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Brandon Jack Article

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"The youth of today lack morals and it's because of mass media or cultural influence x, y, or z." Normally people wait till their 50s till they start up about this.
 

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Brandon should have taken heed of the warning he provided in the first line and stuck to football rather than the social commentary.

When was that glorious period of human existence where the moral power of the nuclear family was able to temper our indiscriminate violent urges? It is nostalgia for something which never existed. If anything, humanity has never been less inclined to violence as it is today (granted, that is really not saying a whole lot). The violence of drunk, young men is not a new phenomena, it predates violent movies, social media and smart phones. There is no evidence that these new phenomena have had a discernible effect on levels of violence in society. The only way the media has created this "new, disturbing trend" is by the nightly news and current affairs programs labelling the behaviour as such - the media has created the narrative, not caused the events.

"The sacred value of human life is not seen, or treated, with the fragility it once was." You just have to ask Brandon when he thinks this time was? Prehistorical societies engaged in continual tribal war? Classical periods of slavery and imperial conquest? The middle ages? The age of European colonial expansion? The millions dead in the trenches or the concentration camps of the first half of the 20th century? The nuclear era?

Our present period of "pre-emptive drone strikes" and "collateral damage" is far from perfect and I don't intend to make any grand claims for the state of humanity right now. I struggle to think of a time when human life has ever been considered sacred or treated with fragility. If anything we are living in a comparative golden age where the concept of human rights, the belief that differences of race, religion, gender or sexuality are not legitimate causes for persecution, tempers the use of force by the more powerful in a way that many previous ages could never have imagined. That this is a work in progress no where near completion (it never will be complete) does not undermine the point that there has never in history been a society which placed more value on the lives of all people than ours today.

What shocks us about these acts of violence that have been in the media recently is actually how out of step they are with our lived experience (the "our" here and in the previous paragraph clearly being heavily caveated to exclude billions of people not fortunate enough to live in a country like Australia) in which the threat of physical violence is not a quotidian fact of life.

Of course Brandon's conclusion that these acts can only be addressed by further education is correct, that the way to avoid violence likes this is for young people to be educated in such a way that they become capable of making judgements for themselves which would see them never placed in a position to engage in mindless drunken violence. That is a task for society as a whole, not just families, not just schools. It doesn't help that education process, though, to incorrectly identify the mass media or the internet as the underlying cause or to seek to take our society back to some idyllic period when things were better when such a period simply does not exist.
 
Gobby needs to lay off the thesaurus. Good on him for having a go, though.

That the SMH opinion editor has appeared to take this directly off Brandon's blog without giving it an edit/sending it back for a bit of a tweak speaks volumes about the depths to which that paper has sunk.
 
Campbell Brown can use the internet (I think)... He should become a BJack follower and go out of his way to promote similar ideals of education about how stupid and moronic it is to throw a punch. In fact, it wouldn't be too hard for the AFL to run with this and use it to further promote the "we're good for the community and not really just after all your money" campaign they've been on over the past decade.

Interesting perspective coming from someone his age and with his (and his family's) background in hard physical contact sport IMO. Nice to see he's at least got a critical thinking head on his shoulders no matter if you agree with his opinion or not.
 
Very thoughtful and well-written article.

(RobbieK, all your points are good, but I'm on holiday and just couldn't be...)

The kid can write. No doubt some of his team mates are scratching their heads as they read it.

No reference to his dad being knocked out cold by Ian Roberts, I see.
 
For all his fancy words, I don't think he's expressed himself that well here. Firstly, he'd benefit from being a little less definite in placing the blame. Secondly, his talk of "moral acuity" etc comes across less insightful and more patronising. Finally, his talk of family values and wistfully looking back to the past is outdated and misguided, and sounds concerningly similar to the recent comments published by Cory Bernardi (minus the racism, sexism, etc).

That said, he does make a good point fundamentally. While violence has been a problem throughout the whole of human history, it is being expressed in a different and somewhat concerning way. It certainly can't be blamed on alcohol, as many people binge drink without ever becoming violent, and this sort of king-hitting has also fairly recently escalated. It's important to tap into WHY certain people, when drunk, feel the need to king hit, and how to stop it. Simply limiting alcohol isn't the problem.
 
