One of the reasons I keep coming back to Buenos Aires is that it's a city where you can easily live without a car. Much like New York, much like many of the great cities worldwide that developed before the auto became so common. Seoul, no; Barcelona, si.
The posh districts of the Capital Federal, where foreigners such as myself are likely to live, are relatively close together and are generally close to the subway system. But it turns out that the subway system is quite limited. So most of the public transport is via these crazy buses that run in very perplexing routes and get very full. And these buses really barrel around -- just two days ago, there were two bus-on-bus collisions in the morning rush hour, one of them very serious -- sixty injured, two or four killed.
And so Buenos Aires is more of a car town than I thought. I'm in a pretty central area, and of the four apartments in this building occupied by locals, three of them have a car. Traffic here is just terrible -- maybe not quite as crowded as New York, but the drivers here have much worse habits. (I was going to say "skills", but that would be too generous.) There is a kind of aggressiveness on the roads, a devil-may-care attitude about safety, that just drives me insane. I can't tell if it's a symptom of latin machismo, or italian carefree-ness, or some combination, but whatever it is, it's my least favorite thing about this town.
This week there has been a great deal of attention on the news to the road conditions, because of the aforementioned bus accidents, but more importantly because of another accident where an 80-year-old driver barreled into a crowded sidewalk on Avenida Rivadavia, one of the biggest streets here, killing one and seriously injuring four or five others. Worse, the dude kind of kept going -- he crashed into the sidewalk, then veered back onto the street and kept driving, dragging someone under his car. Nice, huh? And of course the local news had no qualms about showing the trail of blood on the street. Maybe that's macho as well, I don't know.
So there's been lots of discussion about whether eighty year olds should be driving, and how to make sure that those who shouldn't be driving aren't. Which leads me to the subject line of this post.
Here's one of the worst problem with cars, or rather with a society physically organized around car-based transportation -- Driving a one- or two-ton vehicle around at high speed is not something that should be done by anyone at any time, but because it's such an integral part of functioning in our societies, not being able to drive is a serious handicap. If you can't drive, because you're old, or you're sick, or you're intoxicated, you're a second-class citizen. And people don't want to be second-class citizens, and so they drive even though they shouldn't be. So you get eighty-year-olds and drunks killing people on the roads.
It's easy to blame the drunks, but it's harder to blame the eighty-year-old. No one wants to admit to diminished capacities. And ninety-nine percent of the time, driving is easy, very manageable. It's just that one percent or that one-tenth of one percent of the time when you need good reflexes, peripheral vision, and depth perception.
On a personal note, my father is now 75, and he lives in rural Washington state. He's in excellent shape physically, but he's 75 and he just doesn't drive as well as he once did. Not at all. My older sister and I joke morbidly that the only way he's going to die before 90 is behind the wheel. But driving has been such a part of his life, and it's so essential where he lives, he'd have to really, really deteriorate before he could submit to be chauffeured around by his wife.
This is a long-term problem, not a short-term one. Sure, you can test people more, you can have roadblocks for drunks. But still, people are going to want to drive. And also, just on a fairness measure, you don't want to create second-class citizens out of those who can't drive. There just needs to be other ways of getting around. And more importantly, things need to be organized differently, more densely, to enable effective public transportation. Like I said, long-term problem -- none of us are going to live long enough to see it resolved.
Thursday, March 20, 2008
Wednesday, March 19, 2008
Slum Tourism -- A Tough Issue
It's been years and years since I read any real philosophy, and even in my undergraduate days, I could barely slog through it. I think I'm too impatient -- it's such unbelievably slow going sometimes. If you'd ever cracked "A Critique of Pure Reason" by Immanual Kant, I'm preaching to the choir. But I have a restless mind and so I'm attracted to philosophy. I've been reading a free e-book I found online, "100 Great Philosophers" or something like that. Philosophy very, very "lite". And perhaps the most valuable insight I got out of this book came in the introduction, which addressed what it is that philosophers do. And largely, what they do, is address questions for which there are no answers, or at least no agreed-upon answers. Questions that resist answers.
And this is right up my alley. Issues to ponder, to turn over and over in your head, trying to get to the bottom of them. In many cases you get closer, but usually, there just aren't answers.
