3 ms·
Personally, I think that sounds cool, but it's pretty far outside of the norm in the US in several ways. Part of it is the spread-out car culture of the US, wh
by ufmace 11y ago
Personally, I think that sounds cool, but it's pretty far outside of the norm in the US in several ways.
Part of it is the spread-out car culture of the US, where virtually the entire country is so car-centric that walking anywhere is prohibitively difficult and/or risky. It's kinda self-reinforcing - walking is awkward and discouraged, so almost nobody does it, so there's no incentive to fix any of the walkability problems, like missing or neglected sidewalks, bad traffic light behavior, huge parking lots everywhere to cross, etc.
But the bigger part IMHO is the stranger-danger paranoia. Google the free-range parenting movement here for a few disturbing stories. The media hypes up stories about rare child molesters who kidnap children off the streets for better viewership numbers, then people start to think that kidnappers are everywhere and you don't dare take your eyes off a kid for a minute. This makes its way into policy and expectations. Add that into the common viewpoint here that if you have a child, they must be the most important thing in your life and your entire life must be centered around improving the kid's life. You get a society where letting a child, or even teenager, walk to school seems so outrageously dangerous and irresponsible that kids may sometimes be picked up by the police and returned to their parents even though nothing is wrong, and the parents may sometimes even be investigated themselves for their supposedly wildly irresponsible behavior.
- rustynails 11y agoThis is the absolute truth. However, what's interesting is that the world is still basically the same as 50 years ago in terms of safety. When I first went to school, my mother told me not to accept lollies, gifts or rides from strangers. The same fears existed, but people tempered those fears and kept paranoia in check. What has most probably changed is the social attitude which has become far more judgemental and much more intolerant. I've given a lot of thought to these social attitudes and I see today's society as closer to the Torch and Pitchfork scenes in Beauty and the Beast (think of the feminist attack on Matt Taylor by The Verge as one of many examples of extreme verbal aggression by the masses). This mob intolerance has become popular and frequent in the last 10 or so years.
- ufmace 11y agoOh, absolutely. All of the numbers I've seen say that pretty much all kinds of danger are rarer than in the supposedly good old days. Yeah, there are some risks, but you take some reasonable precautions and get on with life instead of trying to reorganize society around reducing every risk to zero. The media and political classes just creates an environment where it seems more dangerous for their own benefit. People who are constantly afraid buy more newspapers/click more news links and will vote to reduce their own rights. All the better if the dangers are essentially imaginary - the gravy train can keep running without worrying about figuring out something to do that actually solves the problem, or the problem going away once it's solved.