I'm old enough to remember a time when a fight was a fight, and then you shared a beer. This coward punch culture is a different thing. BJack touches on a few things that ring true. Most of these thugs are so insecure, that even the smallest slight, or some need to prove how "tough"they are, makes it OK in there head to assault, with the aim to seriously hurt, someone, anyone. Sure, i had blues when I was younger, but I don't remember thinking I had to really hurt this guy, stomp him when he's down, have my mates gang up on him if I lost, that seems to be new.
 
BarneyBent said:
For all his fancy words, I don't think he's expressed himself that well here. Firstly, he'd benefit from being a little less definite in placing the blame. Secondly, his talk of "moral acuity" etc comes across less insightful and more patronising. Finally, his talk of family values and wistfully looking back to the past is outdated and misguided, and sounds concerningly similar to the recent comments published by Cory Bernardi (minus the racism, sexism, etc).

That said, he does make a good point fundamentally. While violence has been a problem throughout the whole of human history, it is being expressed in a different and somewhat concerning way. It certainly can't be blamed on alcohol, as many people binge drink without ever becoming violent, and this sort of king-hitting has also fairly recently escalated. It's important to tap into WHY certain people, when drunk, feel the need to king hit, and how to stop it. Simply limiting alcohol isn't the problem.
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I seriously think the issue here (if there is indeed an increase in this sort of incident) is the interface of alcohol with steroids and various chemical concoctions.
 

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T Brett said:
I'm old enough to remember a time when a fight was a fight, and then you shared a beer. This coward punch culture is a different thing. BJack touches on a few things that ring true. Most of these thugs are so insecure, that even the smallest slight, or some need to prove how "tough"they are, makes it OK in there head to assault, with the aim to seriously hurt, someone, anyone. Sure, i had blues when I was younger, but I don't remember thinking I had to really hurt this guy, stomp him when he's down, have my mates gang up on him if I lost, that seems to be new.
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Exactly. Fighting is nothing new, humans have been drinking and fighting forever. But the king-hit, while also not completely new, seems to have become unnervingly common (at least based on news reports, would be nice if we could get some solid stats but I doubt they exist). Need to figure out why that is.
 
BarneyBent said:
For all his fancy words, I don't think he's expressed himself that well here. Firstly, he'd benefit from being a little less definite in placing the blame. Secondly, his talk of "moral acuity" etc comes across less insightful and more patronising. Finally, his talk of family values and wistfully looking back to the past is outdated and misguided, and sounds concerningly similar to the recent comments published by Cory Bernardi (minus the racism, sexism, etc).

That said, he does make a good point fundamentally. While violence has been a problem throughout the whole of human history, it is being expressed in a different and somewhat concerning way. It certainly can't be blamed on alcohol, as many people binge drink without ever becoming violent, and this sort of king-hitting has also fairly recently escalated. It's important to tap into WHY certain people, when drunk, feel the need to king hit, and how to stop it. Simply limiting alcohol isn't the problem.
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I don't think his article is particularly impressive. It's great that he's thinking critically about social issues, but underneath his moralising is a disturbing reluctance to accept individual responsibility for behaviour (it's easier to blame publicly available depictions of violence and the failure of schools than individuals and their parents) and a determination to externalise blame. An individual is responsible for their own violent behaviour, and to seek approaches that serve to shift the blame for violent acts away from those that commit them is unhelpful.

Violence has always been present in human societies and will continue to exist. Manifestations of violence change over time, and his point about needing to understand new types of violence and their origins is valid, but to seek and provide a very narrow explanation for the 'coward punch' contradicts his opening statement and attempts to oversimplify a complex issue.

He seems keen to dream of an idealised version of the past that may or may not have existed, and he is equally keen to remain rooted in a time where gender neutral language wasn't thought of - this is disturbing in anyone, but particularly in one who is able to reach a wide audience due to his fame. I'll give him the benefit of the doubt and put it down to an editing error.

Finally, and this is more of a pet hate than a criticism of the article, I can't stand it when people use the "studies show" line then fail to provide any reference to said studies - it usually means the writer is either lazy or making it up.
 

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swans2014 said:
I don't think his article is particularly impressive. It's great that he's thinking critically about social issues, but underneath his moralising is a disturbing reluctance to accept individual responsibility for behaviour (it's easier to blame publicly available depictions of violence and the failure of schools than individuals and their parents) and a determination to externalise blame. An individual is responsible for their own violent behaviour, and to seek approaches that serve to shift the blame for violent acts away from those that commit them is unhelpful.