And one of the thing that discourages me the most about our culture these days is that people feel they have to have an answer to everything. A firm opinion, not an open-ended, well maybe this, maybe that opinion. And of course, most of the people who have the firmest opinions are the ones talking almost exclusively out of their assholes. Idiots, in other words.
So the reason I haven't updated my blog in two weeks, except for a brief rant a couple days ago on futbol violence, is that I've been chewing over an interesting issue that was brought up by an article in the travel section of the new york times. The article got under my skin a little, and then the 200+ comments, most of which I read, really got under my skin.
The article is on organized slum tours, where some enterprising local or expat takes a group of tourists to see a slum of one of the larger third world cities. The article mentions it being done in Rio, Mumbai, and Mexico City, and I know that it's also done here in Buenos Aires.
The impossible-to-answer question is this -- is slum tourism bad, or good? Really, that's it.
Like any conventional journalism exercise, the article presents two sides of the story, each side presented by one or more Qualified Experts. Someone who is a professor of Tourism and the Environment (which sounds like a sweet gig) thinks it is Bad. Someone else, who is the director of the International Center for Responsible Tourism thinks it is Good. Actually the later qualifies what he says quite a bit, but says it can be good.
Both of these experts make good arguments. The professor asks quite reasonably whether you'd want people walking by your door every day, snapping a few pictures, and moving on. What he doesn't ask, but obviously implies, is whether you, as a poor person living in a hand-built shack in a slum, would like to have rich people parading by gawking at you for a few minutes, and then moving on back to their fancy hotels and their fancy lives. He also notes that for many people the exposure to the slum just serves to remind them of how good they have it, by displaying at close range how bad many other people have it.
And sure enough, this hits me a little where it hurts. I have traveled lots and lots in mexico and now argentina and many other relatively poor countries. And I have always said that this is good, that it "puts things in perspective". And the perspective I would get, surely, is that I'm super-duper-lucky to have been born where and when I was, and not in the slum outside Mexico City or wherever.
From this perspective, slum tourism, and to some extent my own travels, are ethically suspect -- they represent the fortunate coming to gawk at the unfortunate, just to be reminded of their good fortune. Or put another way, the powerful using the weak to help them appreciate their power. Sounds pretty ethically suspect to me. And it sounds very plausible, and no doubt in many cases accurate.
The other chap, the director of the center for responsible tourism, says that slum tourism can promote awareness of poverty, which can be a first step in addressing and maybe some day alleviating it. He has a nice quote: “To just kind of turn a blind eye and pretend the poverty doesn’t exist seems to me a very denial of our humanity.”
The article doesn't have him getting into specifics, but I can think through this side of the argument. It's an extension of the idea that tourism, or at least certain kinds of tourism, helps foster cross-cultural understanding, hopefully leading to greater cooperation and less hostility among countries and cultures.
And I do believe that international travel can have this kind of positive effect. It is eye-opening for a lot of people to travel overseas, to interact with people of a different culture, to see the common humanity that we all share. I don't know, but I suspect that people who have traveled and gotten to know people in different cultures, are going to be more understanding and respectful of the interests of others. And probably less likely to start a war with them, less likely to hideously exploit them economically.
Think of the really Bad americans you know, or know of. The ones who just want to exert american power and influence around the world as much as possible. The ones who can really do some damage, and who have been doing damage. Are these people who have traveled a lot overseas, in particular to less-developed countries? People who have gotten to know, or at least been significantly exposed to, people from much more disadvantaged backgrounds? Probably not. (I do remember hearing that before his presidential campaign began, the only time our Current Occupant had left the US was for a brief vacation in Cancun. I'm not sure if that's true.)
So to me, the principal benefit of slum tourism is this -- by exposing the powerful to the less-advantaged, making clear that even the most poor are in most important ways just like the, maybe the powerful will be less likely to totally fuck over the weak.
I guess the new york times can't put it that way, but I think that is really what it boils down to.
There are practical questions about this positive effect, of course. First of all, there's self-selection. Perhaps only the people who were already sympathetic to the plight of the down-trodden are likely to participate in such tourism. And self-exclusion, too -- the really bad people, the ones who may do the most damage, are the ones least likely to participate in this sort of thing.
But there's a giant middle in there, and as in many cases, the giant middle has a huge effect, even if it's indirect. If we could have gotten the giant middle in the US to think about the Iraquis in 2003, rather than TV images of burning towers, then we would not have spent a trillion dollars turning that country into such a mess and making the whole world hate americans again.
