Befuddlement
3 Jan 2010
One of the things I've always found maddening about research is trying to wade through the unbelievable libraries worth of material written on any single subject to separate the wheat from the chaff and, having done that, synthesize it in any meaningful way. Somehow this seems to go beyond the ordinary difficulty everyone has in identifying and juggling sources to me becoming truly bewildered by the minutiae involved. Am I stupid because I read 30 papers and start to get the nagging suspicion that they are all saying the same thing, and that that thing is not very much at all? I have been told, alternately, that, a) no, this is why I will make a great academic—I have an uncanny ability to peel away the piled on layers of argument and get to the heart of what a paper is really saying which makes it unlikely that I will be dazzled by beautiful bullshit or fall into the trap of pedantry (but that I also have the generous ability to see what makes a paper good even when specific arguments might fall short)—and b) I will make a shit academic because I have no head for details, get lost in complex or finely nuanced arguments, and can't synthesize endless amounts of data efficiently.
I must admit, I'm currently feeling a little on the B side. I've been reading and reading possible sources for the thesis and—am I missing something?—I'm just not feeling any real excitement here. It feels like nearly every one of them is missing the forest for the trees and surely that can't be right that so many of them would suck so bad. I must be having one of those lack-of-synthesis moments. I think I have to momentarily forget everything I have "learned" the last few months and step back and just devise some of these answers from plain ol' common sense/experience (omfgbbq it's theory, I'm a theory head against my will), and then ask what I am missing if I derive things that way. So. The question is, "what are the ordinary reasons that people engage in violence?"
| Defense | Offense |
|---|---|
| physical self-defense (self, family, friends, land) | physical acquisition (land, money, resources, slaves, over a woman, etc) |
| ideological self-defense (maintain purity, country, way of life, etc) | ideological acquisition (glory, power, salvation, etc) |
| fear (many others could be collapsed into this...poss. too broad) | frustration (usually related to acquisition, inability therein?) |
| distopianizing | utopianizing |
| enjoyment (sport, excitement, sociopathy, [more?]) | |
| revenge | |
| altruism, to help someone else (alternating between network-defense and enforcing norms...other reasons? collapse entry?) | |
| in response to disrespect | |
| to enforce social norms (punishment, teach a lesson) | |
What else? Others?
Should do a followup entry examining each of these more in depth. Dammit. Why didn't I write that bit down right when I got home after my walk and it was still fresh in my mind?