22nd March 2006, 9:20 PM
You must also acknowledge that there has to be an existing audience willing to actually buy this sort of thing. If that audience didn't exist, a moron like that wouldn't have the money to pay his own hospital bills.
Edit: Yep SJ, that's exactly right. To say that the rappers are responsible is silly, as I mentioned above they have the cause and effect backwards. The rappers have every right to make whatever album they want. Sure the music sucks, for the most part, but there's obviously an audience there. Besides, though the message most of these rappers are trying to get across is pretty bad, the message one can get from that attempted message is pretty interesting :D.
I do love how these sorts of people go on about how they are some sort of "soldier" though. Rather ridiculous.
At any rate, urban society? Some urban locations are pretty well off, some aren't. All urban means is "inner city", essentially. Or, did you mean the more run down areas of urban living? Again, it depends on the culture. There seems to be a self defeating culture, but I doubt your commentary on it will fix things in those areas. Any advice, such as "learn that communicating an idea properly is an important part of actually being successful" or "violence is wrong and should be a last resort rather than the first action taken whenever you think someone has offended you" seem to be taken as insults. It also doesn't help that they really are in a terrible situation and in some cases survival really might depend on who pulls the trigger first, which unfortunatly feeds a mindset that just destroys the whole place.
In the end, all that can be said is it is a sad state of affairs and those who are able to get out of that situation owe it to a combination of effort and luck.
I think perhaps the first thing that needs to be taken care of is this attitude that anyone that gets out of that situation and becomes successful in modern society is somehow a traitor or a sellout or is a slave in a condition worse than what they are in. Plato's Allegory of The Cave comes to mind.
Edit: Yep SJ, that's exactly right. To say that the rappers are responsible is silly, as I mentioned above they have the cause and effect backwards. The rappers have every right to make whatever album they want. Sure the music sucks, for the most part, but there's obviously an audience there. Besides, though the message most of these rappers are trying to get across is pretty bad, the message one can get from that attempted message is pretty interesting :D.
I do love how these sorts of people go on about how they are some sort of "soldier" though. Rather ridiculous.
At any rate, urban society? Some urban locations are pretty well off, some aren't. All urban means is "inner city", essentially. Or, did you mean the more run down areas of urban living? Again, it depends on the culture. There seems to be a self defeating culture, but I doubt your commentary on it will fix things in those areas. Any advice, such as "learn that communicating an idea properly is an important part of actually being successful" or "violence is wrong and should be a last resort rather than the first action taken whenever you think someone has offended you" seem to be taken as insults. It also doesn't help that they really are in a terrible situation and in some cases survival really might depend on who pulls the trigger first, which unfortunatly feeds a mindset that just destroys the whole place.
In the end, all that can be said is it is a sad state of affairs and those who are able to get out of that situation owe it to a combination of effort and luck.
I think perhaps the first thing that needs to be taken care of is this attitude that anyone that gets out of that situation and becomes successful in modern society is somehow a traitor or a sellout or is a slave in a condition worse than what they are in. Plato's Allegory of The Cave comes to mind.
"On two occasions, I have been asked [by members of Parliament], 'Pray, Mr. Babbage, if you put into the machine wrong figures, will the right answers come out?' I am not able to rightly apprehend the kind of confusion of ideas that could provoke such a question." ~ Charles Babbage (1791-1871)