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| | | As my first year at law school has grown into a memory, my anxieties and insecurities have dissipated. I have no grounds to complain. I was benefitted by the lottery of birth. Whatever unhappiness I felt was the product of decisions that I made. No one forced me to be here. | |
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< | I finished my first year at Columbia Law School thirteen weeks ago. I have frequently meditated on the kind of lawyer I want to become ever since. I have always returned to the same conclusion. I came to law school because I wanted to defend people who caught a bad break. I plan to build a practice that sustains itself by defending individuals accused of white-collar crimes, and then uses those resources to advocate for those who cannot pay a legal bill. These individuals are owed advocacy regardless of mens rea, actual innocence, or proof beyond a reasonable doubt. | >
> | I finished my first year at Columbia Law School thirteen weeks ago. I have frequently meditated on the kind of lawyer I want to become ever since. I have always returned to the same conclusion. I came to law school because I wanted to defend people who caught a bad break. I plan to build a practice that sustains itself by defending individuals accused of white-collar crimes, and then uses those resources to advocate for those who cannot pay a legal bill. These individuals are owed advocacy regardless of mens rea, actual innocence, or proof beyond a reasonable doubt. | | | I am a strong believer that we get the world we deserve. People try to draw a line between criminals and civilians, between culpable and innocent mental states. But everybody is guilty. Some just catch a bad break. And as for the state of my practice? I know exactly what I want, and now I must clarify exactly how I am going to do it. But I have a couple ideas. Construction may have stalled briefly, but I have two years to seek practical experience and engage bright peers with a similar vision. I will press forward. }} | |
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< | In the wake of Ray Rice firestorm, the American public mind condemned domestic violence and its perpetrators wholesale. The vitriol was palpable. It was uniformly evidenced by the brand equity indexes, public approval polls, and social media case studies published that September. The NFL egregiously violated its audiences’ conscious social and political beliefs. But then, something peculiar happened. I am not referring to the $180 million signed, sealed, and delivered to Floyd Mayweather nine months later – although that is relevant. This peculiar thing happened much sooner. Nine days after the American public mind excoriated Ray Rice. Nine days after countless individuals paraded their outrage and advertised their morality by way of tweets and statuses, the NFL’s ratings boomed. Two million new viewers tuned in, sat through advertisements, and spurred league revenue. | >
> | In the wake of Ray Rice firestorm, the American public mind condemned domestic violence and its perpetrators wholesale. The vitriol was palpable. It was uniformly evidenced by the brand equity indexes, public approval polls, and social media case studies published that September. The NFL egregiously violated its audiences’ conscious social and political beliefs. But then, something peculiar happened. I am not referring to the $180 million signed, sealed, and delivered to Floyd Mayweather nine months later – although that is relevant. This peculiar thing happened much sooner - Nine days after the American public mind excoriated Ray Rice. Nine days after countless individuals paraded their outrage and advertised their morality by way of tweets and statuses, the NFL’s ratings boomed. Two million new viewers tuned in, sat through advertisements, and spurred league revenue. | | | This paradox rattled me. And I sought to assuage the discomfort by punching out an essay about pay-per-view boxing in mid-May. With stinging rhetoric, I attempted to illustrate a clear example of the fact that consumption patterns are not well correlated with peoples’ conscious goals and political beliefs. But as I typed away, with vision blurred by animus and insecurity, I missed the point. Not only because many of the people who called for the NFL’s punishing Rice never bought a boxing pay-per-view or sat through an NFL broadcast. More fundamentally, I missed the point because this phenomenon should be analyzed far beyond a “rational” or “irrational” classification. There is a more important question. | | | Biological Influences, Archaic Response Tendencies, and Adaptive Impulses | |
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< | Scientific evidence indicates that humans are biologically predisposed toward violence. Violent stimuli trigger dopamine secretion and engage the same reward pathways associated with the satisfaction of food, sex, and drug cravings. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2648522/ This biological predisposition seems consistent with evolutionary theory. | >
> | Scientific evidence indicates that humans are biologically predisposed toward violence. Violent stimuli trigger dopamine secretion and engage the same reward pathways associated with the satisfaction of food, sex, and drug cravings. This biological predisposition seems consistent with evolutionary theory.
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| | | Early humans persisted by continually screening their environment for danger. Over millennia, this heightened concern for potential violence proved adaptive. The trait endured in the brain’s older structures, especially the limbic system. And this biological influence elicits a continued interest in observing violence.
Intra-psychological Impulses and Historical Influences
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< | Prominent intra-psychological influences explain why blood sport viewers are primarily male and further reveal the athletic rituals’ appeal. Cultural guides, downloaded during early childhood, instruct American males to suppress emotion and excitement. Violent sports occasion an opportunity for males to shout, jeer, and cringe in a hyper-masculine context, free from the social pressure to suppress emotion and excitement. The expression of these routinely contained emotions offers viewers a reprieve from the aversive, subjective cost of suppressing behavioral impulses. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2440575/#R37. Historical developments have made these opportunities increasingly rare.
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> | Prominent intra-psychological influences explain why blood sport viewers are primarily male and further reveal the athletic rituals’ appeal. Cultural guides, downloaded during early childhood, instruct American males to suppress emotion and excitement. Violent sports occasion an opportunity for males to shout, jeer, and cringe in a hyper-masculine context, free from the social pressure to suppress emotion and excitement. The expression of these routinely contained emotions offers viewers a reprieve from the aversive, subjective cost of suppressing behavioral impulses. Historical developments have made these opportunities increasingly rare.
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| | | For centuries, extravagant participation was both socially accepted and typical at operas, dramas, and symphonies. Audiences cheered, jeered, and threw objects. At the turn of the nineteenth century, however, the highly participatory audience was sacralized. Silence was expected, and outward emotional expression was repressed. Operant learning and contextual priming now instruct males to suppress emotion. And the social gatherings occasioned by violent sporting events afford a unique opportunity to express emotion in a generally prohibited fashion.
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