Violence has always been present in human societies and will continue to exist. Manifestations of violence change over time, and his point about needing to understand new types of violence and their origins is valid, but to seek and provide a very narrow explanation for the 'coward punch' contradicts his opening statement and attempts to oversimplify a complex issue.

He seems keen to dream of an idealised version of the past that may or may not have existed, and he is equally keen to remain rooted in a time where gender neutral language wasn't thought of - this is disturbing in anyone, but particularly in one who is able to reach a wide audience due to his fame. I'll give him the benefit of the doubt and put it down to an editing error.

Finally, and this is more of a pet hate than a criticism of the article, I can't stand it when people use the "studies show" line then fail to provide any reference to said studies - it usually means the writer is either lazy or making it up.
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Perhaps you can enlighten us. Or better yet, come up with something better. He is isn't shifting blame. He's redirecting the "blame", back to where it belongs. I'm 39, and I'll be buggered if the kids in my life will think it is ok. I salute him for trying.

A Coward Punch, is a Coward Punch. Fullstop. Barry Hall was wrong, every cheap shot is wrong. Let's not get caught up in semantics, that, unfortunately, is for the courts.
 
T Brett said:
Perhaps you can enlighten us. Or better yet, come up with something better. He is isn't shifting blame. He's redirecting the "blame", back to where it belongs. I'm 39, and I'll be buggered if the kids in my life will think it is ok. I salute him for trying.

A Coward Punch, is a Coward Punch. Fullstop. Barry Hall was wrong, every cheap shot is wrong. Let's not get caught up in semantics, that, unfortunately, is for the courts.
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From the second last paragraph of his article: "Rising violence in various media platforms has helped create a faction of thoughtless aggressors". That is a highly problematic statement for which he provides scant evidence, and it's the type of thinking that can be easily used to provide excuses for violence. Taking violence out of the media will not stop acts of violence - there was no shortage of violence before the internet, youtube and facebook. Society helps to shape an environment in which acts of violence take place, but the ultimate responsibility lies with the offender - this is a distinction that Jack seems to have missed in his article.

There are a range of underlying causes of violence such as low levels of education, harsh and inconsistent parenting, concentrated poverty, unemployment, and social norms supportive of violence (Jack's arguments fall broadly within this category), which suggests that Jack's approach is overly simplistic.

It's good that he's got people talking about the issue, but his own arguments are fairly tenuous.

And as for his "we've lost firm guidance over the integrity of today's youth" comment, give me a break, only a generation ago we were happy to conscript the youth of the nation to fight and die in foreign wars against their will - time to take off the rose coloured glasses.
 
swans2014 said:
From the second last paragraph of his article: "Rising violence in various media platforms has helped create a faction of thoughtless aggressors". That is a highly problematic statement for which he provides scant evidence, and it's the type of thinking that can be easily used to provide excuses for violence. Taking violence out of the media will not stop acts of violence - there was no shortage of violence before the internet, youtube and facebook. Society helps to shape an environment in which acts of violence take place, but the ultimate responsibility lies with the offender - this is a distinction that Jack seems to have missed in his article.

There are a range of underlying causes of violence such as low levels of education, harsh and inconsistent parenting, concentrated poverty, unemployment, and social norms supportive of violence (Jack's arguments fall broadly within this category), which suggests that Jack's approach is overly simplistic.

It's good that he's got people talking about the issue, but his own arguments are fairly tenuous.

And as for his "we've lost firm guidance over the integrity of today's youth" comment, give me a break, only a generation ago we were happy to conscript the youth of the nation to fight and die in foreign wars against their will - time to take off the rose coloured glasses.
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Ok, Professor. Maybe he should've remained silent. Maybe I should've kept my uneducated fingers from typing. Maybe, you should support a young Man trying to make a difference. Stop picking holes, stop the patronizing critiques...
 
swans2014 said:
And as for his "we've lost firm guidance over the integrity of today's youth" comment, give me a break, only a generation ago we were happy to conscript the youth of the nation to fight and die in foreign wars against their will - time to take off the rose coloured glasses.
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http://mentalfloss.com/article/52209/15-historical-complaints-about-young-people-ruining-everything

Every generation feels the same way about the ones that follow it. Generally they are a little older than 19 before they start to express it...
 
T Brett said:
Ok, Professor. Maybe he should've remained silent. Maybe I should've kept my uneducated fingers from typing. Maybe, you should support a young Man trying to make a difference. Stop picking holes, stop the patronizing critiques...
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If he is going to put his spurious arguments out into public he should expect them to be criticised.
 

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