest of your comment I agree with 100% and have been repeating this numerous times without directly specifying organizations by name.

Changes often happen slowly, and then all at once. Think of the tension like an earthquake, slowly building for years beneath the ground, and then unleashed all at once.

>Riots, at least those in recent events are an example of contagious social behavior. That is evidenced by the fact that the blamed issues have been known problems for longer than two weeks with people actively working for years to raise awareness of them.

I also believe rioting is contagious. But that doesn't mean it doesn't require justification. Otherwise, wouldn't we see riots totally disconnected from any justification? But few people, when they see vandalism and don't agree with the cause, won't join in. Not enough to spark a riot.

>Why suddenly congregate into emotional hysteria, especially since other people have been actively addressing these concerns for years, when the problems of complaint are preexisting and were clearly previously known to these congregants?

There have been protests, lawsuits, smaller violent reactions, and other riots for decades. It doesn't seem sudden to me.

In behavioral health speak the inception point is called a trigger. Whether a given trigger is justified is subjective and prejudicial.

People always carry with them these passions but without a clear channel to direct their passions, it remains in tension without expression. The pre-existing efforts to address these concerns could very well be seen more as tension-defusers as people are content to believe that someone else is doing the hard work.

> emotional hysteria

Sensitive people like you make me sad. [from your own bio]

To me labelling people who collectively rise up against systemic domination as 'emotional hysteria' is just the epitome of cruelty.

#blacklivesmatter

I don't like the framing of the behavior as somehow irrational or random or clinically-diagnosible. It's not irrational to get involved more in a movement when it is a movement, and seems like it might be gaining traction. Just like it's not irrational to not-boycott some useful, cheap product even if you strongly disagree with some of the practices that go into its production, but to join a boycott if it starts and seems to be gaining traction. In fact, it's less rational and more tied up with self-image than with utility to do the former—and even so it doesn't mean that people who do things like solo-boycotts are wrong, or bad, or misguided, at all.

[EDIT] to put it another way, there's a cost to political action. That a lot of people might see that cost WRT anti-police-brutality protests as lower, and the benefit it yields higher, this week than they did two weeks ago, and so be willing to participate, is not "emotional hysteria". Not that nothing that could be described as that has been involved at any point in the process, but that seems reductionist to the point of being very wrong as a characterization for the overall movement.

Objectively speaking becoming involved in a trend only for the sake of a given trend becoming more trendy strikes me as directly irrational. It’s following for the sake of following only because that’s what followers do which is circular and absent of any original consideration.

> only for the sake of a given trend becoming more trendy

Sure, but that's not what I described.

There is nothing objective about your comments. That's just another veneer of credibility.

Same with calling protestors "irrational" -- maybe to your point of view, they are but this is not an objective statement by any definition of the word.

But humans are social creatures, beholden to social norms. Doing something just because other people do it is literally how society works. There are very, very few (if any) "well-adjusted" members of society who don't do many things just because that's how other people do it (a.k.a. it's "trendy"). If you behave otherwise, you're likely be socially outcasted.

Of course, if you're saying society at large is irrational I pretty much agree... but within the context of social expectation, I'd say it's pretty rational to compute that your contribution is more likely to land once a movement has already started. If anything, those who first begin the movement are the most irrational (since the likelihood of success is much lower compared to the personal cost to the individual).

In other words: if you live in an irrational system, the only way to be rational is to behave irrationally.

EDIT: Italicizing.

Here is the definition: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hysteria

I am not sure why that word comes across as offensive given that people were rioting. I can’t think of any better example of a sudden burst of excess emotion.

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