And so if we could get the giant middle to think about the disadvantaged of the world a little more, rather than just themselves, perhaps our influence and activities in the world could be directed towards making the lives of these people better. And perhaps slum tourism, or some variant of it, could be a way of reaching that giant middle.
But back to the tourism professor, I totally agree, you absolutely don't want rich foreigners traipsing around slums gawking at the poor people as if they were animals in a zoo. That is just ugly. The second guy made the point that this kind of tourism needs to be done "respectfully", in small groups, with the consent of the community, and unobtrusively.
But honestly, I think this is a very big challenge. Most of these slums are really, really poor. Like these people frequently have an annual income of under a thousand dollars, under five hundred dollars even. Anytime you have that kind of disparity in wealth, I don't know how you can avoid the feeling amongst the poor that the visitors are flaunting their wealth.
One program mentioned in the article, in Mazatlan, Mexico, kind of combines slum tourism with very light charity work. Visitors can go and spend some accompanied, guided time in the poor community, but they have to participate in charitable activities, like passing out food. This sounds like a good arrangement -- the visitors are actually producing some tangible benefit for the community.
So, where do I stand on this? Good or Bad, Dan? I don't know, but I think it could be good, or could be bad. The devil is in the details, right? I do think there is great, great potential for this being pretty ugly -- rich people with thousand dollar cameras taking pictures of the poor in their hovels with open sewers running alongside. Very ugly. But I do think under the right circumstances this can be a positive thing for the poor community. And I also think that if the economically advantaged are more routinely exposed to the economically disadvantaged, in the long run the advantaged may be less likely to abuse their powers. But that was a very qualified maybe -- people can be very, very ugly, for sure.
So after thinking about this for two weeks, my opinion on this is still very very divided and qualified. In contrast to about 3/4 of the comments posted, most of which were posted the same day.
As I mentioned earlier, I find it very disturbing how americans these days feel they have to have a strong, rigid opinion on everything. And sure enough, most people posting comments came down very strong on one side or the other of the ethical spectrum. (I'm reminded of the kind-of-lame frankenstein on Saturday Night Live a few years back. Everything was either BAAAADDDD, or GOOOOODDDDD.) But some of the responses were clearly very measured and thought-through. If you look at the article, I highly recommend looking at the comments page -- it's actually much, much more interesting than the article.
I'll close with the comment that I liked the most. I found it rather powerful and kind of disturbing:
And this is right up my alley. Issues to ponder, to turn over and over in your head, trying to get to the bottom of them. In many cases you get closer, but usually, there just aren't answers.
And one of the thing that discourages me the most about our culture these days is that people feel they have to have an answer to everything. A firm opinion, not an open-ended, well maybe this, maybe that opinion. And of course, most of the people who have the firmest opinions are the ones talking almost exclusively out of their assholes. Idiots, in other words.
So the reason I haven't updated my blog in two weeks, except for a brief rant a couple days ago on futbol violence, is that I've been chewing over an interesting issue that was brought up by an article in the travel section of the new york times. The article got under my skin a little, and then the 200+ comments, most of which I read, really got under my skin.
The article is on organized slum tours, where some enterprising local or expat takes a group of tourists to see a slum of one of the larger third world cities. The article mentions it being done in Rio, Mumbai, and Mexico City, and I know that it's also done here in Buenos Aires.
The impossible-to-answer question is this -- is slum tourism bad, or good? Really, that's it.
Like any conventional journalism exercise, the article presents two sides of the story, each side presented by one or more Qualified Experts. Someone who is a professor of Tourism and the Environment (which sounds like a sweet gig) thinks it is Bad. Someone else, who is the director of the International Center for Responsible Tourism thinks it is Good. Actually the later qualifies what he says quite a bit, but says it can be good.
Both of these experts make good arguments. The professor asks quite reasonably whether you'd want people walking by your door every day, snapping a few pictures, and moving on. What he doesn't ask, but obviously implies, is whether you, as a poor person living in a hand-built shack in a slum, would like to have rich people parading by gawking at you for a few minutes, and then moving on back to their fancy hotels and their fancy lives. He also notes that for many people the exposure to the slum just serves to remind them of how good they have it, by displaying at close range how bad many other people have it.
