Miscellaneous And Off Topic Subjects

[hack]

Stan get the hell out of my room.

[Tony G]

I suppose what I'm looking for is to go back and find where it started to go south on these guys. Not the final collision but where the values started to erode. That descent can serve as a shared learning for other who think their program is invincible.

Look at it this way. After the shuttle Challenger blew up, NASA was found to have a weak culture that did not put safety first. They vowed to fix it and make sure it would never happen again. When Columbia's accident happened, the same culture was revealed. They failed to stay focused on the primary goal. In their case flight safety was that goal.

In the case of PSU it was the welfare of students and young men that could be harmed by Sandusky. It's a glaring example of how easy it can be to go astray. If "what I expect to learn" winds up being that example to others, I'm good with that. If that gives them a pause and they examine their own positions and don't go down that road, I'm good with that. Not just in the realm of the case of a predator but in the much broader arena of institutional dynamics. To have not attempted to learn anything from this is a further wound to the victims.

[hack]

If you're talking about how a mission drifts despite everyone presumably working earnestly and diligently towards a goal, sure -- that's interesting stuff. I don't see the comparison though. Where it all went wrong here however has nothing to do with what happens when a large group has to work as a cohesive unit. It has nothing to do how goals are set or communicated. It's an outlier to all that. This kinda seems like punching a wall, having some sore knuckles for a few days, and then launching a years-long inquiry into the impacts of punching a wall.

[UMStan White]

waw waw waw waw waw

[hack]

Can someone please pay attention to Stan? It's not my turn.

[Tony G]

If this is unexceptional, as you propose it is, wouldn't there be some case for change to happen? More of a sea-change of culture than just "oh well, that's the cost of doing business as an institution" approach?

I'm not calling for congressional hearings or even grand jury testimony. I do want someone to study this and see what the facts are. As you assert (and I agree) there is certainly more than one case to study of institutional culture going adrift.

[hack]

Tough question. You'd hope so. But I don't think I'm proposing that -- humans doing the wrong thing in pursuit of money or protecting their jobs is pretty common. There's some furor, senators call in Tony Heyward to answer for BP or Jack-in-the-Box's CEO to talk about e-coli, or whatever else, and then everybody's attention shifts to the next crisis and nobody follows through on the supposed fixes to the previous ones.

[Tony G]

That's why I'm not asking for a congressional approach. That seldom works IMO. I mean more an approach so institutions have a clearer road map for how to avoid this. The let hubris take its course method doesn't seem to work. There should be a desire from within to course correct out of these situations before you get in deep.

[hack]

That assumes institutions want to avoid it. Now of course nobody wants an employee molesting boys -- inside the institution's facilities, at least. But when it comes to the vast marjority of wrongdoing, it's with intent and the hope of not getting caught.

[entropy]

I'm sorry but the "greatest generation" was only great to the people in power - white males. And white males are the only ones who wax romantic about how things were better in the old days because that was the case for them alone. Every other group has since seen their lives improved. Blacks, homosexuals, women, natives, etc etc etc were all fucked (and still are - just less so). Sure there's the surface level selfishness now (and I can't tell you how much I hate the strange fascination with fame and becoming famous these days) but it doesn't compare to the protection of power that was pooled amongst a select group of individuals previous. That is the definition of self-interest and selfishness. The job of disrupting that balance just hasn't been finished yet and that's why there's such a concentration of power amongst a select group of CEO's who are still holding out. And guess what, the overwhelming majority of them are white males. Go figure.

Then again, I think a little more self sacrifice and less self interest could go a long way. It is funny that despite all this power from the greatest generation, wealth distribution has become worse. We no longer have neighbors, but strangers... Maybe...just maybe.. Instead of changing what was wrong, we messed thing up worse.

But what do I know... I'm a white male. Obviously, I hate women and minorities... (sarcasm)

[Rob F]

wow...my brain hurts after reading the last 2 pages.

Good discussion, nonetheless. Opened my eyes to a few new perspectives on both human and organizational behavior/misbehavior. Unfortunately, though, all the thought that went into your debate here would be wasted on not just the so-called "lowest common denominator", but also for a large majority of our citizenry who, for lack of a better way to say it, lack the intelligence to understand things in such complex terms.

What most people do understand, though, is strong and decisive punishment ---both as a weapon of discipine to be wielded upon those who do wrong, are "evil", etc., and as a deterrent to prevent others from repeating such crimes. And even then, there will always be a segment of the population who will decide to do evil and engage in even the most despicable of criminal activities, regardless of potential punishment.

What to do then, to those at Penn State once their guilt is determined by the court of law? Some sort of punishment that is nearly as inhumane as both the dastardly crimes of Sandusky and the inhumane coverup of said crimes by the "leadership" at PSU.

How about having them publicly drawn and quartered, maybe?

[hack]

Heads have to roll at PSU, and not just a few. Measured in the tens. Agreed that you send a deterrent.

[Tony G]

agreed

[DennisT]

Who has the choke chain? I'll take care of Stan for a while.

[Ghengis Jon]

Pedophilia is an incurable mental illness. There is no amount of 'deterrence' that will prevent its re-occurance. Murder, which is not usually the result of a mental illness, can not / is not deterred by extremes like capital punishment or the threat of being caged for the rest of life. So deterrence does not reasonably enter the equation. The only answer is to remove the offender from society, but it is the method that is endlessly debated.

Imo, pedophiles should be treated like serial killers. They should be put in a jar like a bug and studied, until some cure (chemical, surgical, etc) can be discovered. But our adherence to basic human rights prevent us from conducting such experiments. The Nazis and their fledgling eugenics programs tried to address this and we all saw where that led to. So there lies the problem - damned if you do, damned if you don't.

Take money out of college athletics - make it non-profit. A lot of problems go away. Those that covered up and looked the other way did so in order to protect the athletic cash cow and the power/influence that goes with it.

Yes we live in a capitalist society and enjoy its benefits. But what we see at PSU is a dark side of what capital can do to decision making. It makes it far easier to attempt to sweep away a problem rather than face it. The bigger problem is that this malaise is not limited to athletics.

Sadly, the US has become ancient Rome. We are more concerned with the pursuit of leisure and the accumulation of money than we are in bettering ourselves or society. I figure that the US as we know it will be gone in less than a 100 years. Either devolving from a democracy into a totalitarian society like Germany did in the 1930's or simply collapse from the diseases within like ancient Greece.