And sure enough, this hits me a little where it hurts. I have traveled lots and lots in mexico and now argentina and many other relatively poor countries. And I have always said that this is good, that it "puts things in perspective". And the perspective I would get, surely, is that I'm super-duper-lucky to have been born where and when I was, and not in the slum outside Mexico City or wherever.
From this perspective, slum tourism, and to some extent my own travels, are ethically suspect -- they represent the fortunate coming to gawk at the unfortunate, just to be reminded of their good fortune. Or put another way, the powerful using the weak to help them appreciate their power. Sounds pretty ethically suspect to me. And it sounds very plausible, and no doubt in many cases accurate.
The other chap, the director of the center for responsible tourism, says that slum tourism can promote awareness of poverty, which can be a first step in addressing and maybe some day alleviating it. He has a nice quote: “To just kind of turn a blind eye and pretend the poverty doesn’t exist seems to me a very denial of our humanity.”
The article doesn't have him getting into specifics, but I can think through this side of the argument. It's an extension of the idea that tourism, or at least certain kinds of tourism, helps foster cross-cultural understanding, hopefully leading to greater cooperation and less hostility among countries and cultures.
And I do believe that international travel can have this kind of positive effect. It is eye-opening for a lot of people to travel overseas, to interact with people of a different culture, to see the common humanity that we all share. I don't know, but I suspect that people who have traveled and gotten to know people in different cultures, are going to be more understanding and respectful of the interests of others. And probably less likely to start a war with them, less likely to hideously exploit them economically.
Think of the really Bad americans you know, or know of. The ones who just want to exert american power and influence around the world as much as possible. The ones who can really do some damage, and who have been doing damage. Are these people who have traveled a lot overseas, in particular to less-developed countries? People who have gotten to know, or at least been significantly exposed to, people from much more disadvantaged backgrounds? Probably not. (I do remember hearing that before his presidential campaign began, the only time our Current Occupant had left the US was for a brief vacation in Cancun. I'm not sure if that's true.)
So to me, the principal benefit of slum tourism is this -- by exposing the powerful to the less-advantaged, making clear that even the most poor are in most important ways just like the, maybe the powerful will be less likely to totally fuck over the weak.
I guess the new york times can't put it that way, but I think that is really what it boils down to.
There are practical questions about this positive effect, of course. First of all, there's self-selection. Perhaps only the people who were already sympathetic to the plight of the down-trodden are likely to participate in such tourism. And self-exclusion, too -- the really bad people, the ones who may do the most damage, are the ones least likely to participate in this sort of thing.
But there's a giant middle in there, and as in many cases, the giant middle has a huge effect, even if it's indirect. If we could have gotten the giant middle in the US to think about the Iraquis in 2003, rather than TV images of burning towers, then we would not have spent a trillion dollars turning that country into such a mess and making the whole world hate americans again.
And so if we could get the giant middle to think about the disadvantaged of the world a little more, rather than just themselves, perhaps our influence and activities in the world could be directed towards making the lives of these people better. And perhaps slum tourism, or some variant of it, could be a way of reaching that giant middle.
But back to the tourism professor, I totally agree, you absolutely don't want rich foreigners traipsing around slums gawking at the poor people as if they were animals in a zoo. That is just ugly. The second guy made the point that this kind of tourism needs to be done "respectfully", in small groups, with the consent of the community, and unobtrusively.
But honestly, I think this is a very big challenge. Most of these slums are really, really poor. Like these people frequently have an annual income of under a thousand dollars, under five hundred dollars even. Anytime you have that kind of disparity in wealth, I don't know how you can avoid the feeling amongst the poor that the visitors are flaunting their wealth.
One program mentioned in the article, in Mazatlan, Mexico, kind of combines slum tourism with very light charity work. Visitors can go and spend some accompanied, guided time in the poor community, but they have to participate in charitable activities, like passing out food. This sounds like a good arrangement -- the visitors are actually producing some tangible benefit for the community.
So, where do I stand on this? Good or Bad, Dan? I don't know, but I think it could be good, or could be bad. The devil is in the details, right? I do think there is great, great potential for this being pretty ugly -- rich people with thousand dollar cameras taking pictures of the poor in their hovels with open sewers running alongside. Very ugly. But I do think under the right circumstances this can be a positive thing for the poor community. And I also think that if the economically advantaged are more routinely exposed to the economically disadvantaged, in the long run the advantaged may be less likely to abuse their powers. But that was a very qualified maybe -- people can be very, very ugly, for sure.
So after thinking about this for two weeks, my opinion on this is still very very divided and qualified. In contrast to about 3/4 of the comments posted, most of which were posted the same day.
As I mentioned earlier, I find it very disturbing how americans these days feel they have to have a strong, rigid opinion on everything. And sure enough, most people posting comments came down very strong on one side or the other of the ethical spectrum. (I'm reminded of the kind-of-lame frankenstein on Saturday Night Live a few years back. Everything was either BAAAADDDD, or GOOOOODDDDD.) But some of the responses were clearly very measured and thought-through. If you look at the article, I highly recommend looking at the comments page -- it's actually much, much more interesting than the article.
I'll close with the comment that I liked the most. I found it rather powerful and kind of disturbing:
I lived in Mumbai in 2003, close to the world trade center in a large and beautiful residential tower. It was only a couple of streets away from the nearest slum and the people that lived there were essentially the 'support staff' of the wealthy who lived in the towers. They were cleaners, cooks, garbage collectors, elevator operators and street sweepers, keeping the district and its wealthy residents in tip top shape. I was always fascinated with the slums of Mumbai and would walk my shirts down to the local ironing men, on the edge of the slum to have them pressed. One day, my curiosity got the better of me and instead of handing over the clothes and turning back, I headed in, winding my way through the tiny lanes. I hadn't been walking for 2 minutes when a young man stopped me - and in halting english asked me what I was doing there. I said I was just walking and looking. He looked at me, then at the ground and replied, madam, you not see this. In an instant I was looking at the ground. I apologized, turned on my heel and left. My curiosity got the better of me, I wanted to see inside those homes, look through the doorways, see what 'they' did in there. I didn't think about their dignity, that these shacks were someone's home. I would never walk through a neigborhood in the US to see how the people lived, to look through their doors, to see what 'they' did in there. That young man taught me something about myself that day, I thank him for it, and I will never forget him.
Monday, March 17, 2008
more futbol madness
A couple years ago I read a book called "How Soccer Explains the World." It was naturally written by a soccer fan, and I found it disappointing -- I didn't think it explained much, actually. But now, after watching the local news in Buenos Aires for three months every day, I'm thinking the more interesting book would be called "How Soccer Explains Most of the Bad Things in the World."
(Image from La Nacion, used sin permiso!)
I tend to think of futbol, and pretty much all sports, as a kind of ritualized battle. One side v. the other, somebody wins. A battle, nothing less. and the sports fans, supporting one side or the other, become vicariously involved in the battle. And in places like Buenos Aires, and all over the world really, a culture evolves around this vicarious participation in battle that elevates it in importance. And to be sure, this taps into some deep genetic impulses that everyone, but especially males (obviously) carry around. Sure, it's a survival thing -- the young men are the strongest and fastest of the group, so over the millions of years that we evolved, they had to fight to protect the group. So being a futbol fan gives the young males a chance to participate in some level in a battle, which some genes somewhere say is a good thing.
The problem is, battle is not a good thing. Not at all. Battle is violence. Battles frequently get out of control. Especially in a heavily populated, urban society. The battles get out of control, and kids get killed at soccer games, people get stabbed. One kid got killed at a game on saturday, then on sunday there was something of a riot at a Boca Juniors game. A hundred and eighty people were arrested, and one older guy was stabbed. Cars were burned and overturned, i'm sure there were dozens and dozens of injuries.
And it's not just a matter of game-day violence. The bigger problem is that this battle-related violence may tend to legitimize violence and a generally confrontational attitude. Gotta be tough, right? You can't help but notice the attitude, the dudes wearing the futbol shirts. Not all of them -- lots of dudes wear futbol shirts, but you can easily spot the ones looking for trouble.
Argentina, like italy, brazil, england, and lord knows dozens and dozens of other countries has a futbol culture that glorifies belonging to a group of supporters of a team. It becomes way, way too much of these people's identities. And when it's that much of your identity, you start to justify anything done in the name of "supporting" your team.
Seems to me to be very much like a street gang. Your gang becomes your support network, and before long you become willing to do anything to support your gang.
And of course it's generally the people (okay, men - let's be clear, this is a male problem) who don't have that much else going on in their lives who become the most trouble. They're frustrated by their place in society, their lack of opportunities. And being a member of the "Barra Brava" -- the brave/crazy fans -- gives them an outlet for asserting themselves.
So, hell, what is there to do about this? Nothing, it seems. This is cultural, and it's hard to change culture. Although it does change over time -- the soccer fans in england are much, much less thuggish than they were twenty years ago. So what happened? Actually, I hate to say it but it seems that england just became a lot richer. In the seventies, eighties, things were looking kind of bleak in england. And now, it's much more posh. The soccer teams were bought by big companies and really rich people, the stadiums fixed up, the prices raised, and over a decade or so, soccer became 'family entertainment'.
And note how in the US we have a very limited amount of sports-related craziness. OK, once in a while the post-victory celebrations get out of control, but that seems to be about it. And of course the US is pretty rich. But what about the italian example? Italy is now a pretty rich country, but I think they still have trouble with their futbol fans. Although I'm not really sure.
OK, I admit, this is a rant. But it's something I think about a lot. Dan's original quote of the day -- "Violence -- it's a problem." I just hate the futbol culture, because it seems like a violence incubator. We really, really need fewer battles, not more.
(Image from La Nacion, used sin permiso!)I tend to think of futbol, and pretty much all sports, as a kind of ritualized battle. One side v. the other, somebody wins. A battle, nothing less. and the sports fans, supporting one side or the other, become vicariously involved in the battle. And in places like Buenos Aires, and all over the world really, a culture evolves around this vicarious participation in battle that elevates it in importance. And to be sure, this taps into some deep genetic impulses that everyone, but especially males (obviously) carry around. Sure, it's a survival thing -- the young men are the strongest and fastest of the group, so over the millions of years that we evolved, they had to fight to protect the group. So being a futbol fan gives the young males a chance to participate in some level in a battle, which some genes somewhere say is a good thing.
The problem is, battle is not a good thing. Not at all. Battle is violence. Battles frequently get out of control. Especially in a heavily populated, urban society. The battles get out of control, and kids get killed at soccer games, people get stabbed. One kid got killed at a game on saturday, then on sunday there was something of a riot at a Boca Juniors game. A hundred and eighty people were arrested, and one older guy was stabbed. Cars were burned and overturned, i'm sure there were dozens and dozens of injuries.
And it's not just a matter of game-day violence. The bigger problem is that this battle-related violence may tend to legitimize violence and a generally confrontational attitude. Gotta be tough, right? You can't help but notice the attitude, the dudes wearing the futbol shirts. Not all of them -- lots of dudes wear futbol shirts, but you can easily spot the ones looking for trouble.
Argentina, like italy, brazil, england, and lord knows dozens and dozens of other countries has a futbol culture that glorifies belonging to a group of supporters of a team. It becomes way, way too much of these people's identities. And when it's that much of your identity, you start to justify anything done in the name of "supporting" your team.
Seems to me to be very much like a street gang. Your gang becomes your support network, and before long you become willing to do anything to support your gang.
And of course it's generally the people (okay, men - let's be clear, this is a male problem) who don't have that much else going on in their lives who become the most trouble. They're frustrated by their place in society, their lack of opportunities. And being a member of the "Barra Brava" -- the brave/crazy fans -- gives them an outlet for asserting themselves.
So, hell, what is there to do about this? Nothing, it seems. This is cultural, and it's hard to change culture. Although it does change over time -- the soccer fans in england are much, much less thuggish than they were twenty years ago. So what happened? Actually, I hate to say it but it seems that england just became a lot richer. In the seventies, eighties, things were looking kind of bleak in england. And now, it's much more posh. The soccer teams were bought by big companies and really rich people, the stadiums fixed up, the prices raised, and over a decade or so, soccer became 'family entertainment'.
And note how in the US we have a very limited amount of sports-related craziness. OK, once in a while the post-victory celebrations get out of control, but that seems to be about it. And of course the US is pretty rich. But what about the italian example? Italy is now a pretty rich country, but I think they still have trouble with their futbol fans. Although I'm not really sure.
OK, I admit, this is a rant. But it's something I think about a lot. Dan's original quote of the day -- "Violence -- it's a problem." I just hate the futbol culture, because it seems like a violence incubator. We really, really need fewer battles, not